ABSTRACT
A Diatopian reading unearths a political subject that is fundamentally different from the assuredness of the zoon politicon. The fractured and exposed selfhood that speaks from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Douglas Kearney’s poetry or Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad re-imagine the politico-poetic voice as a gesture of address, speaking from a position of the utmost vulnerability. “Unmappable Gestures: Politics of Literature in the Age of Donald Trump” is situated in the present moment of the Trump presidency and the white supremacist discourse it has encouraged; this opening chapter thus focuses on a writing from the ruins. Deep within the fragmentation of such texts, however, lies a search for a renewed ability to be addressed and to respond. These texts explore a transversal subjecthood and create the open-ended and participatory space in which such gestures can be acted upon. Such political voices do not primarily seek the stage of conflict and disagreement, but explore the kind of subjecthood that might make possible a future that does not perpetuate racial violence. These voices’ demands are both more radical and more tender for operating in a performative mode rather than representing a cause.
