Queering Black Masculinity: Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits
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Based on the assumption that the black gay man is the abject that not only signifies the lack of the heteronormative discourse of black masculinity, but also interrogates the hegemony of the exclusionary systems of race, gender, and sexuality, this paper examines the complex dynamics of black masculinity and homosexual identity that Kenan’s novel registers in a larger context of African American discourses and experiences. Kenan’s novel counters the heterosexist and monolithic concepts of black masculinity and identity that silence black gay men by exposing the underlying assumptions about blackness, masculinity, and homosexuality produced by the mainstream African American discourses. His novel problematizes the heteronormative discourses of black masculinity developed by the 1960s Black Power Movement that equated authentic blackness with heteronormative black masculinity to undo the effeminizing and racist representations of black men. Representing the protagonist’s contesting relationship between his budding homosexuality and his heteronormative community through his hallucinating one-night excursion to the agonizing past, the novel queers the ways in which homosexuality is abjected by the heteronormative discourse of black masculinity operating through such institutions as family, church, and school.
Abstract
Based on the assumption that the black gay man is the abject that not only signifies the lack of the heteronormative discourse of black masculinity, but also interrogates the hegemony of the exclusionary systems of race, gender, and sexuality, this paper examines the complex dynamics of black masculinity and homosexual identity that Kenan’s novel registers in a larger context of African American discourses and experiences. Kenan’s novel counters the heterosexist and monolithic concepts of black masculinity and identity that silence black gay men by exposing the underlying assumptions about blackness, masculinity, and homosexuality produced by the mainstream African American discourses. His novel problematizes the heteronormative discourses of black masculinity developed by the 1960s Black Power Movement that equated authentic blackness with heteronormative black masculinity to undo the effeminizing and racist representations of black men. Representing the protagonist’s contesting relationship between his budding homosexuality and his heteronormative community through his hallucinating one-night excursion to the agonizing past, the novel queers the ways in which homosexuality is abjected by the heteronormative discourse of black masculinity operating through such institutions as family, church, and school.
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