Like the sound of a crumbling wall”
Transcultural spatiality in James Baldwin's Just above My Head
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12737720 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pekka Kilpeläinen (Institute of Economic Research Foundation, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 109-127 |
| Publication date | 2014-05-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Atlantic Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1478-8810 • E-ISSN: 1740-4649 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14788810.2014.919086 |
| OpenAlex | W2056574733 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This essay discusses the novel Just above My Head (1979) by the African American writer James Baldwin. Despite its complexity and multidimensionality, this novel still remains understudied when compared to many of Baldwin's earlier works. I argue that a conception of transcultural spatiality emerges in the text, particularly in a lengthy passage that depicts encounters between people of different national and racial backgrounds in the contact zone of Paris. These encounters occur in heterotopic spaces in which the boundaries of conventional identity categories, such as race, sexuality, and nationality, can be challenged and provisionally transcended. As a result, these real, mundane spaces are transformed into utopian enclaves where new configurations of transcultural coexistence and amity can be experienced and experimented on. This becomes manifest first in the transgressive interracial same-sex relationship between the African American protagonist, Arthur, and a white Frenchman and second in the transcultural experience in a jazz club, where Arthur performs in front of a multicultural audience. The text counters the asymmetrical power relations inherited from European colonial history and provides a fleeting vision of an alternative future through the transient moments of mutual transcultural understanding that occur in these utopian spaces.Keywords: African American literatureJames Baldwintransculturationspatialityutopia AcknowledgmentsThis work was supported by the University of Eastern Finland and Koneen Säätiö.Notes on contributorPekka Kilpeläinen is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu. In his doctoral dissertation, he analyzed the intersections of race and sexuality in three novels by James Baldwin. His current research focuses on the negotiations of the traumatic memory of slavery in contemporary African American literature.Notes1. See CitationZaborowska, "In the Same Boat" and James Baldwin's Turkish Decade; CitationDarsey, "Baldwin's Cosmopolitan Loneliness"; CitationWright, "Alas, Poor Richard!"; and CitationCampbell, Exiled in Paris.2. CitationPratt, Imperial Eyes, 4.3. CitationPratt, Imperial Eyes, 6.4. CitationFoucault, "Other Spaces," 12.5. CitationJameson, Archaeologies of the Future, 16.6. Many of Baldwin's works were written during the years that he lived in Paris, and his experiences of exile significantly contributed to his writing and his understanding of the various levels and aspects of identity (see CitationLeeming, James Baldwin, 56–73).7. CitationKaplan and Schwarz, "Introduction," 13.8. For an analysis of form and style in Just above, see Citationmy doctoral dissertation, In Search of a Postcategorical Utopia (129–169).9. CitationBaldwin, Just above My Head, 457. All quotations from the novel hereafter appear parenthetically.10. CitationMcLeod, "Sounding Silence," 10.11. CitationDu Bois's notion of double consciousness refers to the invisibility of African Americans in American society in terms of being seen through simplifying, oppressive categories: "this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others" (The Souls, 2).12. CitationSzmańko, Invisibility, 6.13. See, for example, CitationJarenski, "Invisibility Embraced," 85.14. CitationJameson , The Political Unconscious, 77.15. Challenging the oppressive power of identity categories is a constant thematic undercurrent in CitationBaldwin's work, explicitly articulated in his essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" (see, especially, 24–28).16. CitationMcLeod, "Sounding Silence," 3.17. See CitationFoucault, "Of Other Spaces," 24.18. See CitationFoucault, "Of Other Spaces," 26.19. CitationPratt, Imperial Eyes, 7.20. See, for example, CitationGilroy, The Black Atlantic, 39–40.21. CitationFoucault, "Of Other Spaces," 26.22. CitationJameson, Archaeologies of the Future, 11.23. See CitationDievler, "Sexual Exiles," 163.24. CitationPratt, Imperial Eyes, 4.25. CitationMcLeod, "Sounding Silence," 11 (original italics).26. CitationMcLeod, "Sounding Silence," 11 (original italics), 10–11.27. CitationMcLeod, "Sounding Silence," 11 (original italics), 11.28. CitationNyman, "Beyond Liverpool, 1957," 504.29. CitationSherard, "Sonny's Bebop," 703.30. CitationFoucault, "Of Other Spaces," 25.31. CitationFoucault, "Of Other Spaces," , 26.32. CitationWright, "Black Power," 4 (original italics).33. CitationSchramm, African Homecoming, 14 (original italics).34. CitationShin and Judson, "Beneath the Black Aesthetic," 257.35. CitationWerner, Playing the Changes, 221.36. CitationBaker, Afro-American Poetics, 13.37. CitationMiller, "Using the Blues," 104.38. CitationMiller, "Using the Blues," 107.39. CitationGates regards the concept of Signifyin(g), or self-reflexivity, as a central feature in black cultural forms and defines it as "repetition and revision, or repetition with a signal difference" (The Signifying Monkey, xxiv).40. CitationJameson, Archaeologies of the Future, 11
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| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |