Relational Ethics Series: On Being with Claudia Rankine

Another audio from On Being, this time with Claudia Rankine. Again, read the transcript, but be sure to listen to the unedited version. I have found that most of the depth is in the unheard cuts.

I also want you to really listen for the *dynamic in the exchange itself* between Krista and Claudia. I don’t want to show my hand here, because i want you to really look for it, but something –some *things* actually–are happening in this interview that didn’t happen in the Alain de Botton interview. It shows up most in the transcript, actually. Locate yourself in Krista, and then I want you to do your level best to locate yourself in Claudia, and use your curiosity and your fictive imagination to, at a heart level, discern what and how Claudia felt on a visceral level even as she was engaging.

Then, I want you to listen to the interview itself; this time focusing on Claudia’s words. Her phrase, ‘How Can I Stay In This Car With You?’ contains multitudes.

We talk so much about safety. One thing that gets lost is safety not so much for the person on the dominant side of the slash, but for the person with the most to lose.

Really focus on what Claudia says about the friends she informally focus grouped. How does this play out here?

Overall, what can we glean from all of this?

Let’s roll. No hearts or likes; comments only. I am asking much. I know it. I also know you have the capacity, will, and the agency to see this through.

https://onbeing.org/…/claudia-rankine-how-can-i-say-this-s…/


One response to “Relational Ethics Series: On Being with Claudia Rankine”

  1. Zoe Brookes Avatar
    Zoe Brookes

    I’m returning to this with renewed appreciation, as I read ‘Citizen’. So much of the daily racism that Rankine describes in her book are played out, directly, and in echoes, in this interview.

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