Cartografias do corpo: disrupções imagéticas do corpo negro em James Baldwin

Abstract

Based on the combination between literature and several plastic, filmic and photographic supports, this dissertation aimed at mapping the representation of the black body in James Baldwin’s oeuvre. It invests in Baldwin’s plastic writing style in order to analyze i) the black body as an “alien” component in Western history, by showing the Brazilian context as a fundamental element of such bodily foreignness; ii) the vulnerability of the black body when it comes to the U.S. prison system, along with the housing segregation that shapes the architecture of African American communities; iii) the impacts of the affective connection and artistic relationship between James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney, as well as Baldwin’s collaborations with Yoran Cazac and Richard Avedon, which translate the author’s desire in terms of the combination between image and literature, not to mention his pathway into a shifting arena of constructions of verbal and visual corpographies in his own work; finally, iv) the absence of black corporeality in part of the Baldwinian fiction, by juxtaposing the genesis of the United States as a result of a white, male, and heterogendered supremacy. Therefore, we have drawn attention to the normatization of conservative gender roles, race, sexuality, and masculinities, brought to light by Baldwin’s literary and essayistic works, as an attempt to understand the correlation between different artistic supports, which constitute themselves as counter-images in which James Baldwin develops alternative ways of narrating himself in addition to the African American experience