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Dying to Know: Identity and Self-Knowledge in Baldwin's Another Country

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Ernesto Javier Martínez
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Abstract

This article examines the prevalence of confusion and incoherence in James Baldwin's 1962 novel Another Country, arguing that the novel should be read as an extended and theoretically rich meditation on the difficulty of gaining self-knowledge in oppressive social contexts. Its central thesis is that the novel is motivated less by the tragedy of Rufus Scott's suicide early in the novel than by the ethical imperative that compels all the characters to risk their sense of self (to figuratively commit suicide) in order to better understand the circumstances they face. Through this “suicidal” sensibility, Baldwin examines how self-knowledge in oppressive contexts frequently depends on people making extreme shifts in their conception of self—of who they are in relation to their society. These shifts are often dreaded and appear self-menacing, but Baldwin ultimately implies that they hold liberatory promise.

Type
Cluster on Queer Modernism
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 3 , May 2009 , pp. 782 - 797
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

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