ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Claudia Rankine suggests that the remarkable reception of Citizen hinges on instructional role for readers—not only, but certainly significantly, white readers—during the Black Lives Matter era. The author argues that the object lessons of Citizen hinge on the crucial need to publicly mourn black lives cut short by violence, Citizen also operates within the black American elegiac tradition. She applies Jahan Ramazani’s argument in order to situate Citizen within the lineage of modern black elegy in the twenty-first century. The author demonstrates the utility of considering the didactic alongside the elegiac mode in an examination of Citizen. She proposes a reconception of the didactic mode with an emphasis on “ethics of knowledge,” based on Tina Chen’s and Ann-Marie Dunbar’s pedagogical arguments. Citizen’s flat tone works in tandem with the second-person to resist the individualizing of emotional responses to anti-black racism.
