Perversion the Social Relation

"As If Set Free into Another Land" 161ing that this one homosexual encounter invalidates the rest of the entirenarrative: "Thus, throughout the book he is revealed as an emasculatedand 'abnormal' character. There is even the suggestion here that the rebellionwas participated in reluctantly by the 'sensitive* Nat Turner whoreally only wished to sleep with Miss Margaret to salvage his manhood.The depiction of the young rebel as a would-be deviant carries the implicationthat the whole revolt against slavery and racism was somehowillegitimate and 'abnormal.' "*For Poussaint, Nat's isolated affair must mean that he is "emasculated"and therefore taking part in the rebellion only to alleviate thepain of his personal degeneracy. Poussaint implies that homosexualityand rebellion against an unjust society are mutually exclusive becausehomosexuals are "abnormal" and want only to tear society down totheir level. Thus, every aspect of Nat's rebellion is false because it naturallylacks any concomitant ambition to build a better way of life afterslavery—ais though a gay slave could not resent his condition as muchas a straight one.As Poussaint's condemnation shows, the ten black writers' homophobicassumptions about the supposed effeminacy of gay men limit theirassessment of just what role this homosexual interruption plays withinthe novel. And more recent critics have done no better to explain whyStyron might have decided to include such a controversial scene in analready controversial book. But what if we allow ourselves to read Nat'sonly sexual encounter as central to the novel in a more positive sense?What if we approach the text as a gay novel that happens to include aslave revolt, and not vice versa? To begin with, reorienting our criticalperspective, as it were, to the novel's homosexual dynamics shows usthat there is no evidence to support the idea that the affair emasculatesNat or makes him effeminate and weak. Instead, the description of Nat'shomosexual encounter identifies it as a watershed moment that movesNat into adulthood and points him in the direction of his career both as apreacher and as a rebel conspiring for freedom on the behalf of all blackpeople. In addition, this homosexual force leads Nat to a full-scale revoltagainst slavery by giving him a radical new understanding of the powerof black community. Instead of repeating the patterns of domination andsubmission that typically define both sexual and social relations withinthe slave institution, Nat's homosexual encounter gives him a new ex-