tazemar – James Baldwin

Final Stream of Consciousness (ft. an unsolicited calculus analogy)

Who tells the story of America, and how? If there is one thing that I’ve learned in our James Baldwin course, it is that we may never find this question’s perfect answer. Through engaging with Baldwin’s biography and his publications, I have been trying to practice being an American intellectual historian. I want to track the history of thought. I’ve pushed myself to view Baldwin as just another contributor to this history of thought—not so as to simplify him, but rather so as to demystify and humanize his persona in our popular imagination.

Going into our course in February, I honestly had already sensationalized and heroified Baldwin in a way that many often do with other great American thinkers; I subconsciously considered him—or expected him—to be free of fault or confusion. This left me with a novice approach to understanding Baldwin’s life and his works for the first few weeks…I expected him to answer the question who tells the story of America, and how? with objectivity and excellence. I basically denied him the humanity that I would have given another non-Black non-queer thinker, which is messed up, right?

Well, this course has pushed me to see Baldwin as someone just as human and American as myself. He was not some nebulous being that was sent to solve all of America’s problems. He could not have totally solve the problem of racism in our country. He could not have promises us a perfectly inclusive reformation of the American church. But he did help us understand a direction that our nation should turn. There will always be more that we can argue Baldwin “should have” done, and there is nobility in our criticism…but there is also naïveté in our disappointment.

It’s likely that no one will tell the story of America. It’s likely that there isn’t a way how. It’s likely that we will all just continue to tell our own stories and sew together the scenes that we see most compatible. Maybe America’s story is in Hamilton. Maybe it is in the works of Oscar Wilde. Maybe Audre Lorde or Marcus Garvey or Joni Mitchell or James Baldwin. Maybe nowhere at all. My pessimism, which I am neither ashamed of nor disappointed in, tells me we will never find it exactly. I suppose that just because there is no perfect way to tell America’s story doesn’t mean that the “arc of history” won’t still “bend toward justice”. It’s like limits in calculus (if x = justice, or something). We may not find it, but we can keep getting closer.

Laissez-Faire

This semester, we have been able to take a close look at how James Baldwin exposes and challenges the standing mythologies/delusions that literally and figuratively entrap the American people from justice. He challenges Richard Wright’s notion of a nation’s “native son”. He pushes back against the doctrines and practices of American Protestantism in Go Tell It on The Mountain and “Down at the Cross”. He revises the hegemonic image of an “American” through his exploration of the rich WASP character David’s queerness in Giovanni’s Room. And we can see through his engagement with the civil rights movements that he works to challenge the white supremacist historical narrative that propagates AntiBlackness and rewards whiteness. Baldwin does so much work to expose the United States’ iniquities and to call for radical change…so why leave for Paris?

Now, we’ve already talked about this a bit in class, and of course the simple answer is that Baldwin is just human. He is not meant to serve as a martyr for our liberation or out literary exploration. But it is certainly surprising that Baldwin would flee a nation to which he seemed called to bear witness, and for which he hoped to inspire positive change. I’ve sat and thought about this with some peers, and I see two possible ways to understand Baldwin’s move to Paris (in the context of the works that we have read this semester; of course there is so much more to his story than these…)

We can understand his emigration from the US as either Baldwin falling victim to a mythology that other nations in the “Old World” are free from the social consequences of imperialism and slavery. Or maybe…we can understand his emigration as the ultimate surrender to this nation’s fate: doom. I wonder if Baldwin felt that the nation could actually, feasibly, find redemption. I don’t know if I can say I can. After all the intellectual work that Baldwin has done, the issues he wrote of are still real and relevant today! So what do we do? Maybe, we go to Paris?

“Let’s Not Be Stupid Together”: The American Delusion

Thomas Chatterton Williams’ column “Equal in Paris? On Baldwin and Hebdo” discusses the illusive perception of French (and, likely, greater Europe) as a non-racial/“equal” society. Williams connects his experience living in France for five years as a Black American with James Baldwin’s time in Paris. He notes that, just as its history is vastly different from that of the US, France’s handling of its own structural racism, islamophobia, and xenophobia is strikingly unlike the US’. French #JeSuisCharlie culture seems to be misguidedly and idealistically post-racial; there is an awareness of the structural inequities, but it is overshadowed by the desire to speak and criticize without an attention toward sensitivity. Bigotry is just accepted as free-speech, and perceived liberty through free-speech is framed as more important than actual social justice. In my opinion, the romanization of this seemingly-liberated free-speech culture does of the work of enforcing the illusion (into which Americans and non-Americans can buy) that Europe is a more culturally “equal” society…the same illusion that likely inspired Baldwin to travel there in his time.

While it is certainly true that the United States and the Americas have their own work to do to establish equity in societies founded on land bought with the lives and culture of indigenous peoples and Black people…America is not the only nation that must work toward social redemption. But how did the opposite become the myth? I’ve had a number of discussions with my peers on this matter. On social media, individuals from outside the United States often offer up [totally warranted] critiques of the United States’ history of antiBlackness/racism. These critiques are typically rooted in a hope for a better American and a better world, which is ultimately wonderful! However, a good number of them also reek of a sort of arrogant and destructive nationalism that does not do much good. Pointing to the United States as the “unequal” nation is what solidifies the delusion/myth that other countries are “equal”. It is as if American is the only nation tainted with a history that is beyond redemption…

So do we just buy into the delusion and move to Paris? Or is the “American in Paris”/American-in-Paradise-vibe just rooted in a desire to turn a blind eye to reality?

A Cautionary Tale?

No question the narrative of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a tragedy; David falls victim to the cruel hands of time, heartbreak, and isolation as a result of his preservation of his pride and his performance in the Male Prison/Panopticon. On his troubling journey toward self-realization, David has a major hand in the psychological and emotional damaging of both Giovanni and Hella. I found the conclusion of Giovanni’s Room to be incredibly powerful, and I felt that the work could be read as a cautionary tale of sorts.

I would hope that the text is not misconstrued as a denunciation of Americans’ willing exploration of their true identities, or their breaking from their social performance under the surveillance of the panopticon. I don’t think that Baldwin is suggesting that American’s should live in blissful ignorance lest they die by their own curiosities (a sentiment that Hella would fully endorse, given her “Americans should never come to Europe” monologue). I do, however, think that Baldwin is warning us a slower, but much more final death. Giovanni’s Room, to me, serves as a cautionary tale against one’s reversion into social comfort, ignorance, and complacency at the expense of one’s truth.

The slow destruction of each of David’s close relationships speaks to this slow death about which Baldwin warns us. When David decides to throw himself into her to escape his feelings toward Giovanni (though I do believe that David did also really love Hella), he leaves a vital part of himself to die. David reverts into the comfort of his performance in the panopticon, smothering the side of himself that he found in his life with Giovanni so that he might buy more time for the side of him that stays with Hella. But both sides die, all the same in the end. David is left all alone, the love of his life dead and the woman he loved broken and gone. Baldwin warns us of the silent danger social performance in the panopticon…seems no matter what, we die in jail.

Sin in Shame

After reading Part One of Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, I was left haunted by the wisdom and counsel that the character Jacques offers to David at the bar David, clearly eaten alive by self-loathing and internalized homophobia, deplores Jacques “lifestyle,” seeing his encounters with men as shameful and loveless acts that only come and go in five dark minutes. Jacques returns with a condemning warning to David about the mask that he is putting up to preserve what he thinks is it dignity, safety, and cleanliness. He pushes David to open himself up to Giovanni, in hopes that David can find love and take one more step toward defeating his own shame.

Jacques warns David, “… ‘you can make you time together [with Giovanni] anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe’… ‘You play it safe long enough…and you’ll be trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.’” (Baldwin 267).

Ultimately what Jacques fears is that David will delay his own reckoning with his sexuality until much later in his adult life, when he has much less time and spirit to make the most of his experiences as an openly queer man in the world. He fears that David will surrender to his shame, going on to consider his own natural desires and urges as “shameful” for years and years in order to preserve a pride that can really only be observed from the outside.

But what I find most compelling is the way that Jacques empowers David with the agency to decide for himself what is dirty and what is clean. David sees his own queerness (and the queerness of others) as something dirty because of the shame that he attaches to it. Tt is unclean, perhaps, because it is hidden; it is that “love that cannot be named” that Baldwin writes of in his Go Tell it On the Mountain. What he sees as clean is a long relationship with a woman, likely Hella. He sees it as clean because it is not hidden; it is named and publicly admired. Jacques pushes David to recognize that he has the power to redirect and reject his shame. David has the power to name his love. He has the power to decide what is dirty, and thus worthy of shame, and what is clean.

I wonder if Baldwin, in Paris, believed these words himself. Did he see dirtiness and cleanliness as relative classifications as it came to sexuality, or did he believe something more objective depending on the queer identity?

When the Saints Go Marching In

Throughout the duration of my reading of Baldwin’s Go Tell it On The Mountain, I have been interested in how the narrative bases itself on James Baldwin’s autobiography, while also interacting Biblical symbolism in order to create a criticism of the Christian religion. I’ve been particularly in the themes of apocalypticism that run through the narratives of each major character in the text. Though the main characters (John, Elisha, Gabriel, Elizabeth, Deborah, etc.) are all seeking to grow in their faith in God, it seems as though their greatest motivation for being “saved” is just to avoid the eternal damnation they feel destined for. They do not show nearly as much interest in being with God in the afterlife as they do in fleeing Hell. This is shown through the “fire and brimstone” rhetoric that pervades the thoughts words of each character in John’s family. Shame seems to be the main motivating factor for this outlook on religion and faith.

As this piece is based in Baldwin’s autobiography, I feel that Baldwin is making a criticism of the culture of the [Black] church, in its exploitation of human shame. We can see this through John’s redemption at the end of the text. Although John bears doubts about his religion and even hates religion because of its association with his father, he still seeks out peace in religious redemption. When John is saved and has his name written the Book of Life at the end of the narrative, he feels a sense of peace, or perhaps relief. He no longer feels that he has to run from Hell; no matter how much of a sinner he feels he is, he has escaped Hell. He gets to be in “that number” when the saints come marching into the pearly gates, but it may not be until the afterlife that he gets to fully accept and love himself.

Still, John has doubts at the end of the work, the fear of damnation somehow still finding him taking over. He says to Elisha, “No matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember—please remember—I was saved. I was there.” (Baldwin 215). He cannot fully revel in the miracle of his salvation; he is too fearful that it might be taken away from him.

Florence is perhaps the only character who is not willing to compromise her true self for her the eternal life of her soul. We can see this through how she talks with her brother Gabriel on matters of “the heart”. She is well aware that Gabriel is a well-revered man in the church and seen as very faithful man of God, but she does not believe that intention alone will get Gabriel to march with the saints into heaven. This is why Gabriel hates Florence; he sees her as a threat to his own salvation.

Go Tell it on the Mountain tells the story of a collection of characters who find solace in religion not necessarily because they want to march with the saints into heaven’s gates, but because they want to escape the Hell that they feel their sin and shame promises them. It’s fascinating to see Baldwin’s criticism of religion jump out through these characters!

Is There Refuge Under Afropessimism?

After Elizabeth’s presentation on Wednesday, I have been thinking a lot about how James Baldwin engages with Frank B. Wilderson III’s critical framework, Afropessimism, through his discussion of Richard Wright’s life, work, and legacy.

In Alas, Poor Richard, Baldwin speaks on how his relationship with Wright and Wright’s work has evolved as Wright’s life came to its “untimely” (Baldwin CE 247) conclusion in Paris. Baldwin notes that Paris—among other European cities—was perceived as a “city of refuge” (Baldwin CE 249) for Black Americans in the 1960’s who had the means to emigrate from the US.

Perhaps this act of Black American’s seeking refuge on European soil during the height of the Civil Rights Movement can be seen as an attempt to decolonize oneself and one’s history. It’s not like decolonization through the adoption of Pan-Africanism into one’s American life; this does not do much to decolonize one’s surroundings. And it’s not like decolonization via Garveyism’s Back-to-Africa Movement; the effects of slavery and colonization still reside in African nations. Immigrating to Europe, home of numerous imperial nations, seems like it could be a step toward decolonization…or at least an ironic escape from a colonized reality. After all, the United States has been tainted with the tattoo of Afropessimism. Ever since the first African native was stolen from their own soil and enslaved by colonists, Blackness become “synonymous with Slaveness” or what I’d call irrredemption (Wilderson III).

However, as we talked about in class, the treatment of Black people and Black Americans in European cities is still far from that of a first-class citizen. Professor Kinyon shared with us an example of the subtle differences in how Black American immigrants and Black African immigrants are treated in Ireland: native Black Africans fall victim to more overt racism, while Black Americans are viewed with slightly higher regard (because of their “marginal whiteness” or closeness to whiteness as Americans). It seems as though Europe [and other continents]’s Knowledge and recognition of the history of Black peoples as a result of colonization leaves Blackness inseparable from Slaveness, yet again.

Now, I wonder, if Afropessimism knows no borders, is there hope at all for full redemption for the Black Individual? And if no, is any effort in the direction of redemption (even if unsuccessful) more destructive to decolonization than it is constructive?

The Novelty of American Protest

In his “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” James Baldwin criticizes the American liberal and reader of American protest novels, writing that the problem with the American Protest novel is that the text itself frames the social issues it claims to address as remote and removed from the reality of the author and the reader. He writes that the only benefit the reader gets from such a text is that “finally [they] can receive a very definite thrill of virtue from the fact that [they] are reading such a book at all” (Baldwin 15).

Reading this last week, I was naturally taken back to the Summer of 2020, when Americans were rapidly disseminating and consuming protest media regarding the fight for racial equity and justice in the United States. Though I do not entirely share all of Baldwin’s criticism of protest novels and protest media in general, I can definitely see how passion for change in a nation that was built upon protest and dissent can be misguided and misdirected in a destructing manner. Although much of the media disseminated in the Summer of 2020 were not novels/fictitious—much of them were notable documentaries, essays, journals, infographics, op-eds and nonfiction books—I would argue that they did the work of coddling the liberal American. These pieces of media, though not created with poor intention, seem to be the easiest pieces of media for a troubled and well-intentioned American to grasp onto. They provide the illusion of protest, without the hassle or promise of activity.

Baldwin specifically detests how the American protest novel, particularly regarding race and racism, often still does the work upholding anti-Blackness and white supremacy; he uses Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an example of a text that was written and published to appeal to the white American liberal. Baldwin argues that the novel takes an outward stance against racism, but really it only sees Black Americans as having potential for redemption through performative whiteness.

I don’t think that the texts and pieces of protest media that were being passed around this past summer did exactly what Baldwin accuses of the American Protest Novel, but I will say that the novelty of protest for many liberal Americans made it so that even antiracist media could be used for white complacency and inadvertent anti-Blackness.

A Little Post-Mortem Privacy, Please

I can’t run from the horror of how our protagonist’s story unfolds in the books “Fear” and “Flight” of Richard Wright’s Native Son. Still, beyond this initial horror, Bigger’s overwhelming (and near suffocating) fight for privacy levels to my attention’s surface. In class, we’ve been talking about how Bigger is running from what he considers “femininity,” both around and within himself. He bears a particular hatred for the women in his life (particularly and especially Black women, like Bessie, his sister Vera, and his mother) He associates his own growing “hysteria” with femininity/womanhood, and while he can [inadequately] attempt to hide this “hysteria” from those around him, he cannot run from it within himself.

There are moments in the text when Bigger feels like his inner psyche is hypervisible, like when he is driving Mary Dalton around or even, ironically, when he is around the blind Mrs. Dalton. It is this sense of hypervisibility that Bigger seems to be running from throughout the novel. He wants privacy in his mind; he wants to know that his thoughts are his own. For someone to even attempt to understand his thoughts is to attempt an invasion of his privacy. Think of Mary Dalton. On pages 80-81, Mary, drunk, comments on Bigger’s speech patterns around her, observing, “‘You know, [Bigger,] for three hours you haven’t said yes or no.’” (Wright 80). She then laughs in amusement at what thoughts may be running through Bigger’s head. Wright writes that “[Bigger] tightened with hate. Again she was looking inside of him and he did not like it.” in this moment of social vulnerability, Bigger’s immediate response to being hypervisible, specifically to a woman, is overwhelming hatred. He takes offense to how Mary perceives him; her attempts to look “inside of him,” according to him, make her worthy of being hated and murdered. After he kills her, Wright notes Biggers thoughts, “Gee, what a fool she was, he thought, remembering how Mary had acted. Carrying on that way! Hell she made me do it! I couldn’t help it! She should’ve known better! She should’ve left me alone, Goddammit!”. Bigger treats an invasion of his mental privacy as a crim punishable by death.

There are other moments when Bigger unlocks a new level of security, secrecy, and privacy in his mind, and the thrill he gets borders on frenzied. The morning after his rape and murder of Mary Dalton, he discovers a new sense of fulfillment at the thought that he can walk around town knowing something that no one else knows. On page 105, Wright writes, “The thought of what [Bigger] had done, the awful horror of it…formed for him for the first time in his fear-ridden life a barrier of protection between him and the world he feared. It was something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him.” Bigger is able to live without fear, it seems, for the first time in his young life.

Why does Bigger want privacy in his mind? Does he seek control, a space to call all his own? Is he ashamed of the goings on in his head? If so, what is he bearing in his mind that might bring about such shame? I would argue that he has intense shame attached to his own “hysteria”. He cannot handle others knowing that he has real fears and emotions, that he is emotionally impacted by his environment. Because, to him, that is to be seen as less than a man.