misplaced in that room and the only place to recover it, is in Giovanni’s room which awaits him in Europe. The humanity of America is misplaced must the same as David’s is lost in that room. Because love cannot be named or applied in such a space, one can only experience it as a death.
When one is not allowed to self-identify their power to name themselves is taken. This oppressive act is not Godly, but serves as hubris within in humanity. Lightsey contends that “when hubris is at work humanity is conscious of [God’s] presence not as the center but as an appendage…” The very notion of de-centering God, purports itself as authoritative, therefore essentializing that one’s self-identifying is worthless within that particular space The audacity…show more content… As a queer body, struggling to navigate through a terrain that has proven to be unsafe at times, Baldwin questions safety. As a queer, Black body in Greenwich Village, he would come to understand “the American idea of masculinity.” He noticed how men would treat him publically but would want to sexually engage with him privately. His queer body was subjected to the ambiguities of other’s desires and conflictions of their own sexual confusion. If those particular sexual confusions were ever called into question, there would be bodily harm that would follow. Safety, then, becomes a sexual issue and not just an identity problem. Nonetheless, Baldwin wrestles with issues of identity as it pertains to safety. In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin makes these binary claims between God and safety. He is drawing upon the notion that within our understanding of religion and God, we determined that God meant safety. Baldwin is wrestling through that narrative and complication, while simultaneously, coming into his queer body. His refiguring of safety is being exacted through the lives of those with whom he is doing life with: “the whore, pimps and racketeers on the Avenue.” El Kornegay, Jr. in Queering of Black Theology is unfolding the unsafe environment of the street and unsound environment of the church which Baldwin is grappling with in The Fire Next Time. Furthermore, it was also unsafe for his bodily…show more content… How does a cisgender Black man enter the bathroom with a queer bodied white woman. These questions are the things that I wrestle with as I think about non-gendered bathrooms. Yes, I would have a problem. The queering of the bathroom space has so many things that must be taken into to consideration before I stand at peace with it. I have tried to give three categories that the queer body observes or emphasizes: the performative, grasping of identity in a selfish and stuck society and a need for identity. Within each of those observations, are impactful and necessitating qualities for the socialization of queer bodies in American culture. It is also through these three areas that I muddle through a
