Reflections on Charlie Reich and Reunion Weekend

The recent passing of Charles Reich and an experience in Claudia Rankine’s poetry seminar during our 50^th Reunion a few weeks ago prompt these thoughts.

The Charlie Reich seminar of which I speak actually occurred in the law school, but undergraduates had the run of the campus, and it was widely attended by them.

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The combination of Claudia Rankine’s stunning prose-poem work, “Citizen: An American Lyric”, and having a daughter who is a poet, prompted me to attend Professor Rankine’s 9 AM seminar Saturday morning of reunion weekend.

We learned about the Racial Imaginary Institute and visually feasted and were stunned by the artistry of Bell, Odutola, Faustine, Locke and Kaphar and others whose names have slipped my memory.

Just as the protagonist in Rankine’s poem listened carefully to words delivered with seeming carelessness, but, on another level,  listened to meaning replete with guile, irony and veiled bigotry or not-so-veiled bigotry, these artists helped us listen to the overwhelming significance of that first few milliseconds of visual perception – the glimpse that controls the message.

A feature of our modern connected age, these glimpses were more often misleading, and were shaped by underlying tropes of bias, or worse, misogyny, racism, and homophobia, among others, to take over one’s internal dialogue. The neurological basis of optical illusion drives some interesting visual science, but the experience the artists in Rankine’s presentation were delivering was one of an emotional illusion. For example, Bell’s work repurposed a front page of a past New York Times that sidelined the news story about the racism and deadly violence in Charlottesville in favor of a story about the forced emigration choices for an Iowa mother and her American born son.

This teaching experience from Rankine/Bell et al. sent this 50^th Reunioner back in time to remember Charlie Reich. He always began by reading the front page of the New York Times and the session always moved from the leisurely pace and the suasion of the front page writer to boiling outrage after thinking about what was written, or perhaps more importantly, about what was being reported. These were days when Viet Nam and that war consumed us.

Of course, for the final paper I missed Charlie’s broader message which was only through careful reading and listening could one think clearly, a point elegantly elaborated during the Rankine seminar. Those times may be long past, and Charles Reich died on June 15, 2019. The pedagogic approach that emphasizes the power of semiotics is alive and well and elaborated in astounding art forms and in the hands of capable, amazingly talented faculty.  Thank you Professor Rankine for continuing a venerable tradition that nourished our brains and hearts.