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Invisible desires: Homoerotic racism and its homophobic critique in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Spring 1997 by Daniel Y Kim
The connection between this imaginary white man and the members of the Brotherhood is suggested by a microscope he carries-a microscope with which he initially threatens to strike the narrator, and which he then offers as part of his payment. The narrator reveals to the reader that he has added this detail by "remembering the instruments pointed at me by the physicians" (253). But as an instrument designed to enhance the vision of scientifically-minded men, the microscope links this figure not only to the doctors but also to the men of the Brotherhood, who will, in subsequent chapters, attempt to bend his actions to their will by opening up to him their "scientific" view of history. This linkage is further suggested by Mary Rambo: "I heard them nurses talking `bout you. They say they even got one of the psychiatristses[sic] and a socialist or sociologist or something looking at you all the time" (247-48). Psychiatrist, socialist or sociologist-they are all about the same to Mary. Moreover, in Ellison's chapter as a whole they all resemble that other "kind" of white man: the racist homosexual conjured up by the narrator in order to explain his predicament. In other words, Ellison asserts that beneath the purportedly "scientific" and benign interest that Brother Jack and his cohort take in the black race is a racist desire that resembles this imaginary white man's desire to have the invisible man assume the subordinate position of "nigger." Moreover, Ellison insinuates another claim though he never fully fleshes it out, namely, that the members of the Brotherhood seek to impose control over the lives of black men in order to satisfy an erotic desire that remains largely closeted-an invisible desire, we might say-that resembles the homosexual desire of this "single white figure."
VI. Postscript
My analysis of Invisible Man raises some troubling issues, I believe, for a criticism that strives to be anti-homophobic as well as anti-racist in its commitments. For while this novel calls our attention to certain repressed sexual dynamics that operate in particular forms of white male racism, it does so through a symbolic vocabulary that is patently homophobic. I have thus sought in my readings to emphasize the complexity and subtlety of Ellison's psychological critique of racism while also underscoring the crudity with which it ultimately reanimates another and equally insidious form of hatred. In closing, I will offer some provisional assertions about how Ellison's racial and sexual politics might best be situated in larger contexts, and to suggest some directions for further critical and theoretical inquiry.
The source of the young Ellison's "humiliation" and anger-the sociological writings of Robert E. Park-raises some interesting questions about the relationship between ideologies of racial and sexual difference. Park gives scientific sanction to a demeaning view of blacks that recapitulates a demeaning view of women. Park's writings are thus deeply suggestive of how discourses of racial difference borrow from discourses of sexual difference in identifying and denigrating the "Other." That is to say, Park's writings suggest that modes of racial discrimination are perhaps modeled and dependent upon modes of sexual discrimination.13 As Ellison's work thus identifies a particular ideological structure in which racism and misogyny assume a kind of symbiotic relationship, that work suggests an object of study for critical and theoretical work that seeks to bridge anti-racist and feminist concerns.14
