THE CLOSET, ITS CONVENTIONS, AND ANTI-RACIST CRITICISM

Abstract

There have been many things said in the popular press about Steven Spielberg’s sensationalist rendition of American history in his award winning film Lincoln (2012), but as far as I know no one has accused him—yet—of being just a bit too interested in Thaddeus Stevens’s bedroom. If you saw the film, you no doubt remember that the last time we see Senator Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, he is in his nightgown, giving his mistress, Lydia Hamilton Smith, the signed 13th Amendment. In the landscape of U.S. national fantasy, the black woman as housekeeper-slash-mistress functions here, as Erica Edwards has brilliantly argued, as the suture of national unity; it is literally in her hands—and indeed across her supine body—that the nation and its future are symbolically secured (2013). While the scene is rich in annoyance, what provokes me today is its particular reliance on the narrative language of the closet, as Spielberg positions the viewer inside the house with Smith, played by S. Epatha Merkerson, when Stevens enters and hands over his cane and wig. Seconds later, employer and employee are in bed. In psychoanalytic terms, they have taken up residence in the space of the dream, which means that interracial sex not only plays the role of national secret but animates the film’s own wish to convert the modern world-making trauma of slavery and violence into a domestic tale of interracial love. I raise the specter of U.S. national fantasy for two primary reasons. First, I want to make sure that the specific interdisciplinary domain of American Studies is present in our discussions today in its long-standing commitment to an anti-racist