Flaying Dutchman: Masochism, Minstrelsy, and the Gender Politics of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman

Abstract

This article explores how the notion of black masculinity embodied by Clay in Amiri Baraka's important play, Dutchman, only surfaces in relation to the complicated picture of femininity Baraka stages in the figure of Lula. Lula's characterization allows her to embody white femininity, and through a form of "blackface" minstrelsy, to mimic the same black masculinity Baraka was after in Clay's final, angry monologue. By tracing how race and gender categories circulate in Lula's minstrel performance, however, the defining trait of Baraka's new Dutchman of the 1960s emerges--namely, his endless desire for punishment, his unyielding self-"flaying." By putting pressure on the scope of Lula's complex performance, this article also reveals how Lula's own masochistic white femininity forecloses the same sexual liberty and agency she achieved when she metaphorically "blacked up." In this way, Baraka's ironic treatment of Lula and Clay's intricate, interrelated power plays in the end not only illustrates the self-destructive tragedy of black nationalist masculintiy, but also underscores the way white femininity's trafficking in this currency of blackness as a method of empowerment is doomed, like the Dutchman Lula emulates, to suffer endlessly the scene of her own debilitation.

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