Thousand plateaus in a strange land

The becoming-black in James Baldwin

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2022.1.42941

Keywords:

James Baldwin, Collective assemblage, Deterritorialized subject, White world, The becoming-Black

Abstract

Although it has been said that James Baldwin was an activist prior to being a writer, in Another Country, we find him producing much more by means of assemblage (according to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept), and giving rise to desiring machines, than by the notion of engagement in which the author is often situated. The aim of this essay is to show that while there is no denying that in Baldwin there is a ballast of biographical aspects to be found, one can also not deny there is an authorial figure in him as well. Such a perspective leads us to a condition of a deterritorialized subject in a non-Black and heteronormative world, which points to a kind of schizophrenia by the very fact of not belonging to an imposed white world. As such, Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts, in addition to those of Achille Mbembe, in Critique of Black Reason, can help us to understand with greater clarity the frontiers of engagement and political assemblage specific to James Baldwin’s literary production.

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Author Biography

Jeferson Tenório, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil.

Mestre em literaturas Luso-africanas pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), em Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil; doutorando pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), em Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. 

References

BALDWIN, James. Terra estranha. São Paulo: Companhia da Letras, 2018.

DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Félix. Mil Platôs: capitalismo e esquizofrenia. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34, 1997.

DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Félix. O Anti-Édipo. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34, 1998.

DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Félix. Kafka: Por uma literatura menor. 1. ed. Tradução de Cíntia Vieira da Silva. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2014.

MBEMBE, Achille. Crítica da razão negra. Tradução de Sebastião Nascimento. Paris: Editora N-1 edições, 2018.

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Published

2022-10-20

How to Cite

Tenório, J. (2022). Thousand plateaus in a strange land: The becoming-black in James Baldwin. Letrônica, 15(1), e42941. https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2022.1.42941

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2022): Single volume

Section

James Baldwin, in the age of black lives matter

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