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Black Violence and the Politics of Representation: Selected Readings in the Twentieth Century American Novel Read, Andrew

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Black Violence and the Politics of Representation: Selected Readings in the Twentieth Century American Novel Read, Andrew Black violence and the politics of representation: selected readings in the twentieth century American novel Read, Andrew The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1822 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] BLACK VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION: SELECTED READINGS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL ANDREWREAD QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 2004 THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF PHD V-1 2 ABSTRACT This thesis argues that the representationof black violence in the twentieth century American novel is shapedby two principal rhetorical strategies,which I term denialand demonisation.Denial refersto modesof literary discoursewhich seekto refute the possibility of black violence, or to circumscribe it as an exclusively intraracial phenomenon.Demonisation denotes textual strategieswhich figure a racially determined form of violence as a natural elementof black character.These strategiesmay appear antithetical, but they are rarely deployed in isolation. Rather, they appearin complex combinationsin most representationsof black violence in American literature, as I demonstrateusing a rangeof novelsby black and white authorswhich spanthe twentieth century.These strategies have their roots in racist ideologieswhich seekto obliterateany connectionbetween the impact of racism upon African Americansand black violence. Hence they are most noticeablein literary texts which reflect and contribute to racist ideology. However, texts which seek to expose social and cultural causesof black violence are also unavoidablyinfluenced by thesemodes of literary discourse,and this includesthe work of African American authors.They haveto negotiatethe racist tropes and assumptionsencoded within the languageand literary forms of hegemonicAmerican culture, becausethey have no alternative, completely separateresources for cultural production. External pressuresexperienced by any author representingblack violence compoundthese difficulties. Theseinclude the demandsof black communityleaders and white liberalsnot to representAfrican Americansin wayswhich may hinder the causeof racial equality, and the demandsof publishersto representblack violence in ways with proven commercial potential. Furthermore,despite the retreat of racism in modem America, certain images and fantasiesof blacknessretain a hold over the American cultural imaginary, and continue to influence literary discourse. As my thesis demonstrates,this ensures that denial and demonisation can still be detected in contemporaryAmerican novels. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my family for their support and my supervisor,Dr Mary Cond6,for her help and adviceduring the writing of this thesis.I would also like to thank QueenMary Collegefor funding my research. 4 CONTENTS Introduction 1) "A Black Handon a White Woman'sThroat": Black Violence 16 and White Fantasyin the Fiction of ThomasDixon 2) The Problem of Primitivism: Black Violence in Harlem Renaissance 42 Literature 3) Black Violence, White Mask: Reconsidering Racial Indeterminacy 67 in Light in August 4) "A Shadow Athwart our National Life": Fantasiesof Black 98 Violence in Richard Wright's Native Son 5) "The Horror, the Actuality of Our Bloody Past and Possible Future': 124 (Re)writing the Violence of Slave Rebellion 6) The Era of Black Militancy in Black and White 150 7) Investigating Black Violence: The African American Detective in the 181 Novels of Chester Himes and Walter Mosley 8) "Specifying it, Particularising it, Nailing its Meaning Down was Futile": 222 Racial Trauma, Black Violence and Literary Form in Toni Morrison's Paradise Bibliography 248 5 INTRODUCTION Black violence,whether real or imagined,has always constituted one of the most controversialand motive elementsof mcial politics in American culture. The twentieth centuryis pervadedby eventswhich demonstratethis, from the lynching epidemicin the South at the start of the century,to the massiveinterest in the RodneyKing and 0.1 Simpsonaffairs in the final decade.The lynchingsof the early decadeswere justified by a melodramaticrhetoric which locatedan extremeviolence within the black male body, sweepinga new form of politician to power and ensuringthe national predominanceof segregationand black subjugation.The decisionof an all-white jury to clear the police officers shown beating Rodney King in the infamous videotapeof 1991 reveals that howeverelse American racial attitudeschanged during the twentiethcentury, the idea of black violence retained an extraordinaryphobic power in the cultural Imaginary. As Linda Williams observes,this jury could only have regardedthe brutal force used by theseofficers as reasonablebecause they interpretedthe black male body displayedin ' this video as a perpetual violent threat, justifying any disciplinary measures. The widespreadnature of this fascination with black violence is indicated by the record television audienceof one hundred and forty two million viewers who watched the verdict in the 0. J. Simpsontrial. 2 Black violence has not always maintainedsuch an obvioushold on public consciousnessthroughout the century,but the revival of this issue at key momentsof racial tensiondemonstrates how its power enduredin latentform. The reasonsfor this enduring obsessioninvolve the fears and fantasieswhite Americans invest in imagesof black violence.Attitudes to black violence are shapedby guilt and fear aboutthe violent responsesthe history of racist oppressionmay produce.But white attitudesto black violencealso demonstrate how desiresand fantasies,which threatenthe stability, consistency and authority of begemonic models of selffiood, are projected onto the racial Other. Cultural images of black violence are therefore sexualised. becausethey are the locusof repressedwhite fantasies. 1L. Williams, Playing the RaceCard (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 266. 2 L. Williams, Playing, p. 258. 6 However, it is not my intention to focus in detail on the social and psychological reasons why black violence provokes these reactions in this thesis? Instead, I want to concentrate specifically on the impact of this complex of fears and fantasies on twentieth century American literature. I argue two basic rhetorical strategies characterise the attempts of American authors to represent black violence: dernonisation and denial. The former strategy figures violence as natural and inherent to black people, violence characterisedby a special malevolence, savagery and bestiality. It interprets this violence as evidence of their racial difference and inferiority to white people. The latter strategy seeks to deny the very possibility, either of all forms of black violence, or of specific forms of violence which strike across interracial boundaries. It also seeks to occlude the 4 possibility that racist oppressioncould ever provoke a violent response.This is usually achievedeither by otheringand exoticisingblack passivityas a racial trait beyondwhite comprehension,or by inscribing black subjectivity, particularly black masculinity, as inherentlyinferior to white humanity,making African Americansafraid to use violence directly againstwhites. Ostensibly,these two strategiesappear antithetical and mutually exclusive,based on two opposingviews of black character.However, the twisted logic of American racial ideology ensuresin most Americannovels, denial and demonisationdo not exist in a simple binary oppositionbut in complex combinations,which are no less powerful in ideological terms for containing internal contradictions.For example, although Thomas Dixon's novels are characterisedby a stridently didactic use of demonisation,they also carefully circumscribe the potentialities of black violence. Similarly, the trope of the exotic primitive, combinesdemonisation and denial; black 3 This task hasbeen the focusof a vast body of literaturein America.The connectionsbetween fears and fantasiesof black violenceand the lynching epidemicin the early part of the centuryhave attracted a particularlylarge amountof work. Texts which havebeen useful to this thesisinclude: J. Williamsork Yhe Crucible ofRace (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1984), G. E. Hale,Making H%ilene= 7heCullum of Segregationin the South1890-1940 (New York: PantheonBooks, 1998)and R. Wiegman,American Analomies.* Yheorizing Race mid Gender(Durham: Duke University Press,1995). Attitudes to black violencein the middle decadesof the centuryare analysedperceptively by JamesBaldwin and Calvin Hernton.See: J. Baldwin, 7hePrice of the Ticket.ýCollectedNotfiction 1948-1985(New York: St. Martin's Press,1985) and C. Hernton,Sex mid Racism(London: Andre Deutsch,1969). Useful work on morerecent attitudesto black violencehas been performed by the numerousrecent studies of black masculinity, including David Marriott's On BlackMen (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press,2000) andMarcellus Blount andGeorge P. Cunningham'svolume, Representing Black Men (London:RoutledM 1996). 4 Of coursemany novels which involve racial issuesocclude black violenceas a themealtogether, but in this thesisI focuson thosenovels which introducethe themein someway, yet still deploy strategiesof
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