Men don't have nothing like virginity : migration, refraction, and black masculine performance in Austin Clarke's The Question

Abstract

This paper examines Austin Clarke’s novel The Question (1999) paying attention to its main character’s representation of masculinity. On the one hand, the performance of masculinity that the protagonist brandishes unveils itself as a parody of the models that the white imaginary has created of its other as well as of those internalised by the black imaginary. On the other, the paradigms of migration from the British Caribbean to North America and the ideological refraction they imply situate the speaking subject in an interstitial location from which he visualises the split between the code of Caribbean masculinity and its Canadian counterpart. Within this transcultural scope, issues of social mobility, exoticism and reified sexuality are underlined to contribute a critique of the multicultural kaleidoscope.