Perversion the Social Relation

I70Michael P. Biblerbody" and "one Spirit," baptism can build a new community that redefinesidentity through a fundamental Christian sameness instead ofthrough individual differences in ethnicity, race, gender, or class. In thisway, the act of baptism allows Nat to enlarge his newfound awarenessof the possibility for homo-relationality. By moving from homosexualityto baptism, Nat takes the private recognition of homo-ness and sublimatesit into a religious agenda with a more public purpose. At themoment of his own self-baptism, Nat pledges to God, "Let me henceforthbe dedicated to Thy service. Let me be a preacher of Thy holyword" (206-7). Thus committing himself to God, Nat vows to repeathis sexual experience of homo-ness in a specifically religious way, forGod's orgasmic revelation never comes in this scene. With "a thrill ofjoy," Nat believes that God is just "testing" him, "sav[ing] his voice foranother time" when orgasm and the fulfillment of religious purpose willagain coincide in the creation of a new world. Consequently, he decidesto adopt an activist position that is profoundly inspired by the homosexualact and vows to build a radically new system of social relationsby spreading the idea of a Christian egalitarianism. And, by baptizingWillis with him, Nat already begins creating this new kind of homocommunity.Homo-Community and the Limits of Homo-nessNat's baptism with Willis indicates that homo-ness has the power atleast to open the possibility for creating a new sense of community evenas it simultaneously disrupts the existing cultural hierarchies that enableit. But while Nat's experience of the power of homo-ness is absolutelyvital to the revolution he plots later in the novel, the way he proceedsfrom the baptism becomes highly problematic in part because he actuallytries to remain true to that experience. Consequently, the limits ofthe insurrection that Nat imagines also reveal many of the limitations ofhomo-ness itself. The first problem Nat encounters is that the constitutivepower of homo-ness doesn't actually give him a clear plan of action.Homo-ness empowers a new sense of an egalitarian society opposed tothe existing structure of the slave plantation, but does not offer a practicalmodel for organizing or stabilizing that new political community.To compensate for this gap, Nat tries to build on his experience and ful-