Thus, to some critics, Baldwin (or, alternatively, his characters) comes to terms with his identity, and this self-acceptance and self-knowledge lead him (or his characters) to a fuller and more mature development as an artist the achieved transcendence and clarity then shed the obstructing specificities of sexuality and “race” in the blinding splendor of a universalized artistic insight. Such a reading allows “race” and sexuality to disappear from critical view more precisely, it allows critics to cast them as mere obstructions littering the path of a surpassing transcendence, usually cast in terms of art. This transcendence relies on the transparency of revelation in the text and the assertion of this transparency’s liberatory potential, regardless of whether or not such liberation is a term of approbation. Whether in terms homophobic or racist, or anti-homophobic or anti-racist (rarely, though more often with the former than with the latter, do the poles of either of these oppositions come together), critics have dwelt on a transcendence defined as a coming to terms with one’s identity. (Virginia Woolf 39)Ĭritics of Another Country have been eager to see in the novel the promise of a transparent sexual utopia grounded in a healing unveiling of a serenely accepted identity. “I’m not the boy you want”: sexuality, “race,” and thwarted revolution in Baldwin’s ‘Another Country.’Īmong the tortures and devastations of life is this then – our friends are not able to finish their stories.
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