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“A Syrup of Passion and Desire”Transgressive Politics of Pleasure in Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille

“A Syrup of Passion and Desire”Transgressive Politics of Pleasure in Claude McKay’s Romance in... This article examines the politics of transgressive pleasure and desire in Claude McKay’s novel Romance in Marseille, as a response to what Achille Mbembe, departing from Foucault’s notion of biopower, has termed necropolitics. In the novel, the interlocking hegemonic systems of racism and capitalism function as mechanisms of necropower—the power of determining whose lives are deemed worthy and whose bodies are deemed disposable—which is executed through the procedures of mutilation, surveillance, poverty, and sexual exploitation. Foregrounding the titular “romance,” McKay’s novel features characters who engage in romantic and sexual relationships that subvert the expectations of heteronormativity, sexual economy, and the color line. Anticipating the twenty-first-century theories that locate sovereign power in the body, McKay politicizes and radicalizes desire as a response to the racialization, criminalization, and dehumanization of his novel’s lumpen characters. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png English Language Notes Duke University Press

“A Syrup of Passion and Desire”Transgressive Politics of Pleasure in Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille

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Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Regents of the University of Colorado
ISSN
0013-8282
eISSN
2573-3575
DOI
10.1215/00138282-8814972
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article examines the politics of transgressive pleasure and desire in Claude McKay’s novel Romance in Marseille, as a response to what Achille Mbembe, departing from Foucault’s notion of biopower, has termed necropolitics. In the novel, the interlocking hegemonic systems of racism and capitalism function as mechanisms of necropower—the power of determining whose lives are deemed worthy and whose bodies are deemed disposable—which is executed through the procedures of mutilation, surveillance, poverty, and sexual exploitation. Foregrounding the titular “romance,” McKay’s novel features characters who engage in romantic and sexual relationships that subvert the expectations of heteronormativity, sexual economy, and the color line. Anticipating the twenty-first-century theories that locate sovereign power in the body, McKay politicizes and radicalizes desire as a response to the racialization, criminalization, and dehumanization of his novel’s lumpen characters.

Journal

English Language Notes – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2021

References

  • Hashish in Marseilles
    Benjamin, Walter Demetz, Peter
  • Interview with Catherine Lizette Gonzalez
    Brown, Adrienne Maree
  • The Shadow of Intimacy: Male Bonding and Improvised Masculinity in Claude McKay’s Banjo: A Story without a Plot.
    Brown, Jarrett H.
  • The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830–1861
    Camp, Stephanie M. H.
  • Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics
    Cohen, Cathy
  • Review of Home to Harlem and Quicksand
    Du Bois, W. E. B.
  • The Fact of Blackness
    Fanon, Frantz Markmann, Charles Lam
  • The Burdened Individuality of Freedom
    Hartman, Saidiya V.
  • Introduction to McKay
    Holcomb, Gary Edward Maxwell, William J.
  • The Strangeness of Foreigners: Policing Migration and Nation in Interwar Marseille
    Lewis, Mary Dewhurst
  • A Litany for Survival
    Lorde, Audre
  • The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
    Lorde, Audre
  • Conversation: Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg on Critique of Black Reason
    Mbembe, Achille
  • Necropolitics
    Mbembe, Achille
  • Variations on the Beautiful in the Congolese World of Sounds
    Mbembe, Achille
  • The Tired Worker
    McKay, Claude Sherman, Joan R.
  • The Case of Blackness
    Moten, Fred
  • The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-pessimism and Black Optimism
    Sexton, Jared
  • Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book
    Spillers, Hortense J.
  • Afropessimism and the End of Redemption
    Wilderson, Frank B.
  • The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s (Silent) Scandal
    Wilderson, Frank B.
  • The Best New Novel Was Written Ninety Years Ago
    Young, Molly
  • Hashish in Marseilles
    Benjamin, Walter Demetz, Peter
  • Interview with Catherine Lizette Gonzalez
    Brown, Adrienne Maree
  • The Shadow of Intimacy: Male Bonding and Improvised Masculinity in Claude McKay’s Banjo: A Story without a Plot.
    Brown, Jarrett H.
  • The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830–1861
    Camp, Stephanie M. H.
  • Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics
    Cohen, Cathy
  • Review of Home to Harlem and Quicksand
    Du Bois, W. E. B.
  • The Fact of Blackness
    Fanon, Frantz Markmann, Charles Lam
  • The Burdened Individuality of Freedom
    Hartman, Saidiya V.
  • Introduction to McKay
    Holcomb, Gary Edward Maxwell, William J.
  • The Strangeness of Foreigners: Policing Migration and Nation in Interwar Marseille
    Lewis, Mary Dewhurst
  • A Litany for Survival
    Lorde, Audre
  • The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
    Lorde, Audre
  • Conversation: Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg on Critique of Black Reason
    Mbembe, Achille
  • Necropolitics
    Mbembe, Achille
  • Variations on the Beautiful in the Congolese World of Sounds
    Mbembe, Achille
  • The Tired Worker
    McKay, Claude Sherman, Joan R.
  • The Case of Blackness
    Moten, Fred
  • The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-pessimism and Black Optimism
    Sexton, Jared
  • Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book
    Spillers, Hortense J.
  • Afropessimism and the End of Redemption
    Wilderson, Frank B.
  • The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s (Silent) Scandal
    Wilderson, Frank B.
  • The Best New Novel Was Written Ninety Years Ago
    Young, Molly