Don't Let Me Be Lonely: The Trans-Corporeal Ethics of Claudia Rankine's Investigative Poetics

Abstract

Mass media often presents violence, suffering, and other catastrophic events as singular incidents, frozen in time and disconnected from the myriad of complex relations that contribute to the ongoing flux of worldly existence. Even the most raw and uncensored forms of journalism often do not communicate the complex relationships shaping particular political and cultural figurations. Most devastatingly, the intangible nature of mass media often suppresses the material facticity of the human body. In her fourth book, Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004), Claudia Rankine utilizes investigative poetics to disrupt the facile political frameworks promoted by mass media, writing poetry that engages the complexity of existence while emphasizing material interconnectedness and embodiment. Investigative poetry incorporates a variety of data and reportage into the poem—including testimonials, interviews, facts, and figures—in order to explore the historical and political conditions of contemporary culture. Utilizing the same documents and information used by the media and other meaning-making institutions, the poet actively creates an alternate narrative history. Employing investigative techniques, Rankine accomplishes two interrelated tasks: first, Rankine breaks open the mediated frameworks that seek to erase the piercing physiological effects of racism and oppression. Second, Rankine demonstrates that the human is not a bounded individual, disembodied from cultural values and norms, but rather an embodied being immersed in a network of social, economic, material, environmental, biological, and political relationships.

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