"The word 'homosexual' is not a noun"

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.