Racism and the Paradox of Visibility in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25094/rtp.2023n40a1016

Keywords:

racism, paradox of visibility, poetry, citizenship, Claudia Rankine

Abstract

This text aims to investigate how the work Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), written by the Jamaican-American poet Claudia Rankine, addresses contemporary racial issues considering what we call the paradox of visibility – the way that the hypersurveillance of the black body is linked to the invisibility of the African-American as a citizen. This article will have two focus points: the excessive supervision of black bodies and the construction of an idea of blackness by the imagination of white people. Thus, we intend to demonstrate how Rankine’s work provides rich material to study matters racial identity and human rights.

Author Biography

Anderson Gomes, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ)

Doutor em Letras pela PUC-Rio. Professor Associado da Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) em Seropédica, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

References

JOHNSTON K., Katherine J. “Profile Epistemologies, Racializing Surveillance, and Affective Counterstrategies in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen”. Twentieth-Century Literature, 65 n.4, 2019, p.343-368.

JONES, Shermaine M. “I Can’t Breathe!”: Affective Asphyxia in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: an American Lyric. South: a Scholarly Journal, vol.50, no.1, 2017, p.37-45.

KACHKA, Boris. “Claudia Rankine: Serena, Indian Wells, and Race”. Vulture, 2015. Disponível em: https://www.vulture.com/2015/03/claudia-rankineserena-indian-wells-and-race.html. Acesso em: 15 maio 2023.

KIRSCH, Adam. “Lines of resistance”. Foreign Policy. Disponível em: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/when-did-americas-poets-give-up-on-politicsclaudia-rankine-wislawa-szymborska/. Acesso em: 15 maio 2023.

LIVRARIA MEGAFAUNA. Claudia Rankine conversa com Stephanie Borges. Disponível em: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvodcsO4Ks0. Acesso em: 29 maio 2023.

PHILLIPS, Siobhan. “Change of address: Siobhan Phillips on Claudia Rankine’s Citizen”. Artforum International Magazine, 2015, p.97-98.

RANKINE, Claudia. Cidadã: uma lírica americana. Tradução de Stephanie Borges. São Paulo: Edições Jabuticaba, 2020.

SONTAG, Susan. Diante da dor dos outros. Tradução de Rubens Figueiredo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003.

VINOPAL, Courtney. “How this poet shows the way ‘racism hits the body’”. PBS, 2020. Disponível em: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/how-thispoet-shows-the-way-racism-hits-the-body. Acesso em: 27 maio 2023.

WARREN, Patricia Y. & FARRELL, Amy. “The Environmental Context of Racial Profiling”. The American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol.623, issue 1, 2009, p. 1.

Capa da Texto Poético 40

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Published

2023-09-24

How to Cite

Gomes, A. (2023). Racism and the Paradox of Visibility in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. Texto Poético, 19(40), 56–78. https://doi.org/10.25094/rtp.2023n40a1016

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 40 (2023): Poetry and Human Rights

Section

Dossier

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