James Baldwin and the Performance of (Something Other Than) Subjectivity

Duncan, Evan

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/94916 Copy

Description

Title

James Baldwin and the Performance of (Something Other Than) Subjectivity

Author(s)

Duncan, Evan

Issue Date

2016

Keyword(s)

• undergraduate research journals
• undergraduate work
• James Baldwin
• subjectivity
• blackness
• performance
• possession

Abstract

"“James Baldwin and the Performance of (Something Other Than Subjectivity)"" is primarily focused on the intersection of two primary sources, James Baldwin's novel Another Country, and Horace Ové's film Baldwin's Nigger. It is concerned with the performance of subjectivity, and argues that normative subjectivity is racialized, sexualized, and gendered, predicated on (self) possessive individualism and the regulation of materiality and difference. Rufus Scott, a black jazz drummer and the main character of Baldwin's novel, is unable to survive because the imposition of normative subjectivity is too much to bear, and it interdicts his ability to imagine alternative modes of life. However, prior to his death, Rufus offers an utterance that bears alternative potential in its refusal of the terms of normative subjectivity. This essay focuses on the ways in which that potentiality is taken up by the film as Baldwin and his interlocutors, in thinking through the need to collectively construct a different world, perform something other than subjectivity."

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/94916

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Evan Duncan

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