Identity inflections in James Baldwin: readings in the light of Judith Butler’s theory

The Seminari Filosofia i Gènere—ADHUC organizes the 35th Thesis Laboratory. In this session the PhD candidate Júlia Ripoll Serra (Universitat Pompeu Fabra i la Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis, Laboratoire d’Études de Genre et de Sexualité (LEGS)) will present the work she is doing for her thesis project under the direction of Marta Segarra Montaner (CNRS, LEGS) and Antonio Monegal Brancós (Universitat Pompeu Fabra).

A hundred years after the birth of the African-American writer James Baldwin, his work has aroused renewed interest in academia, popular culture and social movements such as Black Lives Matter. Although he was considered a “Negro leader” in the 1950s, his figure was vilified by the black liberation movements in the 1960s and his work marginalized in academic research until the 1990s. With the rise of queer theory and the criticism of essentialism in identity policies, his essays and fictions, that in the 1960s raised the limits of the categories of race, gender and sexuality, became more relevant. Baldwin offered a critique of the identity and boundaries of sexual and racial categories, especially towards essentialist ontology. This presentation proposes to reread Baldwin in dialogue with Judith Butler, a philosopher with whom he has recently been linked, to vindicate his contributions on “identity” and, especially, on “body”. Baldwin places the body and desire as a crucial part of his deconstruction of the categories of “race” and “sexuality”. A place where, according to Butler, a sensitive ontology of the body subject is needed in which being and feeling merge, as opposed to the individualistic ontology of contemporary identity definitions. Baldwin’s work highlights the limits of categories and the need to think of ourselves as linked and vulnerable bodies.

The session will be held virtually and it has limited capacity. To attend, it is necessary to register in advance by sending an email to adhuc@ub.edu before November 27. Registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.