The Frame of Discourse

Abstract

To educate man to be actional, preserving in all his relations his respect for the basic values that constitute a human world, is the prime task of him who, having taken thought, prepares to act. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Liberty is a practice . . . there may be, in fact, always be, a certain number of projects whose aim is to modify some constraints, to loosen, or even to break them, but none of these projects can, simply by its nature, assure that people will have liberty automatically: that it be established by the itself Foucault, Ethics of Pleasure winter 1980 issue of the pornography magazine Black Male featured material excerpted from The Nubian Archives.' I begin this essay which addresses the question of the formation of Black gay male subjectivity with excerpts from Black Male: and A study organization NUBIAN ARCHIVES* helped us with some interesting historical references to the sexuality of the Black Male. Makes us admit we weren't the first to make the discovery. .. . as explorers and scientists began to take notice (who could miss?), we get references to the great endowments and powers of the men of Africa: They were furnished, as are most of the Blacks upon the Guinee Coast, with large propagators. (John Ogilby, 1670)2 Those hulks of manhood with impressive physiques . . . and members long as a lance and broad as a bench. (Sir Richard Burton, 1885) An early reference to the men of the Mandingo nation recalls a burden we might all like to endure: Noah awakening, cursed Canaan . . . and his ensuing race . . . these people are furnished with such members (penises) as are, after a sort, burdensome unto them. (Richard Jobson, 1623) The Black is a real 'Stallion Man' and nothing can give a better idea as to the color and size of the organ of the African . .. than the tool of an African donkey. (Carrington Charles, 1898) editors of Black Male link their discovery to a long history of discovery in which Black male bodies are observed and exhibited as a complicated and conflicted site of repulsion, desire, and pleasure. Then and Now page of Black Male loops back into history in an effort to undergird the sexual pleasure of the contemporary and presumed white gay male spectator/consumer.3 On the loop back, Then and Now alludes to the historical formation of raced subjectivities and the parallel historical developments of European expansion (chattel slavery, imperialism, genocide, and colonialism), the emancipatory project of modern philosophy, and of sciences of the body (biology, physiognomy, and phrenology among others) in modernity through the ascription of meaning based on visible, especially physical, characteristics . . . [which] permit one to discern identity and difference, equality and inequality, beauty and ugliness among animals and human bodies.4 This loop back reverberates forward into the present carrying with it a history laden with metaphysical claims manifested in presentation and representation that locates the sexuality of Black men in a of from white men.5 In this particular instance, the salience of the physicality of difference (from white men as default observers, classifiers, and consumers of knowledge) is located in the Black man's penis and his color. When Black gay men read a chronicle similar to Then and Now and look at the pictures that accompany them we inevitably recognize that the representations are produced as an object of exchange between white gay men. Any pleasure that we derive from seeing representations of other Black men is dependent upon our desire and capacity to insert ourselves into a system of exchange that renders the sexualized representations of Black men as objects of desire in the white gay male pornographic imagination. Yet, the problematic presented in this scenario of looking is not interracial sexual desire or fantasy. …