Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: Using Afrofuturist Theory To Examine Themes Of Black Visibility

Kiara Bell
Dr. Maleda Belilgne, Africana Studies

How are black lives today still affected by America’s deep roots in chattel slavery? Christina Sharpe’s book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke University Press 2016), studies theories of Blackness as it relates to visibility and aspiration. Sharpe examines cross-cultural representations of Black life to build her theme of “the wake,” which she defines as the climate of anti-Blackness that shapes post-slavery America. I will use the Afrofuturist theory from two chapters of Sharpe’s book, “The Hold” and “The Weather,” to examine elements of Black visibility in Claudia Rankine’s experimental book, Citizen (Graywolf Press 2014). A central tool used by Sharpe is the use of ‘Black annotation’ and ‘Black redaction’ to offer an alternative reading of how information is presented, past “the logics of the administered plantation.” The definitions she presents of ‘Black annotation and reaction’ can be used to analyze scenarios of Black aspiration in Citizen. Both authors use the aforementioned tools in their writings to address Black visibility. Using Sharpe’s theoretical work on ‘anagrammatical Blackness,’ ‘Black annotation,’ and ‘Black redaction,’ I will explore how Citizen promotes themes of Black visibility in “the wake.”

Come see Kiara's research presentation and other undergraduate research and creative work, April 22-29th at URCAD.umbc.edu!