SILENT RESISTANCE THROUGH NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN JAMES BALDWIN’S GOING TO MEET THE MAN

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Résumé

Black people in the United States have always reacted differently to oppression. They wielded strategic violence, such as Nat Turner’s rebellion in
1831. Alternatively, reactions have often been intellectual such as the Harlem Renaissance (1928-30), and protesting such as the Civil Rights Movements (1950-60), and more recently, Black Lives Matter movement in response to police brutality since 2013. One of Baldwin’s contributions to Black people’s struggles against oppression is in the intellectual realm. He is notably well-respected in the American literary canon for his criticism of the injustice and violence suffered by Black people through his books. Verbal resistance to this
oppression is one of the weapons he favors in his collection of short stories Going to Meet the Man (1965). Research shows that through his words and the words of his characters, the author uses language as a tool to fight for the black cause. But alongside this verbal communication, the author also relies on silent resistance through non-verbal communication, which has received little attention in literature. This article delves into the African-American tradition of silent resistance through non-verbal communication as a reaction to white nonverbal and verbal violence. Critical Race Theory and Nonverbal Communication are used to achieve this objective, as they offer tools for analyzing race and interpersonal relations. The study discovers first that White characters use nonverbal communication for repressing, dominating, controlling, and dehumanizing Blacks, with the aim of silencing them. Paradoxically, these Black characters employ this silence, body language, gestures, glances or the absence of glances to resist the Whites’ silencing plot. The article argues that combined with words, silent resistance is an effective coping strategy, enabling African-Americans to be resilient when facing
oppression.

Mots-clés

Baldwin, communication, non-verbal, resistance, silence.