Gwendolyn Brooks And The Vicissitudes Of Black Female Subjectivity

Abstract

Abstract Our examination of works by Ana”is Nin and Djuna Barnes has made it clear that any discussion of the female subject as merely an opposition to the masculine is bound to be fraught with difficulties. A study of the specific gender politics of those authors’ works-questions of feminine identity, for instance-inevitably implicates us in an equally crucial exploration of issues related to sexuality and sexual orientation-the erotic relationships among different subjects, lesbian identification-issues that, while closely related to gender in our social context, are not homologous with it. And yet, just as gender is a constitutive factor in our understanding of sexuality and sexual orientation, these latter phenomena are similarly important factors in the constitution of gender, and then only two among many. For the system in which the various gender and sexual identities that characterize our society are constituted-what Gayle Rubin has called the “sex/gender system”is not closed. The constitution of any given gender identity, for instance, depends upon factors from social categories conventionally conceived of as distinct from sex and gender-race, for example, or class, or physical ability or bodily configuration. And the converse is also true: Any individual’s experience of racial identity, for example, will be contingent upon that person’s gender. This dynamic might be multiplied infinitely, depending on the way that various social categories are inscribed in any given individual subject: Any one of the different social identities with which a given subject might be affiliated is inevitably intersected by a number of other social factors, with the multitude of possible such intersections constituting the various complex, conflicted, and contradictory “subject positions” that a particular individual might occupy at any moment.