Lyric Noise: Lisa Robertson, Claudia Rankine, and the Phatic Subject of Poetry in the Mass Public Sphere.
This essay takes the image of the noise-filled television screen that appears as a visual refrain in Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely as the starting point for a discussion of phatic language in her work and in the work of the poet Lisa Robertson. Phatic expressions are signifying acts that...
| Published in: | Criticism Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 97 - 132 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Wayne State University Press
Winter2019
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=137149909&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 137149909 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00111589 CIS jtl: Criticism issn: 00111589 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2019 vid: 61 iid: 1 pid: 426 pub: Wayne State University Press artinfo: ui: 137149909 10.13110/criticism.61.1.0097 ppf: 97 ppct: 35 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 2.9MB tig: atl: Lyric Noise: Lisa Robertson, Claudia Rankine, and the Phatic Subject of Poetry in the Mass Public Sphere. aug: au: Gorin, Andrew su: Lyric poetry Rankine, Claudia, 1963- Subjectivity Racialization Public sphere sug: subj: Lyric poetry Rankine, Claudia, 1963- Subjectivity Racialization Public sphere ab: This essay takes the image of the noise-filled television screen that appears as a visual refrain in Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely as the starting point for a discussion of phatic language in her work and in the work of the poet Lisa Robertson. Phatic expressions are signifying acts that indicate merely that a channel for communication is open, that signification can occur. Analyzing Robertson's and Rankine's uses of noisy phatic pronouns—pronouns that, in being reduced to a deictic potentiality, gesture to their own function as indexes of a virtual and noisy mass of possible subjective projections—the article argues that a phatic mode of subjectivity and address can be understood as typical of lyric poetry's response to the communicative situation of the mass public sphere. Comparing Robertson's and Rankine's uses of the phatic pronoun "you" in their respective books Cinema of the Present and Citizen , it observes in Robertson's work an affirmation of subjective indeterminacy that is countered by Rankine's tendency to show us scenes in which subjective interiors are, rather, overdetermined as a result of racialization. There is, furthermore, a racial and affective dimension that accrues to Rankine's reduction of lyric interiority to its phatic ground, one that represents a limit to affective exchange that is nonetheless the means by which an experience of shared affect becomes possible. The article concludes by locating Robertson's and Rankine's uses of the phatic mode on a historical trajectory that traces back to midcentury critiques of a dominant conception of lyric. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Criticism is the property of Wayne State University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Criticism holder: Wayne State University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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