Perversion the Social Relation

i6oMichael P. Biblerwhole. Charles V. Hamilton's words are especially revealing: "Styron'sliterary mind can wander [sic] about homosexuality and the like, andhis vast readership can have their stereotypes strengthened by an imageof a black preacher who is irrational and weak . .. and uncertain. Butblack people should reject this; and white people should not deludethemselves." 3 Equating homosexuality with irrationality and weakness,Hamilton describes the scene with Willis as a reinforcement of raciststereotypes that will predictably expose white readers' gullible passivitywhile it prods black readers into activism. Reading communities giveway in Hamilton's mind to larger communities built on a shared racialidentity, but those communities apparently don't take form until thepoint in the novel when the readers must decide how they feel aboutNat's homosexuality. For Hamilton, the construction of a communitybuilt on race depends first and foremost on the regulation of sexualdesire, for the black community will come together, he implies, mostlythrough the act of rejecting homosexuality.If we can generalize from Hamilton's assumptions and say that theconstruction of community depends on the exclusion, or at least control,of same-sex desires and homosexual identities, such a claim is possible• only if we define homosexuality not as an alternate form of affection ordesire, but as a force much like infection that threatens to undermine allforms of social relation through deficiency, inferiority, weakness, and^degeneracy. If community depends on the rejection of homosexuality,then homosexuality itself must be intrinsically negative and disruptive1 of culture—never constitutive. In Ten Black Writers, Alvin F. Poussaintsays as much when he argues that Nat's homosexual encounter "impliesthat Nat Turner was not a man at all. It suggests that he was unconsciouslyreally feminine." 4 As a psychologist, Poussaint was trained at atime when the American Psychological Association still classified homosexualityas a disorder. 5 Therefore, we need to recognize that Styron'sportrayal of Nat Turner in an explicitly homosexual situation was a horribleslap in the face to the black community, in effect identifying oneof their heroes as a sick and dirty queer. But it is also important to acknowledgeboth the implicit homophobia of responses like Poussaint'sthat automatically read Styron's Nat as effeminate and weak, and theway that this homophobia determines the ten black writers' readings ofthe rest of the novel. Poussaint, for example, is especially clear in claim-