Episode
Claudia Rankine's "Triage"
- Podcast
- LARB Radio Hour
- Published
- Aug 14, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3465
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://lareviewofbooks.libsyn.com/claudia-rankines-triage
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Summary
Claudia Rankine joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to speak about her new book, Triage. It follows the lifelong friendship between its narrator and someone she refers to as the "theorist." The two meet in college and begin to play a game called "collapse" — they simply fall to the floor whenever they see each other. In this game, Rankine finds an apt metaphor for the ongoing political struggles that the two friends talk, argue, and labor through. How do we deal with the onslaught of tragedy, genocide, climate change, and poverty? In other words, how do we deal with the daily news? What can we do when we are on the brink of collapse? Rankine examines these questions by looking at art — including a variety of sculptures of couches — as well as through the eyes of the theorist and the narrator as they debate what happens after the fall.