"The word 'homosexual' is not a noun": Transfiguring James Baldwin's Queerness through Translations of Giovanni's Room

Remo Verdickt

doi:10.54797/tfl.v52i4.10594

Författare

Remo Verdickt KU Leuven

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54797/tfl.v52i4.10594

Nyckelord:

James Baldwin, translation studies, world literature, comparative literature, reception studies, queer literature, Giovanni's Room

Abstract

Although James Baldwin’s recent revival in popular culture to a large extent has been informed by Baldwin’s essayist output, his contemporary popular reception is also closely intertwined with his queer identity, which is markedly absent from these texts. As a world literary figure, Baldwin enjoys far greater circulation in continental Europe through translations of his novels – writings in which queerness features much more prominently. However, Baldwin’s writings offer a complicated understanding of queerness and its representation through language, with Baldwin even claiming that “the word homosexual is not a noun.” This essay consists of a comparative analysis of the Danish, Dutch, French, and German translations of Baldwin’s sophomore novel, the queer classic Giovanni’s Room. The essay discusses the plurality of translation strategies that have been applied to the novel, and traces how these diverging strategies exemplify, transmit, transfigure, and distort the novel’s inherent destabilizing queer qualities.

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Författarbiografi

Remo Verdickt, KU Leuven

Doctoral researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium. His PhD project is called “Harlem, Capital of World Literature? James Baldwin’s 21st Century Career and the Dynamics of World Literature” and is supervised by Professor Pieter Vermeulen (KU Leuven). The project approaches Baldwin’s world literary value from several angles, including translation, audiovisual media, geography, Baldwin’s political commitment, and the dynamics between the vernacular and cosmopolitan in his oeuvre.