TOWARDS SELF-DEFINED EXPRESSIONS OF BLACK ANGER IN CLAUDIA RANKINE'S CITIZEN AND PERCIVAL EVERETT'S ERASURE

Abstract

This project explores the ways in which Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and Percival Everett’s Erasure expose, undercut, and challenge reductive, stereotypical portrayals of black anger in the media. The project uses theories of African American literary and cultural studies to provide its basic frameworks, though it also applies, minimally, relevant theories in postcolonial studies. Beginning with Everett’s Erasure, this study uses theories of authenticism (via Ana Maria Sanchez-Arce) and stereotype (via Homi Bhabha) to argue that Everett’s text suggests that there is no viable space in commercial media for self-defined expressions of black anger. Rather, this project contends that Everett concedes to the inevitability of genuine black expression being absorbed into stereotype. The focus on Citizen highlights Rankine’s method of “returning the [media’s] gaze” to expose its power to decontextualize and redefine expressions of black anger (Amad 53). Posited, then, is that Rankine reconstitutes black subjectivity to challenge the visual authority of media. Though these texts present different conclusions on the possibility of self-defined expressions of black anger, they, as objects in the media, demonstrate that one can, in fact, carve out a space in which expressions of black anger are not limited to the confines of stereotype.