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AM Dominguez Dissertation UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Mysteries and miseries : the racial uncanny in the American West Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4947x256 Author Dominguez, Andrea Marie Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California THE UNVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Mysteries and Miseries: The Racial Uncanny in the American West A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Andrea Marie Dominguez Committee in charge: Professor Michael Davidson, Chair Professor Ross Frank Professor Shelley Streeby Professor Nicole Tonkovich Professor Meg Wesling 2012 © Andrea Marie Dominguez, 2012 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Andrea Marie Dominguez is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2012 iii DEDICATION This work is a result of more than just my own efforts. I’d like to thank the following people: To my dear friends from all stages of my life – I am grateful for your company through all this madness, your kindness, your patience, and your amazing ability to always make me laugh. To my mom, Rose – I am grateful for you always encouraging me to be the best scholar, teacher, and woman that I can be. I can never express how your own trials and strengths have inspired me through this process and you continuously remind me of what is really important in life. To my dad, Andy – I am grateful for your constant encouragement, your willingness to listen, and all good memories that we have made during this process. Our football weekends will always be one of my favorite memories of graduate school. Thank you for helping me clear my mind week in and week out. And, finally, to my best friend and husband, John – I am grateful that you have been with me every step of way. On our wedding day I told you that you were the best part of my heart. You are truly the best part of who I am and I could never have finished this project with your constant support and love. This has been a long journey with many ups and downs, accomplishments and disappointments. But I glad that I did not have to go down this road alone. This project is for all of us. iv EPIGRAPH I left my heart in San Francisco . v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page . iii Dedication . iv Epigraph . v Table of Contents . vi List of Photographs . vii Acknowledgements . viii Vita . ix Abstract . x Introduction – Resurrecting the Dead: A Haunting in San Francisco . 1 Chapter 1 - Indian Presence (and Absence) in California: Cultural Memory, Sovereignty, and “Mysteries of the City” . 26 Chapter 2 - Ghostly Ruins: Disaster Romances, Collective Memory, and the 1906 Earthquake and Fire . 78 Chapter 3 - Finding the “Falcon”: Hammett and Hard Boiled San Francisco . 149 Chapter 4 - Uncanny San Francisco: The Vertigo of Historical Markings . 207 Afterword – New Ceremonies for Racialized Ghosts . 264 References . 279 vi LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS The Presido . 1 The Golden Gate . 25 The Ferry Building . 78 John’s Grill . 149 Mission Dolores . 207 vii AKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge Professor Michael Davidson for his support as the chair of my dissertation committee. His encouragement and support through each step of this process has been invaluable and greatly appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Shelley Streeby and Professor Nicole Tonovich for reading multiple drafts, being free with their comments and thoughts, and for their willingness to work with me quarter after quarter. In addition, I would like to acknowledge all the help and guidance provided by Professor Meg Wesling and Professor Ross Frank. My experiences working with them have contributed greatly to the methodological approaches of this project and our conversations have proved invaluable to my intellectual development. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my colleague and friend, Lisa Thomas. Her help, encouragement, and friendship have allowed – and forced! – me to finish this project and I will always be grateful for her kindness and thoughtfulness. viii VITA 2004 Bachelor of Arts, University of California, Berkeley English, cum laude Native American Studies, summa cum laude 2006 Masters of Arts, University of Arizona English: Native American Literature 2012 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego Literature and Cultural Studies ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Mysteries and Miseries: The Racial Uncanny in the American West by Andrea Marie Dominguez Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2012 Professor Michael Davidson, Chair “Mysteries and Miseries: The Racial Uncanny in the American West” considers the use of the mystery genre in Western narratives as a representation of multi-layered histories and cultural ghosts that haunt a mythic and racialized discursive past. Through a case study of San Francisco mystery narratives, I argue that questions of race and blood signal layered and fragmented histories that suggest unstable ethnic-American identity categories. Placing the genre narrative form of the mystery at the center of this historical lens provides a re-reading of methods of cultural empire in San Francisco, California, and the American West that underscore a relationship to national conceptions of whiteness as related to constructions of racialized “others.” Thus, this project goes beyond critical regionalism to suggest that San Francisco literature complicates discussions of x California’s relationship to the American ideology of the frontier by re-reading racial/ethnic formation in relation to past and present forms of American empire building. I begin with a juxtaposition of the first known mystery novel set in San Francisco, The Mysteries and Miseries of San Francisco, by A Californian and the rise of anthropological study in California as related to American Indians in the West. In this chapter I argue that while these popular narratives suggest that the definition of San Francisco as an American city is contingent on the social and racial mixing of Spanish Californios and white immigrants, these constructions are in fact contingent on violent cultural forms of erasure. The second chapter, “Ghostly Ruins: Disaster and Collective Memory,” further considers shifting definitions of whiteness by examining narratives of the 1906 earthquake and fire. Here I consider “disaster romances” such as Gertrude Atherton’s The Avalanche (1919) and Alan Crosland’s 1927 film Old San Francisco, in relation to the tension between erasure and memory. In Chapter 3, “Finding the ‘Falcon’: Hammett and Hard Boiled San Francisco”, I consider the racial unease developed in Chapter 2 in relation to modern forms of cultural empire. I begin with The Dain Curse in order to complicate my reading of both Hammett’s novel and Huston’s filmic version of The Maltese Falcon. My fourth chapter, “Uncanny San Francisco: Urban Space and Haunting Iconography,” examines the classic noir film, Vertigo, through a more feminist oriented lens to consider the relationship between race and agency in historical constructions of California. xi Introduction: Resurrecting the Dead – A Haunting in San Francisco The Presidio. Andrea Dominguez. 2012. Rows of gray stone rise across the Presidio cemetery, silent markers of space and time that offer an eerie contrast to the San Francisco urban skyline that sits below the rolling green hills. This narrative begins with the image of a place where things come to an end, yet the cemetery at the Presidio seems the perfect metaphor for the tensions between space and memory, between history and all its ghostly lingerings, that “‘Mysteries and Miseries’: The Racial Uncanny in the American West” investigates. The cemetery at the Presidio is a liminal space that belongs to multiple times and 1 2 simultaneously defines and challenges definitions of the spatial abstractions that signify San Francisco in the American cultural imaginary. As a memorial, the Presidio is a place that is about the remembrance of the past, one that serves to (re)imagine both the city that is and the city that was. As a graveyard, it is the embodiment of spectrality, a remnant of the shadows of the past that continue to shape our perceptions and misconceptions about the emergent and ever-changing urban landscape of the Bay Area. As a historical marker with a Spanish name, it is a reminder of the strains among American, Spanish, Mexican, and indigenous forces and colonial desires. As an American abstraction, the Presidio cemetery is a place of erasure and negation where the bodies of American heroes mask the reality of uncanny racial violence in the American West. Founded on March 28, 1776 when Juan Bautista de Anza and his party of 193 men landed on the hillside, the Presidio became the Spanish military headquarters for their expansion in Alta California.1 Originally designed to defend Spain’s land claims and to support the endeavors of Mission Dolores a short distance away, the Presidio became symbolic of Spain’s far-reaching power and the proliferation of its expansive empire. Yet like all colonial endeavors, the Spanish glory of the Presidio was challenged early on. As a fort made of adobe and wood, it was vulnerable to both indigenous attacks and the natural elements. The original fort suffered extensive damage in its early years from periodic attacks and devastating earthquakes that plagued the terrain, and, by 1783, there were only thirty-three Spanish men actively serving at the Presidio. Since support from other Spanish outposts was limited, the men stationed at the Presidio were responsible for defending the land against “Indians”; controlling indigenous labor for the 1 This was the Spanish name of “Upper California” during the colonial period. 3 Mission and other land developments; and engaging in farming, ranching, and hunting in order to support themselves and their small community.
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