Instituting Violence: Spaces of Exception in Twentieth- and Twenty- First Century American Fiction

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: INSTITUTING VIOLENCE: SPACES OF EXCEPTION IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION Nicholas Allen Slaughter, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Professor David Wyatt, Department of English Since the War on Terror’s onset, American studies have popularized philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s argument in the treatises Homo Sacer (1995) and State of Exception (2003) that modern governments have come to operate in a permanent state of emergency. Agamben terms this phenomenon a “state of exception” in which law may be set aside at any time. Critics have productively applied this theory to post-9/11 U.S. government actions like surveillance programs, torture, and military interventions. Scholarship treats the Guantanamo detention center as the epitome of a localized, perpetual suspension of legal and ethical norms. Yet insufficient attention has been paid to other spaces of a similarly exceptional nature throughout American history. In “Instituting Violence,” I examine twentieth- and twenty-first century fictional representations of institutionalized sites home to unregulated violence while also engaging in current critical conversations about political and economic violence. Preceding Agamben’s political theory, much American literature depicts this exceptionalism across a wide array of sites. I explore four categories of spaces of exception represented across a range of genres, considering their interconnections and histories. In each text, a space that appears to operate as an exception to American legal and moral norms proves to reveal the normal but obscured relationships of power between the privileged and exploited. In addition to how these texts explore longer histories of such violent spaces, I consider how American writers self-reflexively examine the efficacy of their art for meaningfully engaging audiences in ethical discourses about history and justice. INSTITUTING VIOLENCE: SPACES OF EXCEPTION IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION by Nicholas Allen Slaughter Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Advisory Committee: Professor David Wyatt, Chair Professor Lee Konstantinou Professor Sharada Balachandran Orihuela Professor Peter Mallios Professor Christina B. Hanhardt © Copyright by Nicholas Allen Slaughter 2017 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation is the evidence of my great privilege for having learned and worked alongside great mentors and dedicated colleagues, all with the support of wonderful friends and loving family. First and last, my thanks and adoration go to my wife, Melanie Moomau, whose patience and unwavering abetment has seen me through this endeavor. We will come back to her. My parents, Kathe Kain and Al Slaughter, have enabled me to accomplish all that I have. Their examples have shown that I can achieve almost anything I want. I feel lucky to have assembled such an amicable, encouraging, and brilliant committee to guide me. David Wyatt has been a tireless mentor throughout my time at Maryland. He has seen me through every phase of my development here, offering earnest counsel through my highest and lowest points. No one else has endured and responded to my writing as much as he has, and I cannot truly imagine completing this project with such personal satisfaction without his criticism and guidance. Lee Konstantinou has served as an endless source of knowledge, always having a suggestion on hand for what to read next and having even more thoughts for how I can expand my ideas. Sharada Balachandran Orihuela is always able to cut to the core of my arguments, challenging me and helping to excavate what I really mean. Peter Mallios may have joined my committee on the eve of my defense, but he has been a constant fixture in my graduate career as teacher, mentor, employer, colleague, and friend. I thank Matthew Kirschenbaum and Linda Kauffman for their service on my exam committee. I am further indebted to Linda: the germ for this dissertation emerged from her graduate seminar, and the rigor she demands from academic prose in both courses and workshops has helped to shape my writing. I am also immensely grateful for what I have learned from Tita Chico, Keguro Macharia, and Edlie Wong, all of whom have played a role in shaping key aspects of this dissertation. My colleagues in the graduate programs at Maryland are the people who have kept me sane. I am so grateful to have gone through this experience with them. Carolyn Ureña has seen me through the worst and best times of my graduate career, offering a friendship of patience and caring. My officemates Daniel Kason, John Macintosh, and Jonathan Williams have been an endless source of ideas, encouragement, and usually welcome distraction. Others have been a great source of strength and friendship, including but not limited to Elise Auvil, Sarah Bonnie, Tim Bruno, Michael Colson, and Rob Wakeman. I have also drawn much from afar from other longtime friendships beyond graduate school. The ever-cheery Justin Baughman has listened to my stupid jokes and anything else on my mind for over a decade now. My wife and partner Melanie Moomau deserves the first and last word in my acknowledgements on any subject. She works harder than I do for often times less appreciation. She is my safety net and my greatest fan. I would not have finished this dissertation in the time that I have without her by my side. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iii Introduction: Instituting Violence ....................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Ages of Terror: Extralegal Torture Sites and State Violence in The Parable of the Talents and The Zero.......................................................................... 26 Chapter 2: The “Special Existence” of Bigger Thomas in “No Man’s Land”: The Ghetto as Space of Exception in Native Son ............................................................. 84 Chapter 3: “Ain’t the Law”: Migrant Workers and the Exceptional Spaces of Depression-Era California in The Grapes of Wrath ................................................... 133 Chapter 4: Tastes Like Chicken: Disposable Bodies in Corporate Bioscience Spaces in The Space Merchants and Oryx and Crake .................................................... 181 Coda: Spaces and Beyond ............................................................................................... 233 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 237 1 Introduction: Instituting Violence A Literary History of Violence As the organizing conceit of this dissertation, “space of exception” refers to a site of institutionalized violence and exploitation. In such zones, the expected norms of law, ethics, or morality of American liberalism are dangerously absent or suppressed. The spaces explored in the novels studied here serve various agendas and contexts, but they are linked by their common nature as sites in which citizenship and human rights are at risk of erasure. Moreover, these spaces are ultimately portrayed as not “exceptional” in the common, non-theoretical meaning of the word. The torture chamber, ghetto, labor camp, and corporate laboratory in these fictions underpin the rest of “normal” American life outside them. Since the War on Terror’s onset, American studies have popularized Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s argument in the treatises Homo Sacer (1995) and State of Exception (2003) that modern governments have come to operate in a permanent state of emergency. Agamben terms this phenomenon a “state of exception”—from which I borrow for my own conceit—in which law may be set aside at any time. Critics have productively applied this theory to post-9/11 U.S. government actions like surveillance programs, torture, and military interventions. Scholarship, however, tends to treat the Guantanamo detention center as the epitome of a localized, perpetual suspension of legal and ethical norms. As my dissertation demonstrates, insufficient attention has been paid 2 to the longer tradition in literary representation of other spaces of a similarly exceptional nature throughout American history. I examine six novels as case studies that, when read together, challenge many of the paradoxes inherent to contemporary liberalism’s vision of progress and the American Dream. In President Barack Obama’s farewell address on January 10, 2017, he described “the great gift our Founders gave to us. The freedom to chase our individual dreams through our sweat, and toil, and imagination—and the imperative to strive together as well, to achieve a common good, a greater good” (Blake). He summons the metanarrative of essential American progressive goodness even while the radical right rises in power. The implication at this moment and at large in his address is that any missteps in the practice of democracy, equality, and justice in the past, present, or near future are, in fact, only missteps. From this perspective, the violence and exploitation depicted in texts like Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and John Steinbeck’s

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