Queer Desire, Failure, and Placemaking in Claude McKay’s Banjo
by Joseph Mazzola, Comparative Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies
Claude McKay’s life and body of work has been an area of inquiry for those working in the areas of literary criticism, diaspora studies, and Black literary studies. However, only recently has McKay’s life and literature been the focus of queer and sexuality studies. This essay examines Claude McKay’s novel Banjo, a Story without a Plot as an attempt by McKay to articulate a form of early twentieth century Black queerness. I analyze McKay’s construction of characters, such as the eponymous Banjo and his gender-ambiguous friend Goosey, and their relationships to (re)production, place and the nation-state, and desire itself as queer elements in Banjo. This essay puts the work of Eric H. Newman and Jarrett H. Brown’s criticism on Banjo as a novel that depicts male-male intimacy in dialogue with Jack Halberstam’s work on queer placemaking and queer failure, to understand Banjo as a novel that constructs a Black queerness that is at odds with white heterosexist capitalism and with some strains of Black capitalism in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this essay explains how queer desires act as reasons to push against normative and disciplinary structures of (re)production, heterosexuality, capitalism, and the nation-state.
Claude McKay, queer, sexuality, Black diaspora
The literature of Claude McKay has been the site of critique and scholarship in the areas of Black literary studies, diaspora studies, and more recently, along investigations of queer desire. His novel Banjo specifically has seen an increase in academic interest regarding queer desire and intimacy. This project takes these critical responses to Banjo’s depiction of queer desire and puts them in dialogue with theories of queer failure and queer placemaking. The characters of Banjo and their relationships—to each other, to productivity, and to place—are queer. They depict a queer mode of living outside of a “normative” heterosexist, capitalist society and articulate a form of Black queerness in the early twentieth century. I also will be doing a brief comparative reading of Banjo with Helon Habila’s 2019 novel Travelers, a contemporary novel to gain insight into the ways queerness and place have changed in Black literature over the last century.
Banjo follows a group of Black seamen in the port city of Marseilles, France in the 1920s. The novel Banjo, sometimes titled Banjo, a Story without a Plot, stays true to its name with a not-entirely-clear narrative structure held up by loose plot points. Most of the content of this novel is constructed through the relationships the characters have with one another and to Marseilles. Much of the novel is dedicated to showing a group of Black seamen meandering around the city in search of food, alcohol, and sex, as well as sharing stories, music, and pleasure. The strongest point of reference for a continuous plot would be Lincoln Agrippa Daily, nicknamed Banjo, attempting to create an orchestra with other Black men he meets in Marseilles, which I will be returning to in my section on desire as a motivating force in the novel. However, this does not give it a particularly strong “plot” in a literary sense. As such, this article focuses on the characters of Banjo and their relationships.
Queer Sexuality
First, I read the characters of Banjo and their relationships to one another as queer. Many of the characters in Banjo engage in male/male relationships and actions. For instance, Banjo and his friend Malty go to Café African and see a group of Senegalese boys dancing together. The text states, “They dance better male with male or individually than with girls, putting more power in their feet, dancing more wildly, more natively, more savagely” (McKay 48). The claim that they dance “better male with male” illuminates that this is a clearly homoaffective act, which Eric H. Newman observes, describing this as a “charged scene of queer desire and performance” (Newman 173). The description of “more” wildly, natively, and savagely implies an innateness or naturalness that runs counter to queerphobic narratives about perversion. In the face of a Western heterosexist ideology that condemns homoaffective acts and relationships as perverted or unnatural, the boys freely and powerfully dance in opposition to this. This spontaneity, the readiness to engage in dance and play in new ways that feel more authentic, real, or pleasurable, functions as a queer (both as non-normative, and as homoaffective) form of community making.
A more overt instance of this same-sex desire is found in Goosey, also known as “flute-boy.” Newman notes two things in his analysis of Goosey. First, Newman claims that Goosey’s moniker of “flute-boy” is itself a sexual innuendo suggesting masturbation or fellatio. For Newman, this is obviously a sexual nickname; in pushing this thought further, one can appreciate the text’s association of sex with music. “Flute-boy” may be a sexual inuendo, but it also gestures towards an idea of sex and sexuality that is more refined or artistic. Goosey embodies a musical sensibility in sexuality, or a sexual sensibility in music. Second, Newman recognizes Goosey’s behavior as cruising, a “mode of moving through urban space and as gay male sexual practice” (Newman 174). When describing Goosey’s movement through Marseilles, the reader sees Goosey meeting other young men. The text uses the term “soliciting,” which Newman claims carries some ambiguity on whether their interaction is sexual, commercial, or both (Newman 175). Furthermore, Goosey also comes across a young man, described as “wearing rosy pyjamas and painted like a scarecrow” (McKay 86-7). Newman suggests that the young man is potentially a prostitute (Newman 175), but this more directly describes a clearly queer and gender-nonconforming presentation. The rosy pyjamas and cosmetics indicate a fondness for feminine, androgynous, or queer aesthetics that do not conform to heterosexist masculine ideals of how men “ought to” dress or look. In this instance in Banjo, Goosey is characterized as perhaps soliciting sex, and the realm of that “perhaps” is what allows cruising, a covert way to solicit sex in public, to function. As it relates to Banjo’s transnational scope, Newman writes, “Cruising brings out a love of difference that transcends the limits of nation and language as it moves the body through ephemeral and powerful contact with a range of anonymous partners” (175). Desire and affection are not confined to nationality or language in cruising; they are free flowing and amorphous, not obeying disciplinary structures of heteronormativity or citizenship in a nation-state. Homoaffective desire in cruising is intensely tied to transnationality and movement in Banjo, which I will return to in my section on queer space.
Perhaps most central to this novel’s display of desire is Banjo’s wish to form an orchestra with other men in the Ditch. This is a homosocial desire that manifests as a wish to create a cohesive group to make music. Jarrett H. Brown writes, “The dream to form an orchestra is . . . to create a new reality and identity that is organized around the imagination of homosocial networks” (Brown 9). The orchestra members are generally uninterested in women, focusing more on intimacy between each other—Black men who have made their way to Marseilles. Homosocial, and indeed homoaffective relations, are built out of this orchestra. These relations are strong enough that even nationality and political differences do not prevent the characters in Banjo from building them.
The previous section has highlighted some of the ways queer sexuality is constructed in the text and characters, primarily focusing on relationships to each other and gendered aesthetics. Queerness and queer theory are obviously interested in sexuality, but they are not confined only to the somatic and erotic. Queerness is something political, especially in relation to politics of (re)production and space. The following sections focus on how Black queerness is articulated in Banjo as it speaks to these political worlds.
Queer Failure
In her review of Banjo, Jacqueline Kaye writes, “The boys have failed in the world of work and money but their natural instincts and vitality have not been destroyed and repressed as have those of the whites. Their sexuality, their untrammelled physicality are freed from the aberrations and complexes of those who can only be observers of their enjoyment” (Kaye 167). She is correct. The boys have failed. Within, around, and out of that failure is precisely where the radical potential of this novel lies. In his book The Queer Art of Failure, Jack Halberstam makes a case for failure, which they see as a liberated and queer way to live life. He wishes to dismantle “the logics of success and failure with which we currently live” because “success in a heteronormative, capitalist society equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation” (Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure 2). Essentially, living outside of a capitalist heteronormative society is viewed as “failing.” However, that failure is where pleasure, joy, community, and fun lie. This is simply how Banjo and his cohort live. Their vagrant lifestyle means they are “failing” at work, at heteronormativity, and certainly at monogamous reproduction, all which serve to support capitalism and the nation-state. This mode of living outside of the confines and demands of heterosexist capitalism demonstrates queer community building. In stepping outside, they can find pleasure and art (for instance, an orchestra) in other, more enjoyable and fulfilling ways.
I would imagine this aversion to capitalist hegemony is why Banjo is critical of Marcus Garvey (McKay 91-2). Garvey, and his associated strong nationalism, militarism, UNIA uniforms, and Black Star Line shares all hold the weight of patriotism and Black capitalism that Banjo is making a very conscious and deliberate effort to live outside of. Garvey’s ideology was a strict and structured set of ideas about the nation and gender. For instance, Michael Malouf recounts the history of Garvey’s use of “Irish nationalist symbols (also notably gendered masculine)” in the context of Black Caribbean intellectual and political traditions, and the masculinist nationalism that accompanied them in the early twentieth century (Malouf 51). The rigidity of masculinist ideologies place importance on a heterosexual family, and on national identity and politics. Banjo has rejected this importance (even if the result is him being a “failure”). It was not just Garvey’s politics and economic choices that Banjo found foolish. Garvey’s ideology poses a threat to Banjo’s pleasure-driven, vagrant lifestyle. For Banjo, success in a heterosexist capitalist world is not a success worth achieving.
Queer Place
Banjo and his cohort also engage in queer placemaking practices in Marseilles, radically restructuring the geography around them. Jack Halberstam writes that “‘Queer space’ refers to the place-making practices . . . in which queer people engage and it also describes the new understandings of space enabled by the production of queer counterpublics” (Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place 6). Banjo and his friends’ relationship to the Ditch, Marseilles, France, and the Black Atlantic is queered. The rigidity of national borders is discarded by the boys in Banjo, and in fact, by the city of Marseilles itself. As it is a port city, there is an influx and effluence of people, stories (as seen in the chapter on story-telling [McKay 114-32]), ideas, and desires. The result is a multinational group of men who engage in intimacy with one another—their cruising, their dancing, and their orchestra performing. Rather than an institution governing how Banjo and his friends live, they go their own way in forming relationships and pleasures outside of the wishes of a single, given nation-state.
“Queer space” also seriously destabilizes the nation-state. In a heteronormative society, monogamous, heterosexual reproduction serves to produce offspring to be the next generation of workers and citizens. Capitalism and the nation-state both demand the endless reproduction of workers and citizens to uphold themselves, and the structures of heteronormativity and monogamy serve to ensure these institutions do not collapse. They have become disciplinary projects of capitalism and the nation-state. Queerness—that is, “non-normative” modes of sexuality, such as same-sex relationships or non-monogamy—has the potential to disrupt and end this constant (re)production and discipline. In literary works, this often manifests as migrant characters being LGBTQ. Another instance from Black literature is that of Mark from Helon Habila’s Travelers. Mark is a Malawian transgender student living in contemporary Berlin. He also “queers space” in Travelers, though there are some notable differences between him and the characters in Banjo.
First, Mark queers space in a way that is more granular than Banjo’s characters. Mark’s queering of space is more about confronting individual locations or institutions. For instance, “deconsecrating” the abandoned church (Habila 21) that Mark and his friends are squatting in is an obvious example of taking a traditionally conservative, often cisheterosexist space and institution—the church—and turning it into a nonreligious space for queer and trans life. This is a deeply symbolic act, charged with queer antinormative counter-politics; but they are also only deconsecrating a church, just a single location in Berlin. The characters in Banjo queer space more in the vein of discarding national borders and national identities so as to render them moot, hence the setting of this novel as a port city.
Second, the queering of space readers see in these two texts have much to do with the texts’ settings instead of the characters. Travelers is set in contemporary Germany and other parts of Europe and illustrates the lives of various African migrants who have ended up in Europe. In the shadow of twentieth and twenty-first century neoliberalism, (neo)imperialism, and transnational involvement in the African continent, many residents of Africa have been displaced or otherwise made vulnerable to violence and poverty. In Berlin, Mark’s central conflict is that his student visa expired, and now his citizenship—the legality of his mere being in Germany—is called into question. The unnamed narrator describes it as “a bureaucratic conundrum straight out of Kafka” (Habila 33). At the suggestion that he declare himself a refugee, Mark’s girlfriend, Lorelle, says, “he is not a refugee. He is a student” (Habila 34). Thus, the problem now becomes, how does Mark act in accordance with self-determination and declaring his own identity in an age of cissexist twenty-first century neoliberalism? Mark’s conflict of legality as an immigrant in Germany is textually and thematically paralleled to the conflict of claiming validity and legal recognition as a transgender person in a cissexist society. Banjo depicts life on the early twentieth century waterfront, a site of contact with the Black Atlantic. Interactions with state officials are limited to the police, a municipal force, whose language most characters in Banjo’s posse do not speak. These characters do not interact with France as a nation-state in the same “bureaucratic” way that Mark does with Germany.
Seemingly, Banjo and his friends do not disregard the power of the nation-state because of a rigid set of political ideals and activism. Rather, they simply do not wish to identify with any given nation-state in a way that hegemonic heteronormativity claims they ought to. They plainly have no desire to.
Queer Desires
Desire seems to be a guiding force in this text, as if it were a gravitational pull. For the characters, it governs what music they play, who they form relations with, where they go in Marseilles (for instance Café African), and ultimately how they live. As Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner somewhat comedically claim, “Queer is hot” (Berlant and Warner 343). In the context of that essay (written in the 1990s), the authors were making the claim that queer theory as a field was a new, interesting, “hot” field. But I also read this as a claim that queer theory is incredibly informed by and wrapped up in eroticism, desire, and pleasure—as is Banjo. This can be most immediately seen in the eponymous character’s name.
Banjo’s intimacy with his instrument is incredibly salient throughout Banjo. Brown notes that Banjo is very close with his instrument, calling it “buddy,” a masculine term (Brown 7-8), and generally describing it in masculine affectionate terms. Furthermore, Brown writes, “He strokes [his banjo] like a penis and eroticizes this kind of intimacy between the two. The metaphor charges the moment with sexual desire and pleasure” (Brown 8). Brown takes a very erotic and sexual approach to reading Banjo’s closeness with his banjo. This reading sexualizes Banjo, and Brown claims that this highly erotic performance of playing music gets projected outward to other Black men in the Ditch.
I find that Banjo’s relationship with the banjo actually can be distilled further. When Banjo and Goosey get into an argument about the history of the banjo—Goosey claims “Banjo is Dixie”—Banjo responds with a very simple, “I play that theah instrument becauz I likes it” (McKay 90). Banjo does not subscribe to a greater political purpose that is as structured as Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalism and Black capitalism, nor Goosey’s anti-Dixie politic. Banjo simply enjoys playing the banjo. His fondness does not only indicate or represent masculine/masculine desire, nor only function as a vessel to explain that. It also communicates Banjo’s discarding of Black nationalist politics that he feels are disciplinary and compromising to his own enjoyment. Banjo does not subscribe to a greater politic. The act of playing the banjo is itself an act of, and indeed a promise to, pleasure as an end itself.
Desire has the potential to be such a simple thing, only existing within the physical body. And yet, it opens up an entire new world in Banjo. It cracks open the claws of heteronormative capitalism, giving way to pleasure, art, music, and community across the Black Atlantic. Desire in Banjo—and its corresponding constructions of sexuality, failure, and place in this text—gives McKay the ability to articulate Black queerness in the early twentieth century as both a sexual and political status vis-à-vis white capitalist heterosexist ideology and its institutions.
Works Cited
Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Guest Column: What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?” PMLA, vol. 110, no. 3, 1995, pp. 343–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/462930. Accessed 28 Nov. 2023.
Brown, Jarrett H. “The Shadow of Intimacy: Male Bonding and Improvised Masculinity in Claude McKay’s ‘Banjo: A Story Without a Plot.’” Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 21, no. 1/2, 2012, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24615441. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023.
Habila, Helon. Travelers: A Novel. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.
Halberstam, Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York UP, 2005.
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke UP, 2011.
Kaye, Jacqueline. “Claude McKay’s ‘Banjo’.” Présence Africaine, no. 73, 1970, pp. 165–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24348789. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023.
McKay, Claude. Banjo. Harper & Brothers, 1929.
Malouf, Michael G. “Sovereignty at Home and Abroad: Marcus Garvey.” Transatlantic Solidarities: Irish Nationalism and Caribbean Poetics. U of Virginia P, 2009, pp. 44-79.
Newman, Eric H. “Ephemeral Utopias: Queer Cruising, Literary Form, and Diasporic Imagination in Claude McKay’s ‘Home to Harlem’ and ‘Banjo.’” Callaloo, vol. 38, no. 1, 2015, pp. 167–85. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24265107. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023.
Acknowledgements: Enormous thank you’s to: Dr. Leimbach and Dr. Abelkop for introducing me to queer theory, to Dr. O’Neill for encouraging me to make this project into a queer theory paper, and to all my friends who were there for me this last year.
Citation Style: MLA