Today, as race, gender or religion are not supposed to justify inequality anymore, the question of what constitutes citizenship and whether equality amongst citizens has been realised is as current as ever. The fact that Claudia Rankine’s "Citizen: An American Lyric", that deals with the notion of citizenship and racial discrimination, has been the most widely discussed and celebrated work of poetry in 2014 illustrates that Rankine has touched on a sensitive issue.
Claudia Rankine as black, female writer explores in Citizen the various aspects of private and political citizenship and uses diverse genres to illustrate the multifaced problems. It will be analysed how the term citizenship is traditionally defined and how Claudia Rankine breaks with this expectations in subverting the subject of social standing into that of injury, effectively questioning the possibility for minorities to reach acknowledgement and equal treatment in society.
Citizen illustrates the discrimination of minority citizens by depicting microaggressions and subconscious racial bias in everyday life and shows that acknowledging the problem is not enough. It presents media as an alternate way for representation and uses multiple genres to reflect upon language and to promote alternative ways of communication.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Citizenship in Citizen: An American Lyric
2.1 Citizenship and Social Standing in the US
2.1.1 The Importance of Voting
2.1.3 Earning and the American Dream
2.2 Injury and Vulnerability: Counterimages to Social Standing
2.1.1 Microaggressions in Everyday Life
2.1.2 Invisibility and Loneliness
2.1.3 Bearing Witness: Citizenship and Being a Victim
2.3 The Function of Genre in Citizen
2.3.1 Prose Poetry and the ‘You’
2.3.2 Art as Alternative to Language
3. Conclusion
Research Objectives and Themes
This academic paper examines the intersection of citizenship, race, and gender in Claudia Rankine’s work Citizen: An American Lyric. It explores how traditional definitions of citizenship based on social standing often fail to account for the systemic discrimination faced by minority citizens, proposing instead that "injury" and "vulnerability" are central components of the experience for black citizens in a "white democracy."
- The subversion of traditional citizenship concepts.
- The role of racial microaggressions in everyday life.
- The psychological impact of invisibility and trauma.
- The function of hybrid genres (prose poetry and visual art) as alternative modes of communication.
- The politics of bearing witness and the impact of victim-blaming.
Excerpt from the Book
2.1.1 Microaggressions in Everyday Life
In Citizen, Claudia Rankine describes events from everyday life in America that show that racist stereotypes still prevail in society’s subconsciousness, making African Americans in the United States feel like second-class citizens. The focus on everyday incidents, rather than out of the ordinary events, makes the operations of casual racial and sexual discrimination that often blends into the background of social interaction visible to the recipient.
One way of discrimination that is mentioned in the text is the -sometimes subconscious- presence of stereotypes about black people that can accumulate from little annoying incidents to the deprivation of civil rights. “When a woman you work with calls you by the name of another woman you work with, it is too much of a cliché not to laugh out loud”, Rankine writes and while it is not explicitly stated that this other woman is black, the word ‘cliché’ suggests that the confusion stemmed from the stereotype that all African Americans ‘look alike’.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: This chapter contextualizes the importance of citizenship discourse in light of contemporary political shifts and introduces Claudia Rankine’s Citizen as a seminal work engaging with these themes.
2. Citizenship in Citizen: An American Lyric: This section provides a conceptual framework for US citizenship, focusing on the historical exclusion of minorities and the move from "social standing" to "injury" as a lens for analysis.
2.1 Citizenship and Social Standing in the US: An analysis of how voting rights and economic independence define the traditional, albeit often exclusionary, concept of US citizenship.
2.1.1 The Importance of Voting: Explores the struggle for suffrage and how the right to vote functions as an affirmation of belonging within the American political system.
2.1.3 Earning and the American Dream: Discusses the link between economic labor and social status, highlighting the historical barriers faced by African Americans in achieving financial and civil autonomy.
2.2 Injury and Vulnerability: Counterimages to Social Standing: Introduces the concept of "injury" as a more accurate description of the lived reality of marginalized groups compared to traditional social standing.
2.1.1 Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Examines how repeated, subtle acts of racial prejudice accumulate into significant trauma and social injustice.
2.1.2 Invisibility and Loneliness: Addresses the psychological consequences of feeling unseen or stereotyped within a society that prioritizes a white, male perspective.
2.1.3 Bearing Witness: Citizenship and Being a Victim: Analyzes the burden of testimony placed upon minority citizens and the problematic ways society treats those who speak out against injustice.
2.3 The Function of Genre in Citizen: Explores why Rankine utilizes hybrid forms of literature to break free from traditional, biased narrative structures.
2.3.1 Prose Poetry and the ‘You’: Investigates how the use of the second-person pronoun creates an intimate, yet often uncomfortable, engagement with the reader.
2.3.2 Art as Alternative to Language: Discusses how visual art and non-linguistic expression provide a necessary counter-space to the inherent biases found in conventional language.
3. Conclusion: Synthesizes the paper's findings, reiterating that Citizen serves as both a record of systemic inequality and a call to reevaluate how we define citizenship in modern America.
Keywords
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric, Citizenship, Social Standing, Injury, Microaggressions, Racial Discrimination, White Democracy, Genre, Prose Poetry, Bearing Witness, Victim-Blaming, Identity, Representation, Trauma.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research paper?
The paper explores how Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric critiques and reconstructs the traditional concept of American citizenship by highlighting the reality of racial discrimination and systemic injury.
What are the primary thematic pillars discussed?
The main themes include the definition of citizenship, the mechanism of racial microaggressions, the role of hybrid literary genres, and the power of "bearing witness" to combat invisibility.
What is the central research question?
The research investigates how Rankine’s work subverts the traditional definition of citizenship—based on social standing—into one based on "injury," thereby challenging the possibility for minorities to achieve equitable treatment in a historically biased society.
Which scientific methodology is utilized?
The paper employs a qualitative textual analysis of Rankine’s prose poetry, supported by political theory (Judith Shklar, Joel Schlosser) and cultural studies, to examine the intersection of structural narratives and social reality.
What does the main body of the work cover?
The main body details the historical concept of citizenship in the US, analyzes the persistent nature of racial microaggressions, and examines the innovative structural and stylistic techniques (the 'you' address and the integration of art) that Rankine uses to provoke reader reflection.
Which keywords best characterize this work?
Key terms include citizenship, injury, microaggressions, white democracy, hybrid genre, and bearing witness.
How does the author define the shift from "social standing" to "injury"?
The paper argues that "social standing" is an inadequate metric for marginalized groups because it ignores the systemic violations they face; "injury" captures the pervasive, historical, and bodily nature of the harm inflicted upon them by a "white democracy."
What role does visual art play in the text?
Visual art is presented as an alternative medium of communication that bypasses the limitations and historical biases of standard language, offering a space for reflection that is not explicitly controlled by "the grammar of whiteness."
- Arbeit zitieren
- Anonymous (Autor:in), 2017, This is How You Are a Citizen? The Interpretation of Citizenship and Genre in Claudia Rankine’s "Citizen: An American Lyric", München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1718688
