Abstract

From the Problems of a Democratic Aesthetic to the Aesthetics of a Problematic Democracy

In analyses of poems from the 18th, 20th and 21st century, this article juxtaposes different degrees of trust in a democratic political order and the role of poetry in it. Philip Freneau, who supported a radical interpretation of the American Revolution as initiating a new and better social order, searched for a democratic poetics commensurate with the value placed on common people. For Muriel Rukeyser and even more so, Langston Hughes in the 1930s, democracy felt threatened not only by fascism abroad but by racism and exploitation at home. In 2014, Claudia Rankines Citizen: An American Lyric registers, like Rukeyser and Hughes, the difficulties in constructing a consensual reality and pushes this notion much further; surprisingly, perhaps, her work continues to see art as important to alert us to this difficulty of modern democracies and divers societies.