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Chapter Two Queer Locations/Quee r Transformation s "Vito Russ o pointed ou t i n cinem a . . . that historically , th e ga y characte r always had to end up with hi s head in the ove n or in som e similar state/ ' Henry Loui s Gates, Jr., explained i n a 1991 interview "I t was like a Hays rule tha t yo u ha d t o com e t o a bad end . Giovanni's Room isn' t reall y a n exception t o this ; an d i n Randal l Kenan' s boo k yo u ge t a brillian t tor mented homosexual , Horace , wh o commit s suicide " (i n Rowell , 454). 1 Gates praise d Kenan' s nove l A Visitation of Spirits bu t wa s nonetheles s wary of the suicidal ending: "There's another way of reading this [suicide]: which is just as a way of registering some pretty tragic facts of history. . . . But I want Randal l Kenan to, as it were, take Horace to the big city in his next novel" (in Rowell, 454). Gates's prescription fo r Kenan is in many ways predictable; the "migra tion t o th e bi g city " i s a widely availabl e trop e i n contemporar y lesbia n and gay literature, with a long and illustrious history.2 And yet I find th e need to transport character s like Horace off t o "th e big city" symptomati c of a regiona l elisio n i n quee r theor y generally . Wha t Gate s elide s i n hi s suggestion to Kenan is the fact that taking Horace to anywhere also entails taking him from somewhere . In thi s case, the unmentione d "somewhere " is the fictional Fundamentalis t Christian , rural, African America n commu nity o f Tim s Creek , Nort h Carolina . No t th e mos t conduciv e atmospher e for th e expression o f queer desire , certainly; but as liberal lesbian an d gay thought likes to remind us, "we are everywhere," and rather than conced e that "everywhere " actuall y mean s Ne w Yor k an d Sa n Francisco , I a m interested i n th e (perhap s mor e radical ) implication s o f recognizin g tha t "everywhere" includes such an apparently marginal and inhospitable place. Gates's visio n o f Horac e i n th e bi g cit y i s understandabl e give n th e tragic suicide that ends the novel, yet the desire to fix Horace's situation is not exactly true to Gates's own theories of signification. I n The Signifying Monkey (an d elsewhere), Gates examines the rhetorical process of "Signi 69 fyin(g)" a s it has evolved in diverse African Caribbea n and African Ameri can communities. 3 "Th e Afro-America n concep t o f Signifyin(g), " Gate s writes, involves "forma l revisio n tha t i s at al l points double-voiced " (22) . Gates sees this double-voiced rhetorica l principle at play in the Signifyin g Monkey tales, which have been passed on and revised by African America n speakers in "barrooms, pool halls, and [on] street corners" (54). The Signifying Monke y tale s present listener s with a master o f trickery: the Signi fying Monke y bests his opponent, the Lion, by skillfully openin g up a play of meaning. Through a series of insults directed at the Lion and attribute d to the Elephant, the Signifyin g Monke y tricks the Lion into sparring with the Elephant , who—i n turn—alway s physicall y defeat s thi s suppose d "king o f th e jungle." Th e Signifyin g Monke y succeed s becaus e th e Lion , who always equates the figurative with the literal, is unable to see through the Monkey' s linguisti c games. "Anothe r wa y o f reading " A Visitation of Spirits coul d position th e text within th e tradition o f Signifyin(g), consid ering how the novel shapes a queer trickster identity that rewrites both the "pretty tragi c fact s o f history " tha t Gate s acknowledge s an d th e "correc tive " he offers: the migration to the big city. Contemporary ga y fictio n tha t deal s wit h...

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