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FACULTY OF ARTS AND EDUCATION MASTER’S THESIS Programme of study: Spring semester, 2016 Master in Literacy Studies Open Author: Asli Hersi ………………………………………… (Author’s signature) Supervisor: Eric Dean Rasmussen Thesis title: Rethinking Racism in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric Keywords: No. of pages: 105 + appendices/other: 15 African- American Literature Contemporary poetry Everyday racism Stavanger, 11th May, 2016 Microaggressions Race date/year Abstract The issue of race in America in the twenty-first century is still a turbulent matter. The end of segregation in schools, politics, marriages and workplaces created a mask that hid racial inequalities and injustices (Whitmarsh 1). In a time where police brutalities have frequently surfaced in the media in a supposed “post-racial America”, Claudia Rankine writes a thought- provoking 160 page long “book-length poem” about everyday racism arguing that the overlooking of microaggressions (brief daily commonplace verbal and behavioral racial slights) are allowing macroaggressions (blatant racial act such as hate crime) to occur. Rankine’s “book-length poem” is an experimental work melding poetry, prose, essays, commentaries, video transcripts and imagery, which challenges the notion of what poetry can do and what poetry is supposed to look like. This thesis is a study on Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric in regards to her approach to the African American racial experience in a supposed “post-racial America”. Citizen is filled with anecdotal microaggressions from both Rankine herself and her friends, but also moments when microaggressions escalate to incident that have been frequent in the media such as the Trayvon Martin shooting and Zinedine Zidane’s World Cup head-butt. Naming her book Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), Rankine challenges the notion of citizenship and African American’s position as second class citizens. African Americans are still experiencing hardships that stems from slavery such as racial profiling, stereotyping, and racial slurs. Their citizenship which took centuries to gain, does not protect them from these hardships. Rankine is concerned with the subtle “everyday racism” African Americans experience on a daily basis and the profound affects this has on their self-image, but also the threat this poses to their lives. Rankine intervenes in current debates about racism due to her approach on everyday racism. In a time where macroaggressions such as police brutalities have reached the news and is taking up a lot of the racial discussion in the United States, Rankine decides to take out a magnifier to look at where the disease starts. Citizen is able to urgently speak about microaggressions as if they were macroaggressions. The urgency is created when Rankine follows up her anecdotes with meditations that show how racial comments and gestures are affecting people’s mental state. 1 My interpretation is that Rankine is putting forth a message that claims that microaggressions should be considered an act of racism to the same degree macroaggresions are. 2 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Table of contents………………………………………………………………………………3 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..4 Chapter 2: The Historical Self and the Self Self ………………………………………….24 2.1 Historicizing African Americans’ Struggle for Citizenship …………………………..24 2.2 Rankine on Everyday Racism and Contemporary Issues Concerning Citizenship.........31 Chapter 3: The Lyric……………………………………………………………………......41 Chapter 4: When Such Things Happen He Must Grit His Teeth ……………………….50 4.1 Celebrating Freedom Hundred Years Too Early………………………………………50 4.2 Script for Situation Six: Violence and the Segregation of Words …………………….59 4.3 I Do Not Always Feel Colored………………………………………………………...70 Chapter 5: Blackness in the white imagination……………………………………………78 5.1 The Twenty-first Century Narrative...............................................................................78 5.2 Policing the Imagination.................................................................................................89 Chapter 6: Creating a Link…………………………………………………………………97 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………. 106 3 1 Introduction If they don’t see the happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black. – Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1982) In a time where police brutalities have frequently surfaced in the media in a supposed “post- racial America”, Claudia Rankine writes a thought-provoking 160 page long “book-length poem” about everyday racism arguing that the overlooking of microaggressions are allowing macroaggressions to occur. Naming her book Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), Rankine challenges the notion of citizenship and African American’s position as second class citizens. Rankine is concerned with the subtle “everyday racism” African Americans experience on a daily basis and the profound affects this has on their self-image, but also the threat this poses to their lives. This thesis is a study on Citizen: An American Lyric in regards to its approach to the African American racial experience in a supposed “post-racial America”, but also a contribution to the recent reception Citizen has received. Citizen has been called “urgent” by The New York Times (Lee), “especially vital” by The New Yorker (Chiasson), and “unforgettable” by the well respected poetry scholar Marjorie Perloff (“Citizen: An American Lyric”). Rankine’s “book-length poem” is an experimental work melding poetry, prose, essays, commentaries, video transcripts and imagery challenging the notion of what poetry can do and what poetry is supposed to look like. Citizen is filled with anecdotal microaggressions from both Rankine herself and her friends, but also moments when microaggressions escalate to incident that have been frequent in the media such as the Trayvon Martin shooting and Zinedine Zidane’s World Cup head- butt. This thesis will refer to African Americans using the terms, African American, Black, and Black Americans due to the complexity and the subjectivity of what is considered appropriate. Rankine starts off Citizen: An American Lyric, with a quote from Chris Marker, the French filmmaker of the documentary, Sans Soleil, which explores the nature of human memory where he visits humanity as if from another planet (Bradshaw). Rankine meditates throughout Citizen on what it means to be black in the United States of America in the 4 twenty-first century and in the midst of her meditations, Rankine ponders on what memory is. All of the events that happen in a person’s life accumulate and becomes stored in something we call memory. Memory, in both good and bad, triggers human emotion and takes us back in time. Rankine takes the issue of racism which has been a part of the U.S memory for centuries and brings it forth into the twenty-first century where the legacy of racism continues at a time when nobody alive has a memory of slavery. Racism and the U.S memory can be connected to the notion of cultural memory. Cultural memory, a complex term and a whole study of its own, is how a society is able to preserve their history and culture through a collective memory. Memory is an individual phenomenon, however, what makes memory collective is how minds work together in a society. People normally recall, recognize, acquire and localize their memories in society. It is generally impossible for people to remember coherently without their group context. Groups provide us the opportunity to recall, and they also shape the way we recall things. For instance, adults have a hard time knowing if a particular childhood memory is actually of the original event or if it is different fragments of the original event that has been told to them through various retellings and intervening experiences (Erli, and Nunning 155). Cultural memory, however, can be divided into two levels. The first level of cultural memory is connected to biological memory. This means that memory can never truly be individual as memory will always be shaped by collective contexts, which is closely related to collective memory. People we live with or meet and various things we see from the media are all things that make us recall our past and help us build new memories. We are always being influenced which means that this first level of cultural memory refers to socio-cultural contexts. This type of cultural memory is understood in accordance to for instance oral history. The second level of cultural memory is connected to the shared experience a social group has through the media, institutions and practices. “Memory” is used as a metaphor here. People do not literally remember, but we select different versions and perspectives of the past in accordance to current needs and knowledge. (Erli, and Nunning 5) The latter definition of cultural memory is more appropriate to Citizen. Rankine writes of a mixture of cultural memory and collective memory. The cultural memory Rankine is referring to is the shared experience African Americans have of racism in the United States, and the collective memory Rankine is referring to is the historical memory of slavery that looks at what it means to be American and the collective narrative of the United States (Erli, and Nunning 5). 5 You like to think memory goes far back though remem- bering was never recommended. Forget all that, the world says. The world’s had a lot of practice. No one should adhere to the facts that contribute to narrative… (Rankine, Citizen 61) In this quote from Citizen Rankine is saying