This essay’s close interrogation of James Baldwin’s 1956 novel
Giovanni’s Room allows us to see one aspect of how
sexual shame functions: it shows how shame exposes anxiety not only about the
feminizing force of homosexuality, but about how being the object of the gaze is
feminizing—and therefore shameful. It also shows that the paradigm of the
closet is not the metaphor of privacy and enclosure on one hand and openness and
liberation on the other that it is commonly thought to be, but instead is a site
of illusory control over whether one is available to be seen and therefore
humiliated by being feminized. Further, the essay reveals the paradox of denial,
where one must first know the thing that is at the same time being disavowed or
denied. The narrative requirements of fictions such as Giovanni’s
Room demonstrate this, as it requires that the narrator both know,
in order to narrate, and not know something at the same time.
Let me Take the Wheel: Illusory Control and Sense of Agency
