Violent Disruptions: Richard Wright and William Faulkner's Racial Imaginations The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Chavers, Linda Doris Mariah. 2013. Violent Disruptions: Richard Wright and William Faulkner's Racial Imaginations. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11169797 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA VIOLENT DISRUPTIONS: WILLIAM FAULKNER AND RICHARD WRIGHT’S RACIAL IMAGINATIONS A dissertation presented by Linda Doris Mariah Chavers to The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of African and African American Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts September 2013 © 2013 Linda Doris Mariah Chavers All Rights Reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Werner Sollors Linda Chavers Violent Disruptions: William Faulkner and Richard Wright’s Racial Imagination Abstract Violent Disruptions contends that the works of Richard Wright and William Faulkner are mirror images of each other and that each illustrates American race relations in distinctly powerful and prescient ways. While Faulkner portrays race and American identity through sex and its relationship to the imagination, Wright reveals a violent undercurrent beneath interracial encounters that the shared imagination triggers. Violent Disruptions argues that the spectacle of the interracial body anchors the cultural imaginations of our collective society and, as it embodies and symbolizes American slavery, drives the violent acts of individuals. Interracial productions motivate the narratives of Richard Wright and William Faulkner through a system of displacement of signs. Though these tropes maintain their currency today, they are borne out of cultural imaginings over two hundred years old. Working within the framework of the imaginary, Violent Disruptions places these now historical texts into the twenty-first century’s discourse of race and American identity. In the first part of the dissertation, I show in detail the various narratives at work in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936) in order to portray the imaginations shared by the white characters and disrupted by the interracial body as spectacle. Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) depicts a similar racial imaginary but with more focus on its violent, corporeal effects. By contrast, in the second half of the dissertation, I demonstrate the writers’ central and racially- charged characters from their earlier works, iii Light in August (1932) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1938; 1940) and look at how the figures of Joe Christmas and Big Boy, respectively, work as literary prototypes for their version in later works. iii Table of Contents Abstract iii Gratitude vi Prelude viii 1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Absalom, Absalom! 1 2. White Blurs and Black Sex in Native Son 45 3. Play and Death in Uncle Tom’s Children 80 4. Violations and Disruptions in Light in August 107 Conclusion 143 Bibliography 150 v Gratitude To Mommie It takes a village to raise a child and it most definitely takes one to keep a grad student afloat. I am forever (happily) indebted to my advisor, Werner Sollors for believing in me from day one; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for always lending support without question or judgment; Glenda Carpio for her patience, Tommie Shelby for his enthusiasm and positivity; Robert LaPointe, without whom I would not have lasted one year at Harvard; and to Timothy Patrick McCarthy, for whom I had the privilege of teaching, of befriending, of gaining a mentor, of learning what righteous anger, activism, true love and acceptance can look like (his wedding remains one of my most memorable beautiful experiences). Tim, you agitate, agitate, agitate without a single misstep and I am so glad to know and claim you. To my baby brother, CJ, and sissy, Catherine, you are the first people who I learned to love without question or condition, who continue to bring me instant joy now as teenagers as you did as little tots. I adore you and thank you so much for always believing in your big, “old” sister…who is over 30 and doesn’t have a house but will always have a home to share with you. To my family and to parents, my father for never ever holding back, for telling me his stories as a “North American Negro male,” for showing me love and humor in spite of. And, of course, for winning the bet. To my Aunt Linda, who gave me my first bath and “returned” me to my mother when I was a baby and would not go to sleep. It is a privilege to be your namesake and it’s one that seems to grow every year. I love to carry your name, to claim you as my other mommy, to be a part of this wacky, beautiful sisterhood of Shamwell women. To mom, there’s so much. You dreamt of me before I was born. You steered me while never ever letting me feel out of control. You taught me the true meaning of motherhood and teamwork and what it’s like to be a completely wanted and loved child. Our household was filled, more than anything else, with sheer laughter and a romance between mother and child. Yes “I did it.” But so have you, mom, and you continue to show me what it is to live as a free woman. One who cackles, makes faces without pause, who sternly reminds me never to wake up at the end of someone else’s life. We did it, mommie. To my friends and colleagues that made my grad school experience not just bearable but memorable, ridiculous, and warm: Drs. Cameron Leader-Piccone, Peter Geller, Laura Murphy, Amber Moulton, and Jen Nash. Finally, some unsolicited but priceless advice for whoever may be reading this and maybe about to embark on a new life journey be it grad school, a new job, a move…be sure to get yourself the following friends: A Kyla Sams: If you don’t have a Kyla to call you by your full name whenever the ivory tower goes to your head, your life will be lacking. A Kyla who knows exactly what you’re thinking just by the shared looks on your faces. Who will take a bus up at a moment’s notice after you’ve called her in tears over too many things. A Kyla who knows when to pick things apart and when to simply call things as they are and to keep it moving. A Kyla who you’ve been fast friends with since 14 years old, going on 17 years (who’ll say “that’s too long” when learning this). This is the kind of friend who keeps your teeth white. Get a Kyla Sams. A Dr. Ashley Farmer (and the Wright family): Ashley brings you brownies because you’ve been dealt a serious life blow…or because it’s a Tuesday. She will tell you when to own your voice and to make it loud as well as when to shut up when you’re being ridiculous (that actually happened, she made a very justified argument to me about too much self-deprecation and then finished it with “Also, shut up”). Ashley will be your friend even when you’re being a bad one because she has a good eye for deserving people. Ashley will patiently listen to your same, tired laments and gripes inherent to grad school life. She will humor your silliness as you pass notes in class (yes, that happened). She will share her heart with you. Find these women, share your lives with them. My life, this project, are so much the richer for having known them. Prelude “My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.” — Joseph Conrad In 1983, one year after I was born, Susie Guillory Phipps lost her five-year long legal battle against the state of Louisiana. She began her case in an effort to change the racial designation on her birth certificate from “Colored” to “White”; the case opened up the always-heated debate surrounding the state’s then upheld “one-drop” rule (Phipps was 3/32 “Negro” based on her great-great-great-great enslaved African grandmother). Guillory Phipps stated, “I am White. I am all White. I was raised as a White child. I went to White schools. I married White twice.”1 Jump ahead to the twenty-first century: it is 2004 and I am twenty-one years old, in my first job out of college sharing after-work drinks with some co-workers. One guy had been flirting with me all night and joined me when I walked to my car. He started making more aggressive advances and after the umpteenth rejection, asked, in exasperation, “Look, is it because I’m white? Because I’ve never been with a black girl but I’ve seen a lot of porn.” I could think of nothing to say but goodbye. Without fail, whenever I tell this story, one person will shout, “What was he thinking?” In 2009, The Harvard Crimson covered an undergraduate panel on being a bi/multi-racial student on campus in an article called “Falling in Love with Hue.” I attended this panel and shared this story. The entire panel including the audience roared with shock and awkward laughter.