{"id":465,"date":"2021-04-04T16:26:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T20:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=465"},"modified":"2021-04-04T19:09:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T23:09:52","slug":"the-reproductive-imperative-in-giovannis-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/04\/04\/the-reproductive-imperative-in-giovannis-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reproductive Imperative in Giovanni\u2019s Room"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Giovanni\u2019s Room<\/em>, there is a constant tug-of-war between David\u2019s desire for Giovanni and David\u2019s desire to \u201cbe inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unquestioned\u201d (Baldwin 305). This \u201cinsider status,\u201d which Giovanni\u2019s calls \u201cla vie pratique\u201d (287), is tied up with something that queer theoriests call \u201cthe reproductive imperative,\u201d or society\u2019s implicit mandate that individuals enter into a heterosexual marriage and have children. It is children that are the core of David\u2019s tension, a motif which embodies Lee Edelman\u2019s concept of \u201creproductive futurism.\u201d All of this to say: Giovanni\u2019s Room <\/em>anticipated important conversations about how queer people fit into a society that holds children to be \u201cthe telos of the social order\u201d (Edelman, No Future<\/em> 11).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, an explanation of some terms: reproductive futurism describes society\u2019s obsession with procreation, resulting in political orders that hold the Child (or rather, the image of the Child) to be all-important, a moral trump card over everything else. This is why queer people are deemed \u201cunnatural\u201d and are villainized by society: because we (often) do not procreate, we represent \u201cthe side of those not \u2018\ufb01ghting for the children\u2019\u201d (No Future<\/em> 3). Of course, I can talk about this for ages, and Edelman\u2019s theories, deemed the \u201cantisocial thesis\u201d by some, are not universally accepted; still, the point remains that this tension between the queer person and procreation is a critical component of Giovanni\u2019s Room. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see a tension between queer men and reproductive futures in multiple chapters. For example, Giovani notes that Guillaume, another gay man, \u201cis a member of one of the best and oldest families in France. But maybe, then, he remembers that his name is going to die with him\u201d (Baldwin 306). Implicit in this passage is the fact that Guillame, due to his sexuality, will never reproduce. He represents the end of his bloodline, a travesty in a society that values children over all-else. David himself sees women only for their value as bearers of children, precisely because he recognizes that society demands that he reproduce. He says things like \u201cI wanted a woman to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, where I could always be renewed\u201d (305). This \u2018renewal\u2019 is undoubtedly procreation itself, and the woman is nothing more than a field to be plowed. It makes sense, then, that when Hella says \u201cI want to start having babies,\u201d David replies \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted that\u201d (321). It is notable that Giovanni himself respects women \u201cfor their inside life,\u201d a phrase which refers both to women as having different emotional lives and as having the ability to bear children (285). In short, Baldwin\u2019s astute eye to society and the queer experience enabled him to anticipate conversations that are ongoing today, about how queer people fit into a global hegemony that not only demands heterosexual, biological reproduction, but literally murders those who do not comply with the reproductive imperative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Giovanni\u2019s Room, there is a constant tug-of-war between David\u2019s desire for Giovanni and David\u2019s desire to \u201cbe inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unquestioned\u201d (Baldwin 305). This \u201cinsider status,\u201d which Giovanni\u2019s calls \u201cla vie pratique\u201d (287), is tied up with something that queer theoriests call \u201cthe reproductive imperative,\u201d or society\u2019s … Continue reading The Reproductive Imperative in Giovanni\u2019s Room<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3729,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[489038],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-giovannis-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}