Corpos em disputa e representação (de)colonial: as masculinidades negras na ficção de Geraldo Ribas e James Baldwin

Abstract

This research aims to compare the configuration of black masculinities – as (de)colonial instances – and their effects on the fictional representation of racialized bodies in Geraldo Ribas’s O laço encarnado and James Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone. Initially, we examine the concepts of coloniality and decoloniality to demonstrate how the colonial matrix of power constructs, in countries marked by the racial experience, a system of oppression against the bodies of Black men. Such a regime is grounded in the ascendancy of hegemonic masculinity over other expressions of masculinity, operating through institutional decimation and a sophisticated discursive apparatus of image control that extends to the literary domain. Subsequently, through the concepts of mimesis/representation and the control of imaginaries, we contextualize the historical, social, and cultural conditions that guided the portrayal of Black men throughout the history of Brazilian and American literatures – an exercise that becomes essential for analyzing the masculinities in the works of Ribas and Baldwin which, despite being released in the same period, present profoundly distinct representations of Black bodies. Finally, we privilege the analysis of Ribas's text, which, by highlighting the Black male body as still confined to the bed and labor, reveals a colonial belonging; meanwhile, Baldwin, by proposing a multidimensional Black male body, subverts the control of imaginaries, enveloping his work in a deeply decolonial atmosphere.