Breaking the Spell: the Black Body, Strangeness, and Architectures of Wonder
(opening excerpt) "In Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin juxtaposes the “native” with the “stranger” by culminating the 1955 collection with his essay “Stranger in the Village.” In it he describes his Black, queer situation in relationship to the small Swiss mountain village which expresses an existential dynamic regarding his nativity in the U.S. and his existence in the world, saying, “…I remain as much a stranger today as I was the first day, I arrived...” (Baldwin 1983: 165). Baldwin is attempting a Black flânerie as he wanders through the village, observing life, and writing about what he sees. However, he is denied the privilege of the spectator as he is constantly made a spectacle, what he calls, “a living wonder” (1983: 166). His wanderings through the village are disrupted by constant stares and avoidances, by children shouting and running away as if from the devil, screaming, “Neger! Neger!” He describes how sitting for more than five minutes village folk would put their fingers in his hair as if expecting an electric shock or comment on growing his hair long to make a winter coat (1983:166). Baldwin ruminates about how his American Negro education teaches him to “make people ‘like’ him” by charming them with his smiles. However, when he does smile at the villagers, he describes how the villagers only see his white teeth against hisBlack skin. To Baldwin this moment represents a kind of reduction of meaning from a smile to an aesthetic or functional utility of teeth against skin and how the gesture of his Black smile speaks differently to the European than the American, which is to say European American. He suggests that because his smile being from a Black body carries a meaning of the infernal rather than the miraculous to the white gaze of the villagers. In the midst of the essay, Baldwin makes a curious turn toward a queer performance of architectures that speak, articulating a relationship to an America that is all too familiar with his Black body yet still seeks to make him all the stranger" (36-37).
