Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine (b.1963)

Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) is a very visual piece, for it viscerally describes the struggles of black American Citizens using imagery and life-based experiences. As the presence of visual elements in this work is not coincidental, their analysis is of use to the interpretation of the text and its depth.

Jim Crow Rd., Michael David Murphy (2008)

The excerpt in page 7 of Rankine's book is introduced by the above shown picture by Michael Murphy. In the author's intro to the collection of pictures in which this image is inserted, Murphy wonders if the name rings any bells to the children that attend school in the neighboring block. It makes one question if racial segregation is still part of the social panorama in the US nowadays and if laws like Jim Crow's are still present in people's minds. Can we consider that as the reason why Rankine chose this image in specific to precede the description of the first time she felt like "graphite against a sharp white background"?

“I do not always feel colored. I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background”

The above transcribed phrase (by Zora Neale Hurston) is present in two of the four panels that compose Glenn Ligon’s work Four Etchings (1992). The panels in question are reproduced on pages 52 and 53 of Rankine’s work and follow a passage that reads as follows:  “…people (…) felt like her black body didn’t belong on their court, in their world. (…) better put all that strength to work in their fantasies of her working the land, rather than be caught up in the turbulence of our ancient dramas, like a ship fighting a storm in a Turner seascape” (pp.26). Bearing in mind that the authors of all of these elements are black and considering the fact that Rankine herself has suffered from racial discrimination, do you think the production of her work has any more impact than it would have had if it had been written by a white American citizen? Why?

The Slave Ship, William Turner (1840), oil on canvas

Detail of The Slave Ship

The reification and subconsequent dehumanizathion of the racialized body is mentioned in chapter II of Rankine's work and is evoked by the strong presence of Turner's painting. 174 years separate The Slave Ship from Citizen however, the issue is still a reality. Why is it that "no amount of visibility will alter the ways in which one is perceived"?

 

Tennis-Brazil-Wozniacki-Exhibition (2012)

Whilst comparing Serena Williams' highly criticized three-second celebratory dance in the 2012 Olympics (described on pp.33) and Dane Caroline Wozniacki's poor imitation of Williams (pictured above), we come across an explicit case of racial inequality, where the boundries of the acceptable are blurred. Why is the second instance considered a humerous performance while the first is compared to an "X-rated joke inside a church"?

Cláudia Martins, nº148768

Cristiana Correia, nº52300