Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Published In

Modern Fiction Studies

Volume

62

Issue

2

Pages

292-306

Abstract

In this essay I argue that Baldwin’s depiction of queer possibility depends on the spectacular failure of heterosexuality to ensure the future, a failure that ultimately severs heterosexuality from its procreative logics and justifications. Gabriel is torn between competing drives: his desire to ensure the Grimes line and desire itself. Ironically, the latter troubles the former, as the excess of sexual desire threatens to overrun the marital and procreative logics that make the heterosexual normative. Gabriel models heterosexuality as both desire and procreative engine, highlighting the ways in which heterosexuality contains within itself the seeds of its own undoing.

Comments

Copyright © 2016 JHUP. This article first appeared in Modern Fiction Studies 62: 2, 292-306. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Keywords

Pregnancy, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQ studies

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