Black violence and the politics of representation: selected readings in the twentieth century American novel Read, Andrew

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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 denial. 7

violence is figured as an innate, distinct racial characteristic,of greater savagerythan white violence,yet somehowthe possibility this violencecould crossracial boundariesis totally circumscribed.More recent liberal white writers have often used strategiesof denial to enablethem to conceiveof black charactersas fully human,but the possibilities of black violence they represstend to return in surprisinglytraditional imagesof black demonisation.

These two strategies are most prominent in texts with an avowed racist ideological function, such as Thomas Dixon's propagandist novels. In such novels, the writers deliberately use denial and demonisation in ways designed to exploit the fantasies and anxieties of readers.However, I believe these rhetorical strategiesare also discernible in novels with apparently anti-racist intentions, and this includes the work of Affican American writers. As I stated above, these literary strategies stem from a complex of fears and fantasies which shape the ideological conditions in which all Americans exist.5 The subjectivity and the perception of reality of writers both black and white are unavoidably shaped by hegemonic ideologies of black violence in American culture.6 Therefore, denial and demonisation are not always deliberately deployed, they often constitute unavoidable, unconscious influences on a writer. Furthermore, these strategies are embeddedin the tropesand imagesof black violencewithin the heritageof American literature, and I believe this heritage is a major influence over subsequentliterary production.My thesis contendsthat white and black literature influence each other in their representationsof black violence.I demonstratenumerous resemblances and points of comparisonbetween the novelsI analYSewhich show how any new representationof

5My conceptsof fantasyand ideologyderive from the Marxist theoryof ideologyformulated by Louis Althusserand the psychoanalytictheory of fantasydeveloped by JacquelineRose. For Althusser,ideology determinesour "lived relationto the real," functioningat a preconsciouslevel to determinehow we perceivereality. L. Althusser,For Marx (New York: RandomHouse, 1970),pp. 232-233.For Rose, fantasiesare not purely private,individual phenomena,but shapeand are shapedby the "contoursof our political world," bridging the boundarybetween inner psychicspace and external reality. J. Rose,States of Fantasy(Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1996), p. 79 andpp. 3-4. Combiningthese theories suggests public ideologyand individual fantasyexist in a dialecticalrelationship; each both reflectsand contributes to the other,in forming the subjectivityof eachindividual and their perceptionof socialreality. 77hismeans that in a culturesuffused by racist ideology,no individual cancompletely escape the influenceof racism. 6 Although African Americanspossess their own culturaltradition, which insulatesthem to someextent from the racist imageswhich pervademainstream American culture, this is rarely a major influenceon representationsof black violencein African Americanliterature. 8 black violence is influenced,whether directly or unconsciously,by previousapproaches to the sametheme. Denial and demonisationalso appearin all types of fiction becausethe powerful presenceof this complex of fears and fantasiesin American culture has made black violence one of the most controversial,emotive and difficult topics to represent.The psychologicalpotency of imagesof black violencein Americanculture and the consistent presenceof different political groupscompeting to determinetheir meaningensures that literary representationsof this violenceare alwayssemantically unstable. No matterhow monolithic and didacticthe literary structurein which they are embedded,representations of black violence take on an ambiguousand sometimesself-contradictory ideological significance.These immensedifficulties with using representationsof black violence ensurethat althoughanxieties about black violence itself constitutethe origins of denial and demonisation,anxieties about reproducing racist imagesof black violencecontribute significantly to their endurance.Efforts to avoid or preventracist interpretationsof their work often lead writers to reproducevariants of denial. Conversely,efforts to exposethe full horror of black violence,to force readersto recognisethe appallingeffects of racism and the degree of anger within African Americans, often lead writers to reproduce variantsof demonisation. My thesistherefore focuses on white and black novels.I begin by analysingsome novels which have an unambiguouslyracist function. But I go on to consider the difficulties both black and white authorsface in attemptingto write aboutblack violence in terms other than those determinedby the fantasiesand anxietieswhich suffusetheir culture. As we shall see, most black authorsstruggle to representblack violence as a thoroughlyhuman response to the effects of racist oppression,but this is an immensely difficult task when mainstreamculture associatesblack violence so powerfully with savageryand bestiality.Many black writers found it easierto participatein strategiesof denial and demonisationto make their writing commercially appealing to a white publishing industry and a largely white readership.The demandsof publishers and readers constitute examplesof external pressuresupon authors who representblack violence,which also contributeto the useof denial and demonisation.For black writers, thesepressures also include demandsfrom intellectualsor political groupswithin their 9

own communityto representblack violence in ways which will challengeracism. White authorsare ostensiblyless affected by thesetypes of external pressurealthough, as we shall see,the fierce controversysurrounding The Confessions ofNal Turner demonstrates how the growth of black influencein mainstreamAmerican culture of recentdecades has put new pressureson white writers. However,white writers usually find it more difficult to escapethe internal influence of the cultural fears and fantasieswhich shapetheir subjectivity. The phrase"the politics of representation"in my title refers to all these pressuresand influencesupon literary production. This thesisis not centrally concernedwith novelswhich debatewhether violence is or hasbeen ethically justifiable or politically effective as a modeof resistanceto white racism for African Americans.Other criticism has debatedthis questionin considerable detail, perhapsmost significantly in recent years,Jerry Bryant's comprehensivestudy, Victimsand Heroes:Racial Violencein the African AmericanNovel. Most of the novelsI considerdo not depict black violence as plannedrevolutionary action. In large part, my thesisis a history of the developmentof representationsof black male violencetargeted against white women. This, I believe, is the most controversial,emotive and difficult form of black violenceto represent,because it is the locusof the most cultural fearsand fantasies about black violence. Many of the most interesting novels containing representationsof black violencereturn almost compulsively to revisingthe tropesof this form of violence developedby earlier literature. Nevertheless,other forms of black violencealso entail representationaldifficulties, and this thesiswill also focus on them to someextent, including somedepictions of intraracial.violence. As my thesisprogresses, the novels I examinebecome increasingly concerned with attemptingto articulate the connection between the psychological effects of racism and black violence. In my analysesof these attempts,W. E. B. DuBois's theory of "double-consciousness3-"and FrantzFanon's ideas about the intrusion of racisminto the constitutionof the black self- image will be of particular use.7 In some casesthese theories are clearly conscious influences on the novels I analyse, in others the author has simply representedan aetiologyfor black violencewhich canbe bestunderstood in the termsof thesetheories. I

7 See:W. E. B. Du Bois, 7heSouls ofBIack Folks (London:Penguin, 1996) and F. Fanon,Black SAM, "ife Masks,trans. by C. L. Markman,(London: Pluto Press,1986). 10

will not privilege a particulartheory as a metanarrativeon the effectsof racism,but usea variety of theoretical approachesto explicate how each author seeksto representthe causesof black violence.Although acts of white violenceagainst African Americansare often depictedas key motives for black violence, I will not seek to analysethis white violencein detail. Analysisof this oppressivebrutality haspreviously been performed by a vast body of criticism, and althoughthe insights of this criticism prove useful to my task, I focus centrally on the black violencethis racismcan provoke,which hasreceived lesscritical attention! My thesis follows a basically chronologicaltrajectory through the momentsin twentieth century history when black violence becamea prominent political issue in American culture and fictional representationsof black violence changed.The novels I havechosen to analyseare not evenlyspaced through the twentiethcentury; in particular, thereis a clusterof novelsfrom the late sixtiesand early seventiesperiod. This is because I believe black violence achieved a greater significance in the American cultural imagination,at this time than at any other point in American history for socio-political reasons.I believe many of the novels of this era reflect this and thereforemerit greater attention than the fiction of other periods.However, in analysingthe representationof violencein thesenovels, I will not be focussingcentrally on how they articulatepolitical debatesof the time aboutthe ethicsand effectivenessof black violencein the strugglefor racial equality.Instead, I will focus more on the political and aestheticchoices made by the authorsin their actual representationsof black violence,not their abstracttheorising about it, and how theserepresentations reflect the psychologicalanxieties of both black and white authors. I begin with an analysisof the extraordinarilyphobic figurationsof blacknessand violence in the novels of Thomas Dixon, which I believe have left an enduring impression on American literary discourse.They exemplify the link between racist fantasiesand public forms of discourseon black violence,especially literature. Thomas Dixon did not invent the imageof the Black BeastRapist he deploysin his novels,but he

' Of particularinfluence on this thesisis the recentwork on how white racistviolence traumatises African Americansin the novelsof Toni Morrison. Seefor example:J. Matus, ToniMorrison (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1998) and J. BrooksBouson, Quiet as its Kept.- Shame,Trauma andRace in the Novelsof ToniMorrison (New York: StateUniversity of New York Pressý2000). 11

releases this trope into twentieth century American literature in a dramatically powerful way. It is easy for a modem critic to expose the contradictions, the unreality and the strong element of political expediency which underlie Dixon's figurations of blackness. But these images had extraordinary rhetorical power in their historical context, because they appealed to what people wanted to believe. I then briefly consider Charles Chesnutt's efforts to politicise images of black violence in diametrically opposed ways, to contest the discourse of scientific racism and the political rise of white supremacy, before showing bow Dixon's influence was far stronger on other contemporary literature about black violence. Subsequentblack and white authors have struggled to distinguish their figurations of blackness from Dixon's. No later white authors who I focus upon have used black violence in such blatantly racist propagandist ways as Thomas Dixon. But they can rarely completely escape the influence and the unconscious, affective power of his tropes of black violence, even as they struggle to recognise the unreality of these tropes.

Chapter Two examines how Harlem Renaissanceauthors transformed the highly emotive, propagandist trope of the Black Beast into the exotic primitive, a depoliticised. image for aesthetic enjoyment. I consider the historical circumstances behind this shik and analyse how this trope produced new combinations of denial and demonisation in representations of black violence. I show how African American writers unsuccessfully attempted to use this trope to represent black violence more realistically in anti-racist terms. My next two chapters examine the most controversial representations of black violence by two of the most prominent writers on race in American literature: William Light Son. These Faulkner's in .4ugust and Richard Wright's Native two novels were published at opposite ends of the Great Depression, and they articulate the renewed anxieties about black violence this economic crisis produced in American society. Chapter Three shows the anxiety and ambivalence which plagued Faulknees efforts to confront and think through demonised stereotypes of black violence. Joe Christmas constitutes an extraordinary variant on strategies of denial, a white mask through which Faulkner interrogates a subject he could never confront directly. Faulkner struggles to articulate the origins of black violence outside racist discourse, but his own investments in hegemonic white ideology ultimately undermine his efforts. Chapter Four considers 12

how Richard Wright attemptsto co-opt the central trope in strategiesof demonisation, rape,and useit to expressthe terrible effectsof racismupon the black psyche.Native Son interrogates,and attemptsto refigure,demonised stereotypes, to producea powerful but controversialand ambiguous argument against racism. After briefly consideringhow black violence largely disappearedfrom American fiction in the fifties and early sixties, ChapterFive proceedsquickly to the era of black militancy, whenblack violencenext becameprominent in Americanculture as the site of political anxieties and desires.9 Although this thesis focuses predominantlyon black violencedepicted in twentiethcentury contexts, I focus hereon two novelsset during the antebellumera. The first is William Styron'shighly controversialAe ConfessionsofNat Turner,because of its political andcultural importancein the history of representationsof black violencein Americanliterature. I demonstratehow Styron'salterations to historical evidence about Nat Turner form a consistent strategy of denial, exposing Styron's anxieties about contemporary racial tensions. The historical violence of Turner's rebellion, which Styron anxiously represses,returns in a minor characterin demonised imagery, confirming the influence of racist fears and fantasieson his writing. I then briefly considerSherley Anne Williams's DessaRose, because it representsan interesting responseto Styron, and an attemptto producedifferent, empoweringrepresentations of slaveviolence. It typifies the approachof African American fiction to slave violence in the last decades.of the twentieth century. Chapter Six returns to the era of black militancy, beginningby consideringhow militant writers respondedto 77wConfessions. Black militant writers rejectedtheir predecessors'methods of depictingblack violenceas a negativeeffect of racism,seeking instead to valoriseit as a purely Positiveresponse to white oppression,a way of overcomingracism which raisesblacks from their senseof inferiority. I briefly considerJohn A. Williams' SonsofDarkness, Sons ofLight, which exemplifies the problems which doggedattempts to transform racist tropes of black violenceinto empoweringimages of effectiverevolutionary heroes. I then considerwhite fictional responsesby authorssuch as Saul Bellow and BernardMalamud. Both writers

9 In this thesisI usethe phrase"black militancy" to referto all the political and artistic movementsof the late sixtiesand early seventieswhich rejectedthe peaceful,integrationist aims of the Civil Rights Movementand advocated a rangeof violent or separatistroutes to racial equality.Ilese groupsinclude the Black Powermovement, the Black Panthersand the Black Arts Movement. 13

use imagesof black violenceto critique the literatureand philosophyof black militancy. But their attemptsto exposewhat they perceiveas the problemsof thesemovements, often lapse into traditional demonisedimages of black violence, showing how black militancy reawakenedracist anxieties.Finally, I considerJohn Edgar Wideman's 77ze Lynchers,which satirisesblack militant fiction more accurately,but cannotfind a way to articulatewhat it positsas the reality of black violenceoutside demonised stereotypes. ChapterSeven focuses on a particular literary genrewhich exemplifiesmany of the difficulties of representingblack violence:Affican Americandetective fiction. I begin by consideringthe difficulties which affected Chester Mines's attempt to adapt the hardboiledforinat to exposehow racismcauses black criminality and to representAfrican Americandetectives as heroic men of violence.I then focuson Walter Mosley's attempts to surmountthese difficulties in his "Easy Rawlins" detectivenovels. I considerhow he exposesblack masculinityas a cultural constructwhich producesblack violence, rather than attemptingto make his detectivea heroic man of violenceaccording to hegemonic, patriarchalideals of masculinity.I also show how the pressuresof commercialdemands for excitementand dramatempted both thesewriters into reproducingsome dcmonised images of black violence. My final chapter focuses on a novel which extends this considerationof black masculinity as a constructwhich producesblack violence: Toni Morrison's Paradise. I analyse the problems with Morrison's ambitious attempts to depict the whole history of American racism as a trauma,and to show how this trauma producesviolence in African Americanmen becauseof their attemptsto fulfil patriarchal modelsof masculinity.I demonstratehow theseproblems create a tensionbetween the form and the contentof Paradise.I also briefly considerMorrison's problematicattempts to posit a way out of the cycle of traumaand violenceshe identifies in African American culture. I link the problemsof this novel to recentcontroversies over representationsof black male violence in Affican American women's fiction, and show how the strategies of denial and demonisation remain present in contemporary representations of black violence. My thesisdoes not purport to be a comprehensive,exhaustive study of twentieth century American representationsof black violence.lnsteadý I have soughtto focus on key texts which exemplify representationsof black violencewithin a particular era, and 14

were most influential on other fiction. However,-inevitably, in a thesis covering such a broad historical period,there are numerousother novelsI could have focussedon, which confront the problematicof representingblack violencein interestingand revealingways. My thesisdeals chiefly with black violenceas a phenomenonaffecting the subjectivityof black and white men.Although I considerhow black and white womenare objectified in various ways by black violence, the texts I focus on say little about how this violence impactson black or white female subjectivity.Even Paradiserepresents black violence as principally important in male subject formation, althoughMorrison does give some attention to how it affects black women subjectively.There is a long tradition within African American women's fiction, of representingdomestic violence, rape and other forms of violencesuffered by black womenat the handsof black men. This goesback at least as far as Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were WatchingGod. Some of these novels, such as Ann Petry's The Street, also depict black women using violence themselvesto strike backagainst these abuses. During the last few decades,the efforts of black women writers to use representationsof black violence to expose gender inequalitiesand abuseswithin African American society have generatedconsiderable controversy,attracting accusations of reproducingdemonised stereotypes of black men. This history of black female representationsof black violence is probably the largest significant issuewithin this period I have not focussedon centrally. Although Chapter Eight toucheson this theme, limitations of spaceprevent me from focussingon texts central to this controversy,such as Alice Walker or Gloria Nayloes novels.I could also have written much more on the extraordinaryproliferation of detectivefiction featuring black detectivesduring the nineties,such as the novelsof JamesSallis. I also could have consideredstreet fiction; the novels of authors such as Donald Goines or Clarence Cooper,which usuallybase their plots aroundorganised crime in black ghettos.However, this form of fiction focusesmainly on intraracial violence and usually contain little attemptto analysethe psychologicalorigins of this violence,so it is not strictly relevant to the centralthemes of my thesis. BecauseI havechosen to focus on the work of both white and African American authorsover sucha long historicalperiod, my thesisdoes not fit neatlyinto any particular categoryof critical work currently being produced.Jerry H. Bryant has recently written 15

two importantstudies of representationsof black violencewhich focus purely on African American fiction; the aforementionedVictinu and Heroes,and a study of the history of violent black charactersin African Americanfiction and folklore.10 Although the insights of this work are important to my thesis, I believe a full understandingof African Americanrepresentations of black violencerequires consideration of its relationsto white literature.My thesisis also influencedby a wide rangeof recentcritical work on issuesof race and representationwhich has been at least partially concernedwith analysingthe significanceof representationsof black violence.This includesSandra Gunning's study of representationsof racial violenceduring the lynching era, and RobertE. Washington's sociological analysisof the political forces which shapeddifferent schoolsof African " American fiction. In particular, the recent profusion of critical work which compares the novels of William Faulknerand Toni Morrison influencedmy attemptsto compare and contrast representationsof black violence by black and white authors from very different socio-historicalcontexts. 12 Where my thesisdiffers from all this work, however, is in my specific focus on the issueof representingblack violence,and in my attemptto developmy inferencesinto an overall theory of representationsof black violence within twentiethcentury American literature.

10J. IL Bryant, "Born in a Mighty Bad Land": The Violent Man in Aftican AmericanFolklore and Fiction (Bloomington:Indiana University Press,2003). 11S. Gunning,Race, Rape and Lynching: The RedRecord of AmericanLiterature, 1890-1912 (New York- Oxford UniversityPress, 1996) and R. E Washington,77w Ideolnies ofAftican Americanliterature: From YheHarlem Renaissanceto the Black NationalistRevolt (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). 12See for example:P. Weinstein,What Else But Love?(New York. ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1996), and: C. A- Kolmerton,S. M. Rossand J. Bryant Wittenburg,eds, Unflinching G=e., Morfison widFaulkner Re- Divisioned (Jackson:University of MississippiPress, 1997). 16

CHAPTER ONE

"A BLACK HAND ON A WHITE WOMAN'S THROAT": BLACK VIOLENCE AND WHITE FANTASY IN THE FICTION OF THOMAS DIXON

The past twenty years have witnessed a reawakcning of critical interest in the fiction of Thomas Dixon. Critics such as Sandra Gunning and Joel Williamson have applied modem critical perspectives to his novels and acknowledged their importance as cultural documents which can augment our understanding of American attitudes to race at the beginning of the twentieth century. Two features of Dixon's fiction make him particularly suitable as a point of departure for my investigation into the strategies of denial and demonisation which structure the representationof black violence in American literature. Firstly, his novels attained a degree of popularity unmatched by any contemporary author writing about racial issues. 77ie Leopard's Spots (1902) and The ' Clansman (1905) both eventually sold over a million copies. Joel Williamson goes so far as to claim that Dixon "probably did more to shape the lives of modem Americans than have some Prcsidcnts."2 Secondly, these novels display an unprecedentedconcentration 3 on the theme of black violence, and its political and social meanings for America. The very similar plots of the two novels depict white male Southerners struggling to overthrow biracial state governments and assumethe political power Dixon rcpresentsas their racial birthright. Their ultimate successis heavily dependent on outrageous acts of black male violence against white women, which turn public opinion against any form of racial equality. Modem critics analysing Dixon's fiction invariably condemn its literary qualities. Eric Sundquist calls his portrayals of black characters -Iccring7' and "propagandist,"

1Figures taken from: L WilliamsoN TheCrucible ofRace, p. 158and p. 172.The film M Birth ofa Nation (1915),which thesenovels inspired, was also seenby millions. 2 j. Williamson,Crucible, p. 140. 3 Earlier writers beganto representthe typesof black violencewhich dominateDixon's novelstowards the endof the nineteenthcentury. See for exampleIMomas Nelson Page's RedRock- A Ckunick of Reconstruction(New York CharlesScribner, 1898), pp. 356-359,where a black character'sattempted rape of a white womanis describedin bestialterms. However, passive, loyal "darky" figureswere s6l] the dominanttype in white writers' representationsof African Americans,such as in JoelChandler Harris's UncleRemus (London: Ilomas Nelsonand Sons, 1907). These authors frequently expressed concern about the post-emancipationgeneration of African Americanswho were lackedthe respectof ex-slavesfor the racial customsof the South,but nonefocus so graphicallyon the consequencesof this situationas Thomas Dixon does. 17

Sandra Gunning describeshis representationof black violence as "lurid" and Joel Williamson declares:"In truth, his fiction descendedalmost to dime-novelstory-telling, unashamedlymelodramatic, undisciplined and oppressivelydidactic. "4. Thew verdicts are indisputableaccording to any conventionalliterary critical standards,but I want to suggest that if viewed in their historical context, many of the apparent literary weaknessesof thesenovels actually constituterhetorical strengths.Narrative style, plot structureand characterisationall exploit the psychologicalpower certainimages of black violenceheld for contemporaryreaders. Dixon did not invent the tropesof black violence he uses to make his white supremacistcase, but he contributedsignificantly to their development.He articulated in literary form much that bad existed only in political rhetoric and the mediaof popularculture. His novelscontributed to the developmentof a discoursewith immensecultural capital in American society,supported by sociological studiesand scientific treatises,which producedas the object of its knowledgethe figure of the Black Beast Rapist. Dixon's novels exemplify the many roles the idea of black violenceis calledon to performin white supremacistideology, to bolsterthe political and psychologicalconsistency and authority of white hegemonicsubjectivity. Hence, they demonstratevery clearly why subsequentauthors have found it so difficult to disentangle representationsof black violencefrom this web of ideologicalpurposes. To understandhow Dixon imbuesdemonised images of black violence with so much power, it is first necessaryto considerthe link betweenthe style of thesenovels and the historical context of their production. The turn of the nineteenth century witnessedeconomic crisis in the South.The price of cotton, the stapleof the Southern economy,was steadily failing, and the vast agricultural work force was sinking into poverty. Populist politicians, dctcrmined to change the agricultural and economic structureof the South fundamentally,began to challengethe hegemonyof the planter class, often by entering alliances with African Americans. In Dixon's state, North Carolina, a biracial alliance of Populistsand Republicansbroke the white supremacist strangleholdon power.They won electionsin the town of Wilmington in 1894and 1896 and attaineda majority in the StateLegislature. In 1898,white supremacistDemocrats

4 E. Sundquist,To Wakethe Nations(Cambridge: The BelknapPress of HarvardUniversity Press, 1993), p. 409. S. Gunnin&Race, ReVe widLpiching, p. 30. J. Williamson,Crucihle, pp. 140-141. 18

regainedpower, on the wave of a political movementlabelled "Radicalism" by historian Joel Williamson. Rather than confronting demands for systemic reform, Radicals attemptedto redefine the popular perceptionof the economicand social problemsthe South was experiencingin its painful transition to modemity. As Joel Williamson has stated:"Unable ultimately to deal with the real world, Radicalleadership opted to create in the life of the mind an unreal one."5 In highly emotive and demagogicterms they soughtto transformthe paternalisticimage of African Americansas docile children in need of white guidanceinto a malignant, bestial threat to white civflisation, and the sourceof all the South's problems.They insistedblack peoplewere only retrogressing outside the discipline of slavery,and could never rise to white standardsof behaviour. Hence they neededto be permanentlyand absolutelysegregated from white society. Radicalism producedan ideology of blackness,which as I shall demonstrate,white peoplefound easyto investin emotionally,regardless of its basisin reality. Yhe Leopard's Spots and The Clansman constitute key interventions in the developmentof this discourse.Although the Populist threat to white supremacyhad receded by the time Dixon wrote these novels, both are clearly intended to warri Americans against further experimentswith biracial politics. Their representationsof black violence serve ideologiesof segregationand white supremacy.Dixon enactsthe strategiesof Radical political discoursein literary form. Through their prefaces,Dixon presentedthese novels as historically accuratedocuments of Southernsocial and political experience.In the prefaceto The Clansman,he claims to havetaken no "liberty with any essentialhistorical fhctý" before declaring that the Ku Klux Klan, who "savedthe life of a people," were "led by the reincarnatedsouls of the Clansmenof Old Scotland."6 Ibis abrupt switch from realismto fantasyexemplifies the stylistic dynamicsof both novels. Dixon switchesabruptly from indicationsof realism to a hyperbolictone of fantasy.A thin textual surfaceof social realism producedby the deploymentof real people and supposedlyreal eventsand statistics,overlays a fundamentalstructure of melodramaand fantasy.These novels were designedto appealnot throughthe degreeof their accuracy, but the extent to which they mirrored the dreamworkof a culture. When Dixon was

51. Williamson,Crucible, p. 306. 19

challengedon the questionof historicalaccuracy, he claimedthat his work "expressesthe passionatefaith of the entire white populationof the South."7 He wantedreaders to see their fantasiesabout race and blackness played out on the printed pageas historicaltruth. This historical contextalso explainsthe connectionbetween Dixon's portrayalsof black charactersand the power of his imagesof black violence.Judged on a realistic level, Dixon's black charactersare two-dimensionalcaricatures, but this air of unreality was the sourceof their power. Sincethe end of Reconstruction,the lived experienceof black and white people in America had diverged increasingly. Southern state governmentssegregated all public spaces,from drinking fountainsto trains,and excluded African Americansfrom everypolitical and civic arena.African Americansnow lived in separateneighbourhoods in most Southerntowns, and had their own churches,schools and businesses.A similar, if de facto, apartheidexisted in the few Northerncities with a black population,where African Americanswere confined to ghettoisedcommunities. Thesecircumstances reduced African Americansto a shadowypresence on the margins of white culture.Sequestered and disempoweredý they could not contesttheir reductionto fantasiesand propagandistconstructs within hegemonicdiscourses. W. E. B. DuBois's choiceof the veil as the centralmetaphor in his seminal1903 work on race-rclations,The Souls of Black Folks, illustrates that segregationdid not only create spatial divisions betweenblack and white people.It also establishedbarriers in perceptionwhich, like a veil, distortedand obscuredeach race's view of the other. As the historian GeorgeM. Fredericksonstates:

The price of increasingsocial separationwas a lack of knowledgeabout how blackswere living and what they were thinking that bred suspicionand fed fears that chaos, violence and diseasewould overflow from the black sector and "contaminate'or debasethe white community.8

Dixon sought to achieve maximal exploitation of these white fears. He uses numerous metaphors of contamination and diseaseto describe the consequencesof political, social

6 T. Dixon, Me Clwwwi (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), p. 2. Subsequentrefemaces to this novel appear in parenthesesin the text. 7 Quoted in: L Staiger, "Me Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering its Reception7, Me Birth ofa Nation, ed. by R. Lang, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), p. 202. 3 G. M. Frederickson, Ae Black Image in the Me Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1971ý p. 263. 20 or sexualactivity which breachesthe colour-line.Rather than attempt to penetratethe veil of the colour-line, and reveal black humanity through his characters,Dixon tries to confirm and exploit the white fears and suspicionsthis veil created.James Baldwin has describedDixon's black charactersas "creaturesin a nightmaresonwone is having."9 Dixon's novels exploit the extent to which this nightmare was a collective white experience in this historical context, reducing African Americans to phobic, psychologicallyopaque images who can easily intersectreaders' darkest fantasies about blackness. Considerthe two characterswho ultimately commit the most demonised.acts of violencein eachnovel. Dick first appearsin TheLeopard's Spots as a child who hasfled 10 his parentsafter his father attemptsto decapitatehim with an axe. This exemplifiesthe kind of horrific violenceDixon depictsoccurring within the black communityto support his claims about retrogression." From the startý Dick appears animalistic, and fundamentallydifferent to his white playmateCharles Gaston. He lacks all humanfeeling and can be taught no morality, leadingone characterto declare:"I don't know whether he's got a soul. Certainly the very rudimentaryfoundations of morals seemlacking. I believeyou could take a youngape and teachhim quicker" (179). Thesewords exemplify how Dixon reduces Dick to something subhuman, something impenetrable and is incomprehensibleto an authentichuman -a white man. Dick one of a number of examplesof this novel's links with an earlier, enormouslypopular, intertext whose popularity fascinatedand angeredDixon. Dick constitutesa revision of Topsy, the mischievousblack girl in Uncle Tom'sCabin, who ultimately IcarrisChristian virtue. As we shall see,Dixon devisesa very different fate for his black child, which highlightsthe differencebetween his and Harriet BeecherStowe's views of black character.Dixon was determinedto createimages of blacknesswhich would impact on public perceptionsof African Americans with equal power.

91 Baldwin,"The Devil FindsWork", 7hePrice ofthe Ticket,p. 586. 10T. Dixon, YheLeopard's Spots (New York: Doubleday,Page & Company,1903), p. 99. Subsequent referencesto this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 11Dixon alsodescribes a black motherkilling her baby:"The motherhad knocked him in the headand burnedthe body, in a drunkenorgie with dissolutecompanions7 (94). 21

The representationof Gus in 7he Clansmanillustrates how Dixon's descriptions of black charactersoften intersectthe discourseof scientific racism,but carry its tenetsto new extremes.Consider the following description:

He had the short,heavy-set neck of the lower order of animals.His skin was coal black, his lips so thick they curled both ways up and down with crookedblood- marks across them. His nose was flat and his enormousnostrils seemedin perpetualdilation. The sinister bead-eyes,with brown splotchesin their whites, wereset wide apartand gleamedape-like under his scantbrows (216).

Typically of Dixon, this passagereads bestiality in black physiognomy. The black body is objectified as a text signifying black character traits, in a way which occludes any notion of subjectivity or historicity behind these features. The science of this reading is vague; Dixon makes no attempt to define the category "the lower order of animals" or explain his contention that they all have "short heavy-set necks." But this lack of intellectual rigour was typical of contemporary pseudo-scientific writing on race, which would have shaped many readers' expectations of descriptions of black character. The logic of scientific racism was predicated on simplistic moves from descriptions of supposedly universal features of black physiognomy to claims about the bestiality and inferiority these features signified. 12Furthermore, Dixon did not want readersto dwell on such descriptions in rational, scientific terms, but to react instantly on an irTatioml, emotional level. The Negrophobic distortions and intimate details of this portrait - even "brown splotches" in the whites of Gus's eyes are visible from the narrator's perspective Gus induce - are intended to give the reader an uncomfortable senseof proximity to and physical disgust. Throughout both novels, Dixon makes repeated references to the ugliness and "nauseating odour" of black physicality, encouraging readers to perceive disgust as a natural reaction to African Americans (290). Such demonised descriptions prepare the reader to interpret black violence as originating in natural, bestial character traits, occluding any possibility of social, psychological origins, and to react to this violence on an emotional, irrational level. Furthermore, this erasureof African American

12For example,Edward Drinker Cope,a professorat the Universityof Pennsylvania,claimed the suturesof Negro skullsgrew up at fourteen,and posited this asproof black mentaldevelopment was arrested in early adolescence.I Williamson,Crucible, pp. 123-124. 22

subjectivityand historicity enablesDixon to useimages of blacknessas blank screensfor the projectionof repressedwhite desiresand fantasies. The nature of these fantasiesis revealedby the overwhelmingly predominant motive for the violenceDixon representsblack characterscommitting-, an uncontrollable, instinctive lust for white women.The Radical era witnesseda dramaticincrease in the South of newspaperreports, political claims and popular rumoursabout terrible sexual crimescommitted by black men againstwhite women.A book publishedat the onsetof Radicalismin 1889exemplifies the natureof theseclaims:

Rape,indescribably beastly and loathsomealways, is marked,in the instanceof its perpetrationby a negro,by a diabolical persistenceand a malignantatrocity of detail that haveno reflectionin the whole extentof the naturalhistory of the most bestialand ferociousanimals. 13

The lurid, almosthysterical tone andthe hyperboleof the final phraseexemplify the tone of Radical discourseon black male sexuality.This was a central elementof the Radical strategyof encouragingwhite Southernersto focus the angerand frustrationcreated by real political and economic difficulties on unreal images of Mrican Americans. Historianshave positedmany social and psychologicalreasons for the effectivenessof this tactic. Joel Williamson links it to the South's ever more extreme cult of white womanhoodwhich warpedwhite male sexualitywith guilt and repression.As he puts it: "White men were projectingextravagant sexual behaviour upon black men becausethey were denyingordinary sexual behaviour to themsclves."14 White men may also havebeen projecting repressedfeelings of guilt and self-revulsionabout their own acts of sexual violence.Modem feminist historiographyhas demonstrated that the rapeof black women waswidely usedto terroriseand subjugateAfrican Americansin the postbelltmnSouth. 15 Certainly, the sharprise in the occurrenceof lynchingsand the emergenceof a new form of lynching during the 1890ssuggests the real origins of the desireswhite ideology insistently attributed to black men. Historian Grace Elizabeth Hale has demonstratedhow Southernerstransformed a secretiveform of vigilante justice into -a

13Philip A. Bruce, 7hePlantation Negro as Freeman(New York- Putnam,1889), p. 84. 14j. Williamson,Crucible, p. 54. 23

modem spectacleof enduringpower. "16 "Spectacle Lynchings" were often advertisedin advanceon radio stationsand in newspapers,and specialtrains were charteredto bring spectatorsto the event. They took place in public spacessuch as town squares,where large crowds could gatherto witnessthe event,often amidsta carnival atmosphere.The deathof the victim was madeas slow, painful and gruesomeas possible.17 These events exposewhich social group was really taking pleasurefrom the acts of wounding,torture and murderRadical ideology obsessively accused black men of committingagainst white women.Modem commentatorssuch as Robyn Wiegmanhave noted that lynching rituals "enacteda grotesquelysymbolic - if not literal - sexual encounterbetween the white mob and its victim."18 Trudier Harris claims the structureof lynchings"made the sexual natureof the ritual explicit." The gradualrise in tensionduring the pursuitand captureof the victim, the intimatemutilations, and finally the climactic releaseof the victim's death, 19 when the crown would advancecheering with relief in pursuit of souvenirs. Evidently, the Beast figure was both phobiaand fantasy.His constructionas a hated, fearedOther maskedhis intimate connectionwith the deepestrecesses of white desire.Producing this fantasyenabled whites to project unacceptabledesires and to satisfythese desires, under the guiseof upholdingthe law andprotecting white womanhood. Dixon's narrativisationsof black rape exploit all the elementsof this sexual pathology.He encouragesthe idolisation of white womanhoodWilliamson cites as the origin of the white male sexual guilt which producedthe Black Beast image,elevating white femalecharacters to an almost sacredstatus. This also enableshim to figure rape not just as an assaulton a humanbeing but as an act of sacrilege.One characterdescribes the rape of Marion Lenoir in The Clansmanas, "a pricelesssacrifice on the altar of outraged civilisation" (325). Dixon could not represent rape directly without transgressingthe publishing standardsof this period, but he turns this limitation to his advantagethrough his shapingof the outlines of thesespaces in his narratives.In the

13See: G. Lerner,"The Rapeof Black Womenas a Weaponof Terror", Black Womenin FM/e Americw A Documen1myHistory, ed. by G. Lerner(New York: Vintage, 19731pp. 172-193. 16G. E. Hale,Making "iteness, p. 20 1. 17See: G. E. Hale,Making, pp. 199-227for accountsof the mosthorrific lynchingsduring this period and an analysisof their popularity. 18K Wiegman,Americatt Analomies, p, 82. 19T. Harris,Exorcising Blackness. Historical and Literwy LynchingevidBurning ktuals (Bloomington: IndianapolisUniversity Press, 1984), pp. 22-23. 24

"Ostorical Note' which prefacesYhe Leopard's Spots,he declares,"it will be a century yet before peopleoutside the South can be made to believe a literal statementof this history of thosetimes" (vi). As Eric Sundquistobserves, this statementis "calculatedto arousefantasy. "20 It implies what follows is attenuatedand sanitisedto avoid offending public decencyand exceedingthe credibility of readerswith no experienceof the terrible truth of black violence. It instantly encouragesreaders to participateimaginatively to understand fully what is being represented.Joel Williamson has described the psychologicalprocess behind lynching: "In their frustration, white men projectedtheir own worst thoughtsonto black men, imaginedthem actedout in somespecific incident, and symbolicallykilled thesethoughts by lynching a haplessblack man.V121 Through the carefully nuanceddetails he gives, Dixon guides readersto imagine such "specific incidents." He understoodthat having erasedAfrican Americans as subjects in his writing, and reducedthem to a blank spacefor the projectionof Negrophobicfantasies, therewas no limit to the monstrousforms they could assumein readers'minds. This rhetorical strategyis evident in The Leopard's Spots,where the readeris guidedto imaginethe rapeof Flora Campthrough a descriptionof its consequences:

Flom lay on the groundwith her clothestorn to shredsand stainedwith blood. her beautifulyellow curls were mattedacross her foreheadin a dark-redlump besides a wound whereher skull had beencrushed. The stonelay at her side,the crimson mark of her life showing on its jagged edges. it was too plain, the terrible crime that hadbeen committed (375).

Here,black violenceis cffcctively demonisedwithout the representationof a singleblow. Dixon deploysFlora's damagedbody as a text upon which the proof of black bestialityis inscribed. Although he shrinks from even naming the "terrible crime" which has occurred,her "clothes tom to shreds"suggest a frenziedsexual assault. 11c crushingof her skull by a stone implies a hypermasculine,animalistic degreeof strength in her assailant.The juxtaposition of Flora's "beautiful yellow curls". conventionalsentimental symbolsof innocenceand beauty, with horrific wounds,which suggestviolated virginity, underscoreDixon's intentionto outragethe reader.The descriptionsof Flora's behaviour

20E. Sundquist,FaulAner. Ae HouseDivided (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), p. 83. 21j. Williamson,Crucible, p. 308. 25

after the attack heightenthe senseher experienceis too terrible for articulation.Every time she regains consciousness,she suffers a fit which re-opensher head wound, eventually causingher death (376-379).This rupturing of a blood-vesselin the brain suggestsher experienceis too traumatic to be containedin consciousmemory. Her demiseconstitutes a literal demonstrationof Dixon's repeated,hyperbolic claims that for white women,black raperepresents a fate worsethan death. In The Clansman,Dixon getscloser to the actsof black violencewhich form the crux of his argumentfor white supremacy.He directly representsthe scenebuilding up to Gus's rape of Marion Lenoir, portrayingthe Black Beastadvancing on his victim: "The girl uttereda cry, long, tremulous,heart-rending, piteous. A single tigcr-spring,and the black clawsof the beastsank into the soft white throat and shewas still" (304). Here,the chapterends and the narrativeresumes after the rape. In thesetwo lurid, melodramatic sentences,Dixon has supplied enoughdetails to stimulateappropriate fantasies in the reader.Marion's innocenceand fragility is emphasised,while Gus is transformedinto a beastthrough animal metaphorswhich becomeliteralised as he approacheshis victim. However, Dixon later returns to this incident to exploit further its ideological power, throughGus's re-enactment of his crime underhypnosis, after the Ku Klux Klan captures him (322-323).This re-enactmentunderscores Dixon's preferencefor forms of black violencedisplaying a minimal degreeof control by rational black agency.Gus is reduced to a passiveperformer, his violencefully controlledby whites. In this scene,his violence can outragewhite readersin the mannerDixon desires,while remaining totally under white control. This level of white control is problematic,however, because it threatensto exposethe Black Beastnarrative Dixon is trying to presentas historicalreality as nothing more than a white fantasy. Gus's performancealmost seemsscripted by his white hypnotist,particularly given the mannerin which Dr Camerondeduced Gus's guilt. He was describedas "trembling with excitement," perceivingGus's imageingrained on Mrs Lenoir's retina, and Ben Cameroneven cautionedhim: "I'm afraid the image is in your eye" (313-314).Perhaps to suppressthis senseof white desiresbeing projected,Dixon makesthe Klansmenquickly stop Gus's performance,because they are too horrified to witness a re-enactmentof the rape. This shows how images of black violence can undermine and deconstructthe argumentsthey are intended to support. Also, by 26

suggestingthese acts are too horrific to be witnessedby civflised men, Dixon preserves the fantasmaticpower of Gus's violence,maintaining the reader'srole in fantasisingwhat is omitted. Dixon attemptsto convince readersthe rapes he depicts were a realistic and ubiquitousthreat to white womenthroughout the Southduring the period.After the attack on Flora, he claims "scarcelya day passedin the South without the record of such an atrocity" (385). Modem historical researchhas revealedno evidenceof such frequent attacks, but as historian Stephen Kantrowitz has shown, contemporary Southern newspapersobsessively reported every accusationor rumour of black rape, "creating a kind of journalistic feedbackloop which disguisedand distortedsocial reality."22 Dixon exploits this hysterical fear of an omnipresentblack threat, not by actually representing rapes occurring daily, which may have exposedthe gap betweenhis novels and the reality experiencedby his readers.Instead, he makesthe threat of black rape appear om-nipresentby conflating all demandsfor racial equality with rape. Any black activity which involvescrossing the colour-line is figured as a form of violation, threateningand sometimesphysically harmful to white women.Consider the reactionof Mrs Gastonin The Leopard's Spots, when black men arrive to view her house, which the corrupt authoritiesare forcing her to sell to pay exorbitanttaxes:

When she saw a great herd of Negroestrampling down her flowers, laughing, cracking vulgar jokes, and swarmingover the porches,she sank feebly into her [ ]. The head drooped fell to floor in dead chair ... poor woman's and she the a swoon(139).

As a direct consequenceof this experience,Mrs Gastondies, leadingSandra Gunning to observethat: "The very act of black appraisersentering the houseis figured as a fatal violation of the submissivematernal body. t923 Dixon frequentlytropes the entire Southas a prone,white femalebody, suffering the ravagesnot just of military defeat and the "carpethaggene'of the Reconstruction regimes,but also of African Americansdaring to asserttheir equality.In one of the most

22S. Kantrowitz,"White SupremacistJustice and the Rule of Law: Lynching,Honor andthe Statein Ben THIman'sSouth Carolina!, Men and Noleuce,ed. by P. Spierenburg(Columbus: Ohio StateUniversity Press,1998), p. 220. 27

fantasticalincidents in TheLeopard's Spots,immediately after the predominantlyblack Reconstructionregime takes power, a blizzardoccurs, where "every snowdrophad in it a tiny red spot that looked like a drop of blood!" (97). The red spotssuggest violation and pollution of the racial whitenessand femaleinnocence connoted by the snow.Dixon also portraysthe rapeof white womenas the ultimate,hidden aim of everyblack demandfor equality,repeatedly reducing all racial issuesto one question:"Shall thefidureAmerkan be an Anglo-Saxonor a mulatto?" (161). As SandraGunning notes, for Dixon, "the threat of blacksvoting, working, buying propertyand thereforeinevitably achievingfull 4 citizenshipmust be reimaginedas, and thus containedby, the threat of black rape."2 In this way, Dixon seeksto extendthe horror he has evokedin readerstowards the menace of black sexualviolence to coverall movestowards racial equality. Although the style and rhetorical strategieswithin these novels are heavily determinedby Dixon's desireto exploit the sexualinvestments of white societyin black violence,they also reveal the manyother ideologicalpurposes images of black violence performedin this historicalcontext. Dixon exertsa lessdeliberate rhetorical control over theseaspects of his narrativisationsof black violence, and they frequently threatento underminehis centralideology, or exposehis imagesof black violenceas nothing more than politically expedientconstructs. Despite his obsessionwith the threat of black violence,Dixon carefully circumscribesthe forms this violencecan take, in the clearest exampleof the strategyof denial in thesenovels. He insistentlyoccludes historical causes for black violence, such as the pressuresof poverty and white racism, to avoid undermining his argument for stricter forms of segregationand subjugation.As Joel Williamson hasobserved, there is someevidence that black criminality increasedduring the 1890sin responseto the increasinglyharsh and violent natureof white racism,the very measureswhich Dixon is advocatingto prevent black violence.25 He invariably attributesincidents of black violence to innate black characteristicssuch as lust, greed and malignancy.Furthermore, these traits neverpermit black charactersto useviolence in rationally plannedways. Someforms of violence are essentialto hegemonicnotions of

23S. Gunning, Race, p. 37. 24S. Gunning, Race, p. 32. 28

the power and superiority of white masculinity, and have to be kept separatefrom demonisedimages of black violenceto maintainhierarchical notions of racial difference. Thus Dixon's black charactersnever possessthe courageand intelligenceto challenge whitc mcn.in open,premcditatcd conflict. This explains Dr Cameron's extraordinary ability to hypnotise Gus in The Clansman.At one point, a companyof black soldiers led by Gus attempt to arrest Dr Cameronat gunpoint.He respondsby reducingGus to a deadfaint, using only his eyes, causing the other black soldiers to flee in terror. Eventually white soldiers have to perform the arrest (227-228). Similarly, in The Leopard's Spots, when a "gang of Negroes"attempt to bum ReverendDurham, Dixon cmphasises;that they are "led by a white scoundrel"(128).Both novels contain frequentclaims that the inevitableresult of attemptsto achieveracial equality in the South will be race war. But Dixon is always careful to point out that the only possiblevictors in sucha conflict will be white people. In TheLeopard's Spots,he claims Anglo-Saxonfury will sweepits victims beforeit like chaff before a whirlwin&' (386). This simile reducesblacks to a passiverole in racial conflict, figuring all force and agencyas white. Dixon's representationsof wild, bestial black violence strain to mask a fundamentalcontradiction in his white supremacist ideology.The extremepractices of segregationand subjugationhe advocatesrequire the justification of a seriousblack threat to white civilisation. Yet the conceptof absolute, natural white supremacyalso demandsthat African Americansbe utterly incapableof challengingwhite dominance. In 77zeLeopard's Spots, Dixon creates a character who threatens to expose this fault-line in his ideology. Tim Shelby, the leading figure in the fictional Reconstruction regime Dixon represents,is a "full-blooded Negro," yet combines violent intent towards white people with intelligence and rationality (88). Ile possessesthe power of reasoning and the rhetorical skills to goad other blacks into acts of violence against white property to further his own political ends (92-93). The immediacy with which he is eliminated from the text when he shows signs of using his intelligence to plan personal acts of violence against white people shows how the possibility of such a figure disturbed Dixon.

25See: J. Williamson,Crucible, pp. 115-116and p. 208,where he describes how one black man shot a whiteman because of paranoidfantasies about being lynched, provoked by theclimate of fearand 29

He is lynchedjust for attemptingto usea combinationof cunningand force to compela white woman to kiss him (151). Shelby exemplifies the ideological difficulties Dixon experiencedrepresenting black violence in a way which served his twin aims of promoting white supremacyand national unity. He wants to blame the problems of Reconstructionnot on Civil War defeat or Northern political policy but centrally on African Americans.But in so doing he has to risk inscribing the masculinequalities which are the foundation of white supremacyin black characters.In The Clansman, which is generally less ideologically ambiguous than Yhe Leopard's Spots, Dixon resolvesthis problemby makingthe leadingblack politician a mixed racecharacter. Silas Lynch is pointedly describedas possessing"the head of a Caesarand the eyes of the jungle" (93). Dixon blames his innate, black malignancy for the evils of his Reconstructionregime, while crediting the intelligence and leadershipabilities which enablehim to obtain political power to his white blood. Similar combinationsof white and black characteristicsare possessedby all mixed race charactersin 77zeClansman, which enablesthem to be usedin supportof Dixon's argumentagainst miscegenation. Dixon's novels show black violence as crucial to the formation of hegemonic white male subjectivity, not just as an Other for the projection of unacceptablesexual desires,but also as the territory on which the power of authenticwhite masculinity is enacted.At one point in The Clansman,a black politician declares:"Here and now I servenotice on every white man that I am as good as he is." Dixon describesthis as "the challengeof raceagainst race to mortal combat," cmphasisinghow his conceptof white masculinity is reliant on superiority to a subjugatedOther (275). He perceivesracial equality as a "mortal" challengeto the white race becauseit would destroy what he regardsas the basisof white identity. Both novels imply the white men who dominated the antebellumSouth have beenfeminised by Civil War defeatand Federallaws which give African Americansequal citizenship.Sandra Gunning describes the amputatedleg of Tom Camp,father of the fatally violated Flora in 7he Leopard'sSpots, as an obvious "dephallicization." She claims: " Camp epitomizesthe disempoweredwhite male, at a lossto control eitherthe womenor the blacksaround him. "26 In YheClansman, before he

violence. 26S. Gunning,Race, p. 39. 30

joins the Ku Klux Klan, Dr Cameronis renderedas an indecisive,impotent figure. He is unableto resistthe tjrannical black Reconstructionofficials who put him in chainsand paradehim through the town. Dixon usesthis sceneas a provocativeindication of how Reonstruction.has reversed the racial hierarchywhich underpinnedslavery, chains were a crucial symbolof the reductionof slavesto passive,feminiscd objects (231-234). The structureof Dixon's narrativesindicates that this lost masculinitycan only be recuperatedby restoringwhite male dominanceover African Americans.The hypervirile qualities we have seenprojected onto black men to preservethe stability and the moral authority of the white male ego must be masteredand reclaimedto prove white male As SandraGunning "In Dixon's [ ] torture superiority. observes: novels such as ... white and dismembermentof the black male body allowed for the political reinvigorationof Southern [ ] black imagined masculinity through a transference of ... the males hypermasculinity.voV In The Clansman,Dr Cameronappears to regain his masculinity throughorchestrating the lynchingof Gus,which makeshim manly enoughto take on the Reconstructionregime. In both novels, the heroes achieve what Dixon figures as appropriatewhite masculinepower by leading white society in fighting and destroying the Black Beastmenace. The lynchingsDixon figures as the only effective responseto this menaceoffer a return to what Robyn Wiegmandescribes as the illusion of "totalised mastery" over African Americans,which the structureof slave societymade crucial to white maleidentity. 28 Black men must be ferninisedand divestedof all white male rights; suchas citizenship,freedom of employmentand voting rights. This denial of the powers naturalisedas maleby the patriarchalideology of Americansociety to black men requires to justify it the figuration of black masculinity as defective; primitive, violent and perverse,which mustbe controlledand destroyed. However,the demonisedimages of violenceDixon usesto justify the subjugation of African Americansalso threatento taint descriptionsof white violence,undermining Dixon's efforts to usethese images to supporta notion of fixed, naturalracial difference. Dixon doesnot representthe true processesthrough which white men recuperatedtheir masculinity to avoid collapsing the rhetorical boundarybetween descriptions of white

27S. Gunning,Race, p. 12. 28R Wiegman,American, p. 100. 31

and black violence,which is so crucial to the white supremacistideology of thesenovels. Consider the curious role he gives Charles Gaston in the lynching of Dick in 77ie Leopard's Spots. Although Gaston is a fervent spokesmanfor white supremacy,he attemptsto preventthe mob who captureDick from burninghim, saying:"Don't disgrace [ ] humanity by insanebrutality. A beast do You our ... claims to this wouldn't this. wouldn't kill a mad dog or a rattlesnakein such a way" (383). The terms of Gaston's objection show the nature of Dixon's anxieties.Gaston is not concernedabout Dick's suffering, but with preservingthe boundary betweenDick, who the text has already reducedto a bestial, "mad dog" status,and the mob, who will be reducedto a similar bestial level by this methodof killing. The lynching threatensto exposethe existenceof the violent, sadisticdesires the white mob claim to be destroyingwithin themselves.This explainswhy Dixon repressesfrom his descriptionsof lynching rituals, elementssuch as castration,which were so symbolic of the reinvigorationof white masculinity.He then contrivesa way for Gastonto assume"natural" white male authoritythrough other forms of violence which establishhis dominanceover black men. Ile leads a white mob in forcing the resignationof all black political officeholders,and in destroyingthe offices of a local black newspaper,whose editor has impugnedwhite Southernwomen (413418). These acts imbue Gastonwith authenticwhite male power. He then makesa stirring, Negrophobicspeech to the Democratconvention, which leadsto his electionas governor, with a mandatefor absolutewhite supremacy(437-448). In The ClansmanDixon finds a way to make this destructionof the Black Beast more centralto empoweringthe white male subjectthrough the ritualisedviolence of the Ku Klux Klan. When Gus is re-enactinghis crime, the Klansmenattack him, "kicking, stampingcursing and crying like madmen." But Dr Cameronrestrains them, shouting, "Men! Men! You must not kill him in this conditioe (323-324). The ambiguity of "condition" here reflectsDixon's anxieties.It may denoteGus's hypnotisedstate, but it may also refer to the excited, vengeful condition of the Klansmen. Dr Cameron articulatesDixon's anxiety that white violence will collapse distinctions betweenthe races.After this, Dr Cameronperforms a ritual involving the blood of Marion Lenoir and a burningcross, giving his commandto executeGus a sacred,sanctified status (324-327). As Gunningobserves: "Only in the highly ritualized,controlled executions performed by 32

the Ku Klux Klan does white male violence become a fully liberating, purifying experiencethat absolvesthe whites of guilt and restoresthe 'natural' order."29 These rituals preservethe distinction between black and white violence, thus enabling the lynching of Gus to be depictedas a key momentin Ben Cameron'sassumption of white male power. He subsequentlyleads a white mob in disarming the Negro regiment destroyingthe power of the Reconstructionregime (337-341 and 373-374).Nevertheless, Dixon still suppressesany direct descriptionof the lynchingof Gus from the text. He still ostensiblydisavows the crucial role of the Black Beastin white male subjectformation evenas the underlyingstructure of his narrativeconfirms it. Dixon's novels also reflect how the Black Beastreinvigorated white masculinity by providing a new justification for absolute patriarchal authority over women. Significantly, all the women who fall victim to black violence in these novels have transgressedpatriarchal authority somehow. In 7heLeopard's Spots, Annie Camp insists on marrying without her father's approval and is kidnappedby black soldiers on her weddingday, and Flora Campdisobeys her father's commandto 'ýrunevery time you see a nigger" shortly before she is attacked by Dick (126-127 and 369-375). In The Clansman,Marion Lenoir and her mother reject Ben Cameron'soffer of protection on their first night in their remotefarmhouse, and they are attackedby Gus and his cohorts (300-304).Kim Magowanclaims this patternshows any degreeof independentfemale agencyis problematic for Dixon.30 Alive, women possessa troubling degreeof alien subjectivity and mobile desire for Dixon, which may compromisehis insistenceon absolutewhite male supremacy.But in death,as SandraGunning observes, they become "tangible evidenceof black criminality, the necessarysacred text required to validate white supremacistviolence. "31 At a time of growing feminist demandsfor greater independencein American society, thesenovels use imagesof black male violence to justify a rigid form of patriarchywhich maintainsabsolute male authority over women. Dixon's novels reflect how not just individual white subjectivity but also collective white identity becamereliant on the Black Beastnarrative. His representations

29S. Gunning, Race, p. 4 1. 30K Magowan,"Coming Betweenthe 'Black Beast' andthe White Virgin: The PressuresofLiminality in ThomasDixon", Studiesin AmericanFiction, 27:1 (1999),77-102, pp. 96-97. 31S. Gunning,Race, p. 42. 33

of black violence provide a crucial foundationfor a new era of national unity. Dixon's suggestionof the title The Birth of a Nation for the film inspired by these books demonstrateshis understandingof the ideological work his imagesof black violence performed.Walter Benn Michaelshas shownhow Dixon recastthe meaningof the Civil War and Emancipation,transforming them into necessaryprerequisites of a new form of nationalunity. By eliminatingall economic,political and sectionaldivisions, these events madenational identity coterminouswith racial identity.32 As I will show,the demonised representationsof black violencein thesenovels are crucial to this unity. In eachnovel, Dixon positsa new definition of Americannational identity. In The Clansman,Dr Camerondeclares:

The Republic is greatnot by reasonof the amountof dirt we possess,the size of our censusroll, or our voting register- we are greatbecause of the geniusof the raceof pioneerwhite freemenwho settledthis continent daredthe might of kings and madea wildernessthe homeof Freedom.Our future dependson the purity of this racial stock (291).

In his crucial speechin YheLeopard's Spots, which convinceswhite societyto overthrow the biracial regime and subjugate African Americans, Charles Gaston proclaims:

We are not free becausewe havea Constitution.We havea Constitutionbecause our pioneerfathers who clearedthe wildernessand daredthe might of kings, were freemen.It was in their bloodýthe tutelageof generationon generationbeyond the seas,the evolutionof centuriesof struggleand sacrifice (442).

Both these passagesdeploy the same rhetorical logic. They transform all the conventionallyaccepted causes of American greatness- the Constitution, democratic freedoms,the successfulsettlement of a vast,fertile areaof land- into mereeffects of the real cause:the "blood" of the men who forged these achievements.Dixon empties American identity of all other determinantsand fetishiseswhiteness as the crucial characteristic.The inherentqualities of whitenessitself justify the use of any meansto achieve white supremacy,no matter how radically they contradict the democratic

32W. B. Michaels,"The Soulsof White FoIV, Literature and dw Body,ed. by E. Scarry(Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press,1988), p. 188. 34

principles of American identity. Throughoutboth novels, appealsto a mystical blood heritageguarantee the differencebetween black brutality and the forms of extra-judicial and anti-democraticviolence white characterscommit. This racial ideology appealedto both Southernand Northern whites at the time Dixon was writing. Civil War defeat and the abolition of their principle economic institution left Southernersneeding a new basisfor the senseof superiorityslavery had granted them, which was not based on their ignominious external, historical circumstances.In the North, the secondhalf of the nineteenthcentury witnessedan industrial revolution which involved massiveimmigration, urbanisationand movement from agrarianto industrialmodes of employment.These changes created a stateof social flux, in which, as GraceE. Hale observes:"Americans of both regionsshattered the old hierarchicalstructures of power, imaginedas organicand divinely inspired,and usedthe fragments to erect more binary orderings, imagined as natural and physically grounded.t,33 The black-white binary became central to American national identity, especially in the 1890s,when the Southerndisenfranchisement of African Americans coincided with the colonisationof the Philippines after the Spanish-AmericanWar in 1898. An ideology of natural white superiority was required to justify violating Constitutionalprinciples by denying non-white people living in American territory full citizenshipand democraticfreedom. However,making racial whitenessa fixed and absolutedeterminant of identity in this way has substantialsocial ramifications.Whiteness is not a culturally constructed constituentof identity, negotiatedand developedby the communitylike democracyand the rule of law. It is an ontological,supposedly natural absolute,preceding any cultural, social activity. As a basis of group identity, it offers no scope for the expressionof political and economic differences within white society. People can only identify absolutelywith the fixed imageof whitenessthis ideologyproffers. All other differences haveto be subordinatedto maintainthe fiction that whitenessis the primary determinant of social identity. The Black Beasttherefore became crucial as an externalembodiment of chaosand an Otherto projectand release unconscious desires and socialtensions on.

33G. E. Hale,Making, p. 5. 35

Dixon seeks to disguise the crucial role of the Black Beast mythos in the productionof racial unity to avoid exposingthat it is not naturallyoccurring. But its role is evident in the narrative dynamics of both novels. Dixon purports to idealise a feminised,model of black manhood,exemplified by Nelse in Me Leopard's Spots.He remainsdoggishly loyal to his former masters,bringing the sword of CharlesGaston's father back from the Civil War to give to Gaston (9-14). He tries to assist the uninterruptedtransmission of the phallic, patriarchalauthority this sword symbolises;to a new generationof white men,and takes a "mammy" role in Gaston'seducation as Sandra Gunning observes.34 But such imagesof blacknessare uselessin producing the new forms of collective white identity Dixon advocates.To producea rigid racial divide and an absolutelyunified white communitywhich believesin racial homogeneityas its most important bond, the Black Beast narrative is required. Consider the effects of the discoveryof Flora's batteredbody uponwhite societyin TheLeopard's Spots:

In a momentthe white racehad fusedinto a homogenousmass of love, sympathy, hate and revenge.The rich and the poor, the learnedand the ignorant,the banker blacksmith, [ ] But andthe the greatand the small, they wereall one now. ... at the end of an hour there was not a Negro amongthem! By somesubtle instinct they hadrecognised the secretfeeling and fearsof the crowd and had disappeared.Had they beenbeasts of the field the gulf betweenthem would not have beendeeper (372).

This polarisationof the racespoints up by contrastthe lack of racial unity in the previous part of the novel. In the absenceof the Black Beast, Southernsociety fractured along lines of classand gender. Dixon attempts to mask class divisions through the rest of the text by foregroundingthe highly sentimentalisedfriendship betweenTom Camp and General WortIL35He posits their mutual love and admiration,despite their huge socio-economic differences,as the norm of white Southernclass relations.But his desire to represent eventsin 1890sNorth Carolina as a warning againstgiving African Americanspolitical power compelshim to acknowledgethe very different attitudeof most poor-whitesto the plantocracy.Poverty drove many white farmers into alliance with the Fusion party of

34S. Gunning, Race, p. 36. 36

Republicansand Populistswhich dominatedstate politics until 1898.Dixon traducesall white politicians preparedto work with African Americans as scoundrels,motivated purely by self-interest,and ridiculestheir schemesfor economicrefOM1.36 Yet he also has to show that this supposedlymotley alliance drove the traditionally dominant, white supremacistDemocrats from power (323). Only the emergenceof the Black Beastthreat in the narrative producesthe type of white racial unity visible in the passagequoted above,which increasesafter a black regimentencamped in the town usesarmed violence against white people. Only this galvaniseswhites to unite and fight for a white supremacist,racially segregatedform of government(414-418). Furthermore, both novels insist that horrific black mpesalso occurredduring Reconstruction,yet The Leopard's Spots shows that less than twenty years later whites are preparedto considerbiracial political co-operationas a solution to their economic problems. Dixon inadvertently exposesthe Black Beastas a constructof white supremacistideology, a figure in a drama which needsto be playedout repeatedlyto maintainwhite unity. Dixon's novelsdemonstrate, then, how imagesof demonisedblack violencecame to perform many crucial roles in the production of hegemonicwhite identity and of hegemonicwhite culture, its patriarchyand classstructure. To reconsiderblack violence meantreconsidering the bondswhich gaveAmerican society a senseof political unity, it risked exposingthe classand regionaldifferences black violencemasked. It also meant reconsideringgender politics, sexualityand the very basisof white male subjectivity.The stability and consistencyof the white male ego becamereliant on a particular notion of black violence. Thesecircumstances perhaps explain the failure of an African American novel which perceptivelydissected and exposedthese images of black violenceas ideological constructs. The Marrow of Tradition (1901) by Charles W. Chesnutt was actually publisheda year before The Leopard's Spots,but it is clearly a responseto the already- existing types of Radical rhetoric Dixon inscribesin literary form. Chesnuttchallenges the Black Beast Rapist narrative in two key ways. He exposesthe white supremacist political interestsbehind the distortionsand fabricationswhich producedthe imageof the

33See: 64 and378 for examplesof their relationship. 36Dixon refersrepeatedly to a planto issuepumpkin leaves as currency (See: 243,267 and 353-354). 37

Black Beast, and he attemptsto articulate the types and causesof real black violence during this era outsidethe rhetoric of demonisation.Chesnutt literalises the idea of the Beast as a projection of white desire by depicting a white man assumingblackface to commit a crime. Although this crime is only robbery,which leadsan old woman to fall and fatally injure herself,the taint of blacknessleads to wild accusationsfrom the white community. Through the discourseof scientific racism, in the form of Retrogression theory, the white community construesthis crime as the product of a black man's "degraded instincts,[ ]a declinehad in ancestral ... rapid culminated robberyand murder how - and who knew what other hoffor?"37 Chesnutt understood as well as Dixon apt contemporarySoutherners were to imaginethis "other hoffor," and he depictsan angry mob gatheringto burn the accusedblack man. They interpretand articulatethe crime in the same, melodramatic, emotive rhetoric Dixon would popularise as an accurate depictionof African Americanbehaviour:

A white woman had been assaultedand murderedby a brutal negro. Neither advancedage, nor high social standinghad been able to protect her from the ferocity of a black savage.Her sex, which should have been her shield and buckler had madeher an easymark for the villainy of a black brute. To take the time to try him would be a criminal wasteof public money.To hang him would be too slight a punishmentfor so dastardlya crime. An examplemust be made (148).

Despite the absenceof evidenceto support their surmise,the inexorablelogic of the Black Beastnarrative leads the white communityto fantasisea rapeand devisewhat they considerthe only appropriatepunishment for it. When the black man is exonerated,the mob quickly realisesthe "absurdity" of the rapecharge (159). Chcsnuttdisplays an acute understandingof how political and media activity inculcatedthis logic in the public imagination. Media coverage instantly figures this crime within the Black Beast paradigm:

All over the United Statesthe AssociatedPress had flashedthe report of another it burly dastardlyoutrage by a burly black brute- all black brutes seemsare - and

37C. Chesnutt,Tradition (London:The X Press,1998), p. 121. Subsequentreferences to this novel appear in parenthesesin the text. 38

of the impendinglynching with its prospectivehorrors. This news,being highly sensationalin its characterhad been displayedin large black type on the front pages of the daily papers. The dispatch that followed, to the effect that the hadbeen found innocent[ ] if (160). accused ... receivedslight attention, any

In an increasinglymedia-saturated American popular culture, African Americans only obtain visibility as criminals. Chesnuttalso exposesthe cynical political manipulation which helpedform the Black Beastimage. Like TheLeopard's Spots, this novel offers a fictional version of the Wilmington Riot of 1898.Chesnutt shows how powerful white supremacistfigures in the community exploit this crime to increasewhite support for their plannedseizure of power (122-124). Chesnuttalso challengedthe myth of the Black Beast through representinga violent black characteroutside the vocabularyof this fantasy.Josh Green seems destined to commit extremeviolence from his first appearancein the teA when he bearsthe scars of a recent fight with a sailor. But this fight was causedby the sailor calling him a "damnedlow-down niggce' (74). This exemplifieshow Chesnuttfigures this character's violence not as naturally, racially determinedbut as a product of the environmental, social factors which Dixon so insistently occludes.Chesnutt depicts this violence as honourable,"manly" resistanceto the humiliation and oppressionof white racism, rejecting the distinction betweenblack and white masculinity Dixon encodesin his representationsof black violence.A memberof the Ku Klux Klan shot Green's father, and he dedicateshis life to taking revengeon the murderer.To cmphasisethe distinction between Green's violence and the black brute of white fantasy, Chesnutt carefully humaniseshim, repeatedlyreferring to his concernfor his elderly mother,which prevents him his life is 3" When the taking revengeand risking while she alive. white supremacist uprising begins, Green gathers a force of armed black men to protect the African American community.Chesnutt reverses the hegemonicdistinctions Dixon will exploit betweenblack and white violence.He portraysGreen and his comradesas disciplined, brave men defendingtheir community in a justifiable way. By contrast he turns the strategiesof demonisationconventionally used to figure black violenceagainst the white mob, who are renderedas cowardly,criminal and governedby "primal passions"(217).

38See for example:75. 39

They murderAfrican Americansindiscriminately to satisfythese passions like a "wolf in a sheepfold"(208). Green finally dies leading a fatally brave chargeagainst the white mob and killing his father's murderer.This is representedin the heroic terms Dixon reservesfor actsof white violence:"Some of the crowd pausedin involuntaryadmiration for black [ I down his face, his ht this giant, ... sweeping on them, a smile upon eyes up with a rapt expressionwhich seemedto take him out of mortal ken" (216). As we shall see, such representationsof rebellious black violence would remain extremelyrare in American literature for at least half a century after this. Green embodiesa radical alternative to the Black Beast figure, but it is an alternative which would remain marginalisedand devoid of cultural capital. Chesnuttattempted to usehis novel to combatthe rise of the Radicaldiscourse of black violence by sending copies to PresidentTheodore Roosevelt and membersof Congresswhen 7he Leopard's Spotswas published.39 But this effort failed to challenge the growing cultural hegemonyof the Black Beast fantasy.The imagesand rhetoric of black violence to which Dixon madesuch an importantcontribution began to dominate other discursivefields. In a speechto the U. S. Senatein 1906,Ben Tillman claimed "forty to a hundredSouthern maidens were annuallyoffered as a sacrificeto the African Nfinotaur." He insistedhe would ratherfind his daughterkilled by "a tiger or a bear" dian "robbed of the jewel of her maidenhoodby a black fiend."40 As Eric Sundquisthas observed,his demonisationof black men "tak[es] a pagedirectly from Dixon."41 Dunning School historians,as GraceE. Hale has observed,had a tendencyto "sound surprisingly like Dixon. A2 Eric Foner's summaryof their representationof the freedpeoplein the South Dixon's influence:"Blacks [ ] postbellum. shows appeared ... as unthinking people whose 'animal natures' threatenedthe stability of civilized society."43 The Dunning Schooltransformed Dixon's fictional insistenceon the black man as a constantthreat to white womanhood into an accepted fact of American historiography. In a 1905 work, Philip Bruce claimed, with no detailed, factual evidence, that black rape had become a

39S. Gunning,Race, p. 53. 40Cited in E. Sundquist,Wake, p. 409. 41E. Sundquist,Wake, p. 409. 42G. E. Hale,Making, pp. 80-81. 43E. Foner,Reconamcdon, p. xx. 40

daily occurrencein the South.44 This myth would not be explodedby less tendentious historical researchfor over half a century. Dixon also influenced many other authors of fiction, writing from diverse ideological and aestheticpositions. In The Jungle (1906), a naturalist novel about the mistreatmentof immigrant workersin Chicago,socialist author Upton Sinclair describes strike-breakingAfrican Americanworkers as "humanbeasts":

[Y]oung white country girls [were] rubbing elbows with big buck Negroeswith daggersin their boots [ 1. The had been in ... ancestorsof these people savages Africa [ ]. Now for first free free ... the time they were - to gratify every passion [ ] began debauchery ... and with the night there a satumaliaof - scenessuch as neverbefore had been witnessed in America.45

The description of black men as violent and violating, the insinuation of their uncontrolledsexuality and the senseof outrageat their proximity to white women all suggestthe influence of Dixon. The mere presenceof black men in the Northern metropolisis figured as invasive,a distinctly sexualthreat to the racial purity of white urban society. Instead of extending his socialist sympathy for exploited workers to include African Americans,Sinclair demonisesthem as one of the problemssuffered by white workers. They are irreducibly Other to white humanity. Sinclair defines his immigrant charactersas human,and as deservingof better treatmentthrough opposition to thesedemonised images of African Americans.It is their behaviourwhich is foreign to American values,which exceedsanything previously witnessedin America, becauseof their "savage"ancestry. Sinclair's novel cxemp]if ies how the conceptof the Black Beast was crucial to formulating new racially-based,notions of American identity which encompassedethnically diverse white immigrants.The Jungle also demonstrateshow the Black Beastnarrative shaped reactions to the black migrantsentering Northern cities at this time, which would have profound implications for future cultural imagesof black violence, as we shall see later in the thesis. Although Dixon's popularity soon waned dramatically, the tropes of black violence he formulated had become establishedin

44P. Bruce, Ae Riseofthe NewSouth, cited in E. Sundquist,Wake, p. 409. 45U. Sinclair, Ae Jungle (London:Penguin, 1986), pp. 328. SandraGunning also citesthis passageto demonstratethe %ideinfluence of Radicalimages of black violence.S. Gunning,Rwe, pp. 24-25. 41

American literary discourse.As we shall seein subsequentchapters, these tropes had an enduring impact on American literature,albeit as somethingto be reactedagainst and challenged. 42

CHAPTERTWO

REPRESENTING BLACK VIOLENCE IN THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: THE PROBLEM OF PRIMITIVISM

Harlem Renaissancerepresentations of black violencereflect the changingracial ideology of American culture! Joel Williamson claims that with the demise of Radicalismas a political ideologyduring the nineteen-tensand twenties,"went the death of the image of the Negro as beast"2 The black image in the white cultural Imaginary now assumeda role Williamson calls "neo-Sambo." This figure, like his antebellum predecessor,was "docile, subordinate, pliable, conforming and loyal."3 African Americans who refused this stereotypewere rendered invisible by a culture which focussedpurely on minstrelisedcomedy characters such as StepinFetchit. Increasingly, white Americans sought to deny the very possibility of black violence. In 1919 in Arkansas,black farmers' fired on a posseof propertiedwhites who broke up their union meeting,killing one white man and sparkingoff racial conflict which left five whites and twenty blacks dead.The local white authoritiesblamed this violenceentirely on outside 4 white agitators,a claim New York Timesreports on the incident endorsed. Williamson readsthe 1915 Leo Frank lynching in Atlanta, where a Jew was blamed for killing a white girl despite a more obvious black suspect, as evidence of a new white determination"not to seea black beastrapist when they had one right beforetheir eyes. They were rapidly losing the capacityto copewith the omnipresentthreat and they were determinedto substitutemenaces more manageable."s Conversely.I believe the very manageabilityof African Americansin this era, their total subjugationto white control, reducedthe need for the Black Beast fantasy.The black populationwas growing in the North and South, in defiance of the predictions of Radical thinkers that African Americans would gradually die-out, but it remainedcompletely dominatedby white power. Although Northern blacks possessedmore rights, the racial segregationof

1The Harlem Renaissanceis usuallyunderstood to be approximately1923-1933, although some later works by authorswho werepart of this movementare often alsogrouped under the sametcrm. 2 j. Williamson, 7he CrucibleofRace, p. 460. 3 j. Williamson,Crucible, p. 463. 4 See:H. Shapiro,R%ile Violence andBlack Response(Amherst: University of MassachusettsPress, 1988), pp. 148-149for a detailedaccount of this incidentand see: A. D. Grimshaw,Racial Violencein the United States(Chicago: Aldine Publishing,1969), pp. 95-96 for the reportsfrom the New York I-Imes. 43

Northern, urban spaceand the political quietude of black communitiesensured white societydid not perceivethem as any kind of threat.In Dixon's cra, the memoryof threats to white supremacysuch as biracial political alliances was fresh, but now African Americans' subordinate position in the national body politic seemed fixed and unchangeable.This openeda spacefor new, less propagandistimages of black violence to appear,which revealedwhite psychosexualinvestments in the ideaof black violencein new ways. Black violence was transformedfrom a political threat to a fascinating,exotic cultural phenomenon.White readersdeveloped a tastefor representationsof the natural primitivism and exciting strangenessof black life, and they regardedviolence as an essentialelement of this. This led to the formulationof the trope of the "exotic primitive" in both black and white literature.The tropeof the exotic primitive combineswithin itself the strategiesof denial and demonisation.It demonisesviolence as an inherent,racially determinedtrait of black character,while simultaneouslycircumscribing the potentialities of this violenceas limited to intraracialexpression. In this, it follows Dixon's insistence on the inability of black men to challengewhite men, thus preservingthe difference betweenwhite and black masculinity which is crucial to racist ideology. This enables black violence to be seenin a new light as aestheticallypleasing and fascinating.The Black Beast Rapist discourseserved to reinforce the stifling straitjacketof Victorian patriarchalmorality. But exotic primitivism enabledblack violence to be usedto offer liberating forms of transgressivesexual pleasure to whiteswithout challengingthe idea of violenceas naturallyblack, or endangeringthe fixed, superiorwhite maleego. I acknowledgethat manyAfrican American intellectualsconceived of the Harlem Renaissancein very different terms, as an opportunity to challenge hegemonic 6 stereotypes,and producemore realistic literary imagesof black people. Violence was a

3 J. Williamson, Crucible, p. 471. See pp. 468-472 for a full account of this case. 6 For example, Alain Locke confidently claimed in his 1925 essay"The New Negro" that American culture blackness: "Uncle Tom Sambo have [ ]. The would now transcend stereotypesof and passedon ... popular melodrama has about played itself out, and it is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to a realistic facing of facts." He regarded Harlem as the "laboratory of a great race-weldinS7, giving African Americans their "first chances for group expression and self-determination7 in a new environment of racial unity and freedorn, unlike the fragmented, embattled black communities of the rural South. Locke felt these changeswould have a beneficial effect upon the representation of blacks in literature: "the Negro is being carefully studied, notjust talked about and discussed. In art and letters, instead of being wholly 44

serious social problem in Harlem at this time; most years, Harlem had a murder rate which was double or triple the New York average.7 The potential explanationsfor this violence involved numerous,complex, historical, cultural and psychologicalfactors. Articulating thesefactors in literary discoursewas an immenselydifficult but, in the eyes of many black writers politically necessary,task, in order to challengeracist explanations of this violence. But new white attitudestowards blacknesscreated heavy commercial pressuresfor very different, non-realisticimages of black violence.Publishing, in almost every availableform, was controlledby white people.White editors,authors and agents possessedthe power to make or break the careersof African American writers.8 White readerswere the largestmarket for any form of literature, and further pressurescame from black intellectuals.Black Harlem Renaissancewriters were caughtin a double-bind LangstonHughes articulated well:

The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites. "0 be respectable, write about nice people, show how good we are," say the Negroes. "Be stereotyped, don't go too far, don't shatter our illusions about you, don't amuse us too seriously. We will pay you: ' say the whites.9

He knew the difficulties of negotiating the demands of white patrons and an overwhelmingly white readershipfor entertainment,while satisfying the propagandist demandsof the black middle-class.For many black intellectuals,who were so concerned about improving the official image of African Americans,there was almost no way of representingblack violencewhich they did not find derogatoryand contributoryto white racism. These circumstancesdemonstrate why representationsof black violence in the literature of The Harlem Renaissancehave always been politically controversial.Many subsequentAfrican Americanwriters haverejected the literary legacyof this movement, either ignoring it or explicitly reacting against it. Nevertheless,this chapterwill argue caricatured,he is being seriouslyportrayed and painted." A. Lockeý'rhe New Nege, Within the Circle, by ed. A. Mitchell, (Durham:Duke UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 23 -26. " J. de Jongh,Vicious Modendsm: Black Harlem and the Liferwy Imagination(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990), p. 9. a See:R- E. Washington,Me IdeolagiesofAfricaft AmericanLiterature, p. 53 for a usefulexplanation of the effectsof this white control over all forms of publicationon the HarlemRenaissance. 45

that this literatureconstitutes a crucial momentin the developmentof representationsof black violence in Twentieth Century American literature. Black violence is rarely a centraltheme in Harlem Renaissancefiction, althoughit often pervadesthe settingof the novel. Thus I will focus briefly on a numberof different texts,revealing the debatesthey articulate and inspire about the representationof black violence, which have remained important in subsequentAmerican literature. The first signs of the vogue for black primitivism which characterisedthe Harlem Renaissance appear in much earlier writing. Gertrude Stein published "Melanctha" in 1909, but the mode of depicting black violence this story employs foreshadows all the literature of this movement. Descriptions of James Herbert, Melanctha's father, appear to reprise Dixon's tropes of the violent black male. He is described as "a powerful, lose built, hard handed, black angry Negro." A "big black virile negro" who looks "very black and evil, " and is "brutal and rough to his one daughter."10 Stein appearsto be building to depictions of brutal, horrific violence, which didactically demonstrate black retrogression, savagery and inability to fit into civilised society. But when a razor fight breaks out between Herbert and the black man he believes is attempting to seduce Melanctha, Stein reassuresthe reader: "Razor fighting does not wound very deeply, but it makes a cut that looks most nasty, for it is so very bloody" (62-63). This describes perfectly the function of black violence in Stein's story. It provides a sensational,exciting display of black primitivism which is used primarily for entertainment purposes. It looks shocking but it is denied any depth or seriousness.Stein does not significantly alter the essential character traits Dixon attributed to black men, but she uses them very differently. She does not seek to create racist propagandajustifying the harsh oppression of African Americans, but to create an interesting and alien new figure in American literature: the exotic primitive. Her descriptions of the wider black community in this novel emphasisethis new aesthetic function: "It was summer now and the colored people came out into the sunshine full blown with the flowers. And they shone in the streets and in the fields with their warTnjoy" (137). Stein's story marks the beginning of a new mode in American literature of figuring African Americans as a source of cultural energy and

9 L. Hughes,"The Negro Artist andthe RacialMountain7, WiMin the Circle, pp. 57-58. 46

vitality. In a mannerresembling the Europeanmodernist interest in primitive cultures, manifestedin the African masksof Picassoand the primitive rites of Stravinsky'sballets, African Americansbegan to be renderedas possessinga special bond with natureand instinct. They were representedas a specialbreed of humanity,not alienatedfrom their instincts by the civilising processand the experienceof urban, industrial life in the mannerwhich had lcft white culturejaded and worn out. One of the first Harlem Renaissancenovels to reflect and contributeto thesenew tropes of blacknesswas JeanToomer's Cane (1923). "Blood Burning Moon" depictsa struggle for sexual possessionof a young black woman, Louisa, culminating in a murderous fight between her black and white lovers. The story initially appears politically radical; Toomerdoes not conform to the strategiesof denial usuallydisplayed by white formulationsof the exotic primitive trope. He depictsextreme black violence which is not intraracial,but directedagainst a white man,and he depictsthis violenceas a product of white racism. Toomer does limit the politically controversialaspect of this violence by carefully delineatingit as self-defence.The black man Tom only begins to fight whenthe white man Bob attackshim, and he usesBob's own knife to slit his throat, after Bob tries to stab him. But this may have been done to prevent interpretationsof Tom as a stereotypicalblack man, who is naturallyviolent without provocation.Towards the beginningof the story, Toomerenters the minds of both his protagonistsand reveals briefly but tellingly the psychologicalorigins of the impending violence, which are rooted in the racism of Southernculture. Tom is angeredby his inability to fulfil the concept of masculinity idcalised by hegemonic culture, in which the exertion of patriarchalownership over a womanis an essentialelement. Because the racist structure of Southernsociety denies him the social statusof manhood,he feels only able to prove his masculinity through violence, threateningthe friends who taunt him with rumours about Louisa's white lover with a knife." Bob feels frustratedand humiliated by his inability to fulfil an antebellummodel of white manhood,the "totalised mastery" over African Americanswe saw recuperatedby lynching rituals in the previouschapter. He

10G. Stein,-MelanctW, Aree Lives (London:Peter Owen Publishers, 19701 p. 40, pp. 60-61.Subsequent referencesto this story appearin parenthesesin the text. 11J. Toomer,Cane (London: W. W. Norton, 1988),p. 3 1. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 47

cannot maintain the kind of open and absolute control over black female sexuality, regardlessof black male claims, exertedby mastersover female slaves(33-34). Thus Toomer at least gesturestowards the malign legacy of slavery with regard to racial relationsin the contemporarySouth, even though he doesnot analysethese dysfunctions of black and white Southernmasculinity in any detail. In a groundbreaking essay, Barbara Foley has argued for a much stronger connectionbetween Cane and the racial politics of its era than critics usually make. She demonstratescogently how the storiesof lynchingsmentioned in the "Kabnis" sectionof the novel allude to someof the most horrific historical incidentsof white racist violence from contemporaryGeorgia. 12 She reads all the referencesto lynching in Cane as a deliberate contestationof the hegemonicSouthern narrative which invariably linked lynching with horrific sexual crimes againstwhite women.13 All these incidents show black men lynched for reasonsunconnected to the rape of white women. If "Blood Burning Moon" constitutesan element of this narrative strategy,we might read the violence in this story as an attemptto undermineand contestthe stereotypeof the Black BeastRapist. This would align Cane with the very different, openly propagandist,anti- 14 lynching novels producedby membersof the NAACP at this time. However, even Foley acceptsthat Toomer only really engageswith the issueof lynching on a political level in "Kabnis." Toomer challenged the grounds of justification for white racist violence.But he was not preparedto attemptthe more controversial,radical and difficult task of representingblack violence in realistic, openly politicised terms.In the first two sectionsof Cane,which containthe only significant representationsof black violence in 5 the novel, "symbol and myth predominateover concretehistoricity. "' This useof symboland myth makethe aestheticsof the black violencein "Blood Burning Moon" politically problematic.The languageand style of the descriptionsof the violenceat the climax of this tale severelydetract from the senseit hashistorical, cultural causes.Jerry Bryant claims that Toomcr's use of natural symbols to portend this violence, most obviously the blood-redfull moon of the title, elevatesthe violenceto a

12B. Foley,"'In the Land of Cotton': Economicsand Violencein JeanToomer's Cme, Affican American Review,32: 2 (1998), 181-198. 13B. Foley, "Land". p. 188. 14For example:Walter White's Me Fire in the Flint, (1924). 48 supernatural,archetypal status. It makesof the conflict betweenTom and Bob a "cosmic disharmony," destined to result in murderousviolence, rather than focussing on its specific socio-historicalcontext. Tom and Bob "submit to their rolesand play out the fate written into their southernscript. They move like charactersin myth, not so much by consciouswill as by instinct and feeling - love, jealousy, race pride, race fear.""6 The very sparse,concise terms in which their fight is describedproduce this senseof fate and instinct supersedingconscious will. Toomer gives no senseof subjectivemotives behind the violence, usually describingonly the violent movementsthemselves, without even any referenceto a humanagent performing these actions (35). As Bryant suggestsin the above quotation,this might reveal how the actionsof thesemen are determinedby the coercive ideological scripts of their culture, which offer black and white men only absolutelyfixed masculineidentities. The insistentracism and patriarchyof their culture makes this interracial violence over a woman inevitable. But Toomer's languageonly gives a senseof naturaldeterminants, not political ones. Although the story is told in a highly poetic tone, densewith symbolism and figurative language,the actual descriptionsof violence use sparse,reportorial language, which doesnot shrink from describingthe horror of Tom andBob's fight:

Blue flash, a steelblade slashed across Bob Stone'sthroat. He had a sweetishsick feeling. Blood beganto flow. Then he felt a sharptwitch of pain. Ile let his knife drop. He slappedone hand againsthis neck. Ile pressedthe other on top of his headas if to hold it down. He groaned(35).

Despite this refusal to aestheticisethe fight and the lynching in direct, conventional terms, however, this violence has an important contrastivefunction in producing the overall senseof poetic beauty within this tale. Any intention of representingviolence realistically or making a political statement against white racism is ultimately subordinatedto aestheticisationby the tale. As Jerry Bryant hasobserved, the philosophy which underliesthis contrastbetween beauty and horror in the first sectionof Cane is explicitly statedat onepoint in the novel:

15B. Foley,"Land", p. 193. 16J. H. Bryant, Ilictims andHeroes.* Racial Violencein theAfrican AmericanNovel (Amherst:University of MassachusettsPress, 19971 pp. 131-132. 49

Life bendsjoy and pain, beauty and ugliness,in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy or perfect pain, with no contrastingelement to define them, would mean a monotonyof consciousness, would meandeath (62). 17

This emphasisesthe pervasivesense within Cane that the violence and suffering of Southernblack life are crucial to the beautyand vibrancyToomcr is revealingwithin it. The beauty of the Southernlandscape and the black folk culture depicted in the first sectionof Cane seemsto requirethis violenceto give it its full aestheticpower. Edward Margolies summarisescritical objectionsto this aspectof Cane by asking: "Is Toomer unconsciouslysaying that beautyresides in the pain and sufferingof black men?""' It is significant that in contrastto his descriptionof Bob's fatal stabbing,Toomer does not describeTom's subjective experienceof his even more horrific death. lie describeshim only from an externalperspective: "Ilis face, his eyeswere set and stony. Except for irregularbreathing have him dead.[ ] Now Tom one would thought already ... could be seenwithin the flames.Only his bead,erect, lean, like a blackenedstone" (36). As they suffer murderousviolence, Bob is mobile and human,the readercan identify with his suffering sympathetically,but Tom is static, reduced to a horrific, but aestheticallypowerful symbol.Like earlier white fiction, Caneinsists on the superhuman enduranceof the black male lynching victim, and useshis destroyedbody as a symbol. Toomer himself corroboratedthis sensethat black violenceand suffering were essential to his aestheticvision of the South after visiting Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Ile complainedthat the black communityhad lost contactwith their passionate,full-blooded ancestralfolk culture, becomingbland and anacmic.Ile relatesthis declineto the lower degreeof interracialhostility outsidethe Deep South:"Racial attitudeson both sidesare ever so much more tolerant,even friendly. Oppressionand ugly emotionsseem nowhere in evidence.And thereare no folk songs."19 The contrastbetween depictions of black violencein this first, Southern,mythical sectionof Caneand the second,Northern, urban section, underscores the sensethat black

17See also: J. Bryant, Victims,p. 132. 18E. Margolies,Native Sons.- A Critical Studyof TwentiethCentury Negro American Aulbors (Philadelphia:J. B. Lippincott Company,1968), p. 40. 50

violence is primarily an aestheticconcern in Cane. Scenessuch as the boxing match betweenthe dwarvesplace focus centrally on how urban life has left African Americans cut off from their folk culture (67). Bourgeoisnotions of respectabilitycompel them to repressthe passionsand instinctsso vibrantly displayedin the South,and they return as grotesque, meaninglessoutbursts of violence. Some political significance can be detected,but this always seemssubordinated to aestheticconsiderations. " Furthermore, the suggestionsthat black violence is a product of atavistic, instinctive passionsin African Americans threatens to completely deconstruct the novel's subtle, earlier attempts to situate black violence in specific political and cultural contexts. Toomer demonstratedthat the violence of contemporaryblack life offered fertile material for dramaticand innovativeforms of literary expression.However, although the primitivism he representedwas rooted in the circumstancesof a specific, rural folk culture, subsequentauthors could easily detach his tropes from their context and use them to figure primitivism as the natural,ahistorical essence of blackness.21 Intentionally or not, he contributedto a demonisingliterary discoursewhich developeda new way of figuring violence as an innate elementof black character,a discoursewhich achievesits most controversialexpression in Carl Van Vechten'sNigger Heaven(1926). Nigger Heaven has polarisedcritical opinion ever since its publication. Many contemporaryAfrican American critics condemnedthe novel, most notably W. E. B. DuBois, whose objectionsmany subsequentcritics have endorsed.22 Bernard W. Bell claims: "Van Vechtenreduced his black charactersto torturcdýoften grotesque,amoral souls who inhabiteda jungle of joy, in which the good life was symbolizedby barbaric orgies, fights and jive talk. ,23 Yet Nathan Huggins praisesNigger Heavenas the first generally read novel" which took "the Negro as its subject and abandonedthe

19Quoted in: J. Bryan4 Victims, p. 134. 20 For example, Roger Rosenblatt interprets the black audience's encouragement of the dwarves' violence as a sign of how they are perpetuating the "cycle of brutality, " initiated by the impact of white racist oppression upon them, "in which each group seeksonly to find solace or satisfaction in the humiliation of another." R. Rosenblat4 Black Fiction (Cambridge: I larvard University Press, 1975), p. 57. But Toomer makes no explicit link between the popularity of this violent spectacle and the effects of racism. 21Toomer always denied he believed in natural racial difference, claiming he used tropes of race and blood only as metaphors. J. Toomer, "The Americans7, A Jewi Toomer Remler. Selected Utpublished Writings, ed. by F. L. Rusch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 109. 22W. E. B. Du Bois, "Booksr, Crisis, 33: 12 (December 1926), 2. 51

stereotype.9924 These radically different verdicts may result from the inconsistencies within the text. Detractors tend to judge the entire novel by controversial yet relatively brief sections. As Huggins goes on to observe, there is a sharp contradiction between Van Vechten's attempts to depict Harlem as a socially and intellectually diverse community, containing as wide a variety of human types as white society, and his tendency to portray "the Negro as a natural primitive" who can only preserve his "mental health!' by avoiding "civilized artificiality. s923 The contradictions within the representation of blackness reflect the inconsistenciesof contemporarywhite racial.ideology. The bulk of the narrativefocuses on bourgeois,intellectual blacks who speakforeign languages,appreciate art and argue intellectually as intelligently as white people. But these are weak, insipid characters, often portrayedwith surprisinglyhostile satire.The novel only comesto life when Van Vechten switches his focus to the vivid "exotic primitive" characterson the textual margins,who deconstructhis efforts to refute essentialistviews of black character.Van Vechtentries to show that his interestin African Americansstems from his liberal belief in their equalitywith white people,but someparts of the novel imply his interestactually stems from the fascinating differences he perceivesin black character.One of Van Vechten's sternestmodem critics, David Levering Lewis, claims this contradiction reflects Van Vechten's mixed motives for writing the novel. Although he felt a "patronizing sympathy" towards blacks, "[Qor the sake of sales", he also "intended Nigger Heaven to create a sensation.226 Whether he unconsciouslyrevealed his own psychosexualinvestments, or deliberatelyexploited those of his readership,the enormous commercial successof the novel certainly shows how well Van Vechten captured contemporarywhite attitudes to blackness.Although Huggins correctly argues that Nigger Heavenabandons traditional stereotypes of blackness,it wascentrally involved in the formulationof the new tropeof the exotic primitive. By the nineteen-twenties,the attitude to blacknesswe noted in Stein had developedinto a major cultural movement.The popularityof performerslike Josephine

23B. W.BeIL Yhe Afto-American Novelwxffts Tra&fion (Amherst: University of MassachusettsPress, 1989),p. 113. 24N. 1.Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (oxford: Oxford University Press, 197 1), p. 103. 23N. 1.Huggins, Harlem, pp. 102-103. 52

Baker and the flood of white visitors to Harlem clubs and cabaretsrevealed a new white fascination with African Americans as exotic and primitive. As Adam Lively has observed,the conceptof blacknesswhich underwrotethis fascinationbore little relation to the realitiesof black existence.Instead:

Negroeshave become [ ] figureheads late-flowcringfin-die decadence ... of a sikle [ 1. 'Primitivism' is longer ... no the return to or recoveryof any actually existing society, but a phenomenonthat belongs entirely within and with referenceto modernised urban society, a lifestyle that embodies certain reactions to conventionalvalues. 27

This quotation gestures towards a crucial difference between Toomer's and Van Vechtcn's use of primitivist tropes. Van Vcchtcn does not link black charactersto a specific folk culture.Their primitivism seemslike a projectionof his own desireto throw off the stifling restrictionsof Victorian, bourgeoismorality without compromisingthe superiorityof the white male ego. This use of black charactersseverely undermines his attempt to render African American life realistically. For example, he depicts fights involving Harlem 28Yet men and womenas part of the colour and excitementof nightlife. he confessedin a letter to LangstonHughes that he never witnesseda fight in a black cabaretin twenty-five years.29 However, like ThomasDixon, Van Vechten masksthe constructed,projected nature of his imagesof blacknesswith a tone of realism.His status as an experton Harlem and the novel's overall claims to recordthe realitiesof black life carefully and objectively gave the violent excessesof characterslike Lasca and the Scarlet Creeperan air of authenticityfor contemporaryreaders. The tone of realism is considerablymore predominantin Nigger Heavenand the imagesof blacknessarc less obviouslyracist, but the basiceffect is undeniablysimilar. Van Vechten was almost as opposed to the idea of innate racial difference as Toomer, stating in an aftcrword to Nigger Heaven that: 'Negroes are treated by me exactly as if I were depicting white characters, for the very excellent reason that I do not

26D. L. Lewis,nen Harlemwas in Vogue(oxford: Oxford University Press, 198 1), p. 188. 27A. Lively, Masks.- BlacAness, Race wid the Imagination(London: Vintage, 1999),p. 2 10. 29See for example:C. Van Vechten,Nigger Heaven(New York: Alfred A- Knop& 1926),p. 164and pp. 247-248.Subsequent references to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 53

believe there is much psychologicaldifference between the races."30 Certainly, there are decadentcharacters in all Van Vechten's fiction, who behavein sexually transgressive ways. However,there is a politically problematicundertone of racial determinismin the representationsof black decadencein Nigger Heaven,and, as we shall see,an elementof violence within this decadence.Some episodes in the narrativeseem designed to contest essentialistviews of black violence.Byron Kasson,the scholarlyprotagonist, is horrified to witnessa disputebetween Jewish and Italian streetvendors, which culminatesin the Italian stabbingthe Jew's horse:

Suddenlythe Italian drew a long knife from his belt and plungedit to the hilt into the breastof the animal. The beastgroaned sickishly and shudderedýbut did not fall. The blood in [ ]. Blood! Blood! [ ]A gushedout a greatred stream ...... crowd collected.They werepounding the dago. Byron thoughthe was going to vomit. Blood and cruelty (230).

Byron, who has led a sheltered,middle-class existence, is repulsedby this display of lower-classurban violence. This scenemakes no connectionbetween his aversionand his partly white ancestry.This vignette also refusesto paint violence in nineteen-twenties New York as an exclusivelyblack problem, making it a socio-culturalphenomenon. It gesturestowards factors like overcrowding,poverty, a highly competitive commercial environmentand the close proximity of numerousethnic groups with no intercultural understanding. However, after Byron begins his affair with Lasca, essentialistand sensational tonalitiesbegin to dominatethe narrative.The characterisationof Byron alters radically, revealing a primitivism beneathhis civilised exterior which supportsAddison Gayle's claim that Van Vechtenperceives an exotic primitive insidethe skull of everyblack man: "half-man half-savage, in Byron Lasca's existing a world of sensuouspleasure .01 and decadent,passionate relationship descends into scenesof demonisedviolence:

29Cited in: M. V. Perkins,"The Achievementand Failureofffigger Heaven:Carl Van Vechtenand the HarlemRenaissance", College Language Association Journal, 42:1 (1998), 1-23,p. 14. 30Quoted in B. Kellner, "'Refined Racism': White Patronagein the HarlemRenaissanc6", Harlem RenaissanceRe-Ewmined. - A Revisedmid ErpwidedEdifion, ed. by V. A. Kramerand R. ALRuss (Troy: Whitston, 1997),p. 130. 31A. Gayle, 7he Wayof the NeWWorld.. 7he Black Novelin America(Garden City: Anchor Press Doubleday,1975), p. 87. 54

I'd like to be to [ ] I'd like heart cruel youl ... to cut your outl Cut it out, Lascamy own! It belongsto you! I'd like to gashyou with a knife! Beat you with a whip! Lasca! She drew her pointed nails acrossthe back of his hand. Ile flesh came off in ribbons. My babyl My baby! She sobbed, binding his bleeding hand with her handkerchief,kissing his lips (252-253).

Despite the obvious political and aestheticdifferences, there are structural similarities between this representationof black violence and those we consideredin Thomas Dixon's novels. For Van Vechten,blackness still embodiesa hypersexualexcess that spills over into violence,which he strugglesto articulatein this ludicrousscene. Dixon inscribedhis constructionof black sexualviolence on the batteredbodies of innocent,white femalevictims in a propagandisttone designedto makethe readerfeel outragedand threatened. The psychosexualinvestments we detectedin theseimages were submergedbeneath the surfaceof the text. But, throughthe lens of a modernist,decadent sensibility, Van Vechten transformsthis conceptof black sexual violence into images which are more obviously designedto fascinateand titillate, even if the quotient of projected white desire they contain is still disavowed.He does this by removing all possible threat to white people, circumscribing the potentialities of black violence through strategiesof denial. He enablesreaders to contemplateblack violenceas a series of pleasurableaesthetic images from an uninvolved, unthrcatenedperspective. His descriptionsof the characterwho epitomisesexotic primitivism exemplify this. From his first appearancein the opening scene,the Scarlet Creeperembodies a violent, phallic excesswhich is not bestialand horrifying, but stylish, exciting and aestheticallypleasing (3). Representationsof the Creepercircumscribe any potentialthreat to white women,or white societyin general.Any link betweenhis violenceand the cffects of white racismis also occluded.The narrativenever enters his consciousnessto considerthe origins of his violence, it is depicted purely as entertainment.This trope of the exotic primitive combinesdenial with demonisationto exploit the commercialpotential of a new imageof 55

black violence.As Addison Gayle observes,the depoliticisationof thesenew imagesof African Americanswas crucial to their popularity,32 The backgroundagainst which Lasca and Byron's relationshipis played out is also highly revealing of Van Vechten's new mode of exploiting white fantasmatic investmentsin black violence.The drab life of the black bourgeoisieis exchangedfor a world of parties and cabaretswhere white moral values are transgressedin numerous ways.Lasca and Byron embarkupon a downwardspiral of depravitywhich culminatesin a visit to a nightclub called the "Black Mass", whereviolence is onceagain glimpsedat the heart of black primitivism. The wild dancingand "demoniae' wailing of the music producea scenedescribed as a "witches sabbath"and a "pervertedDies Irae" (254-255). Finally, to the beat of a tom-tom, a nakedteenage girl who is "pure black, with savage African features" "evil "The lifted knife The performs rites": girl a ... a womanshrieked. knife " (255-256).The in literally ... ellipses this demoniseddescription of black violence perform a similar function to the omitted descriptionsof black rape we consideredin Dixon's novels.They opena spacefor the readerto projectfantasies about black violence which can be more terrible and more personallysignificant than anythingVan Vechten can articulate.Like Dixon, he blurs the boundarybetween private fantasy and public ideology to powerful literary effect. The description of the girl as "pure black" and possessing"savage African features"suggests her actionsreveal a violencewhich is the naturalessence of blackness. The implicationsthat black womentake sexualpleasure from violencedetectable in this episodeare underscoredin another scene,when Byron respondsviolently to Lasca'sinsults and threats to breakwith him:

He her throat in his hands her [ ] he flung her caught strong and shook violently. ... back the [ ]. She for breath,her lollingout, on chaise-longue... was gasping tongue but shelifted her armsfeebly and beckoned him. Kiss me Byron, she panted.I love you. You're so strong! I'm your slave, your own Niggerl Beat me! I'm yoursto do with what you please!(259-260).

This scene not only demonstratean increasingly prominent violent element within Byron's character as he becomes part of the black community, it also transfers

32See: A. Gayle,Way, p. 89. 56

responsibility for the dysfunctional, violent model of masculinity predominant in Harlem away from any connection with the effects of racism and onto black women. The novel's conclusion reinforces this sense black violence is a product of intraracial problems and pathologies unrelated to white racism. Van Vechten deploys strategies of denial to ensure the violent denouement will excite and entertain readers without disturbing them. Ostensibly, the Scarlet Creeper shoots Randolph Pcttijohn out ofjealousy over a woman, but there is also a suggestion of class antagonism between these men. When the Creeper first Pettijohn in the "Unreasoningly, [he] hated him. [ ] it meets novel we are told: ... irked the Creeper to realize that anyone else possessedpower of whatever kind" (7). This implies the Creeper envies Pettijohn's business achievements, which have taken him from hot-dog vendor to numbers racket king. The ending therefore appearsto support the claim of one character that other African Americans represent a greater obstacle to black progress in Harlem than white people do (119-120). Charles Scruggs reads the killing as an example of the "crab antics" which characterise relations between the different strata of black society in the novel, an illustration of Van Vcchten's belief that, "the only time peoplefrom different classescome together in Harlemis to do eachother ill. 9,33However. I believe Van Vechten usesthis apparentlypercipient focus on class tensionsto mask links betweenwhite racismand black violence.Giving the most extremeact of violence in the novel a purely intraracial aetiologypresents a distortedview of Harlem, ignoring the shaping influence of many forms of white oppression such as poverty and overcrowding.Van Vcchten circumscribesthese factors in his representationof Harlem to enablereaders to enjoy this violenceas pure entertainment. The sense that connections with white racism are being repressedbecomes even stronger in the representation of Byron's final act of violence. The image of a black man shooting a corpse might be read as a political symbol of the terrible futility of violence in Harlem, and its powerful tendency to reinforce black suffering. However, the context makes Byron's redundant violence seem more like a symbol of his personal impotence and divided psychological state. Although Byron has suffered from white discrimination during the novel, particularly in his efforts to find employment, his main problem always

33C. Scruggs,"Crab Antics and Jaocb's Ladder: Aaron Douglas's Two Viewsofffigger Heaveh",Harlem RenaissmceRe-Examined, p. 172 and p. 185. 57

seemsto be his alienationfrom the "natural" selfhoodand lifestyle of his race. At one point, he contemplatesviolence in direct responseto white racism:"Groaning, he burned to summonup a mob to stampout this proud, haughtywhite world. Ile yearnedto tear New York apart, [... ] to trample those white fiends under foot" (228). However, the context mutes the subversivenessof this fantasy. Byron hasjust proudly rejected the adviceof a white editor, who seemsto be a mouthpiecefor Van Vechten'sown views, to focus on lower class Harlem life in his stories (222-227).'Mis decision clearly stems from Byron's haughtyrefusal to identify with the black masses.Thus his violent impulses are cast more as evidenceof the inner turmoil createdby his alienation from his true naturethan as the effectsof racism. Byron's final act of violence producesa similar impression.Seeing Pettijohn's corpse,Byron goestowards it, fascinatedby the blood:

Suddenlyhe stampedon the facewith the heel of his boot. You Nigger bastard!he screamed. He drew his revolverand shotonce, twice into the ugly black mass. Immediately his anger left him. The gun slipped from his fingers. His legs, shakingwith terror refusedto supporthim (283-284).

Calling Pettijohn a "Nigger bastard," and the dehumanisingperception of Pettijohn's body as an "ugly black mass"reinforce the sensethat self-hatredand alienationlie at the roots of Byron's violence.His instant loss of aggressionafter firing his gun suggeststhe extent of the division within his self, which has beenvisible throughoutthe final pages, as he thirsts for revengeon Lascaand her new lover Pettijohn:

Governedby his he his [ ] like dying rage, clutched revolver and cried aloud ... a [ ] I'll kill both! But droppedfrom his fingers animal ... them the revolver relaxed to the table, his head followed. [ ] God! he demandedimploringly, and ... why haven't I the strengthto go throughwith it? (273).

It now appears clear that Byron possessespowerful natural violent impulses, but they are frustrated by the "white", civilised persona formed by his middle class lifestyle, producing an agonising and paralysing internal conflict. Now his aversion to violence is implicitly racialised as a product of learnt, white behaviours, frustrating the natural 58

violent impulseswhich stem from his black origins. This is certainly how many of Van Vechten'swhite contemporariesinterpreted the ending.Mabel Dodgebelieved it showed "the archaicreal niggerbeing able to do the deed7[my italics] and the hero "spoiled for action by thought.v234 As we have seen,the Scarlet Creeperhas been depictedas the epitome of authentic,primitive blackness.The contrastbetween his ability to commit violence and Byron's ineffectuality implies that violence comes naturally to "real" blacks. Thus the violence of the ending deconstructsthe novel as a plea for the acceptanceof African Americans as equals, revealing more powerful psychosexual investmentsin the idea of black differencebeneath the surfaceof liberal ideology. However dissimilar Van Vcchten's politics were to Dixon's, Nigger Heaven repeats a number of narrative strategies deployed by Dixon to conceal white psychosexualinvestments in blackness.This confirms how the reliance of white male superiority on demonised images of black violence made it difficult to abandon completelyhis methodsof representingblack violence. Van Vechtenallows readersto 44playin the dark," as RichardMoreland puts it, without risking the moral authority and intellectualsuperiority predicated on their fixed white identities.35 By making decadence, sexual perversityand violence essentially,naturally black, Van Vechten reaffirms the fundamentalbases of white racial differenceand superioritywhile still permittingreaders to flirt pleasurablywith thesedisavowed, projected desires. The appearanceof Nigger Heaven and similar novels and plays led many African American intellectuals to challengeLocke's optimistic claims about the impact of the Harlem Renaissanceon cultural imagesof blacks. W. E. B. Du Bois, in particular, was appalledby thesenew trendsin representationsof blackness.He wrote a trenchantarticle attackingprimitivism as racist propaganda,and demanding that black authors challenge it with equally propagandistimages which assertthe equalityand humanity of African Americans.36

34Quoted in D. L. Lewis, nen, p. 188. 35Moreland takes the phrasefrom Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark, whereit refersto American literature'sprojection of fears,conflicts anddesires which cannotbe acknowledgedwithin white subjectivityonto "bound" and"silenced" black bodies.This allows the investigationof theserepressed feelingswithout compromisingthe stablesuperiority of whiteness.F- C. Moreland,Learning From Difference: TeachingMorrison,Twain, Ellison widEhot (Columbus:Ohio StateUniversity Press, 1999), v. 29-30. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Criteria of Negro Art", Withinthe Circle, p. 66. 59

However,the next major Harlem RenaissanceAfrican American novel bearsthe mark of different pressureson black writing, illustrating the extent of white control over black literary production in this movement. Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928) was one of the first American novels to both represent and seek to understand the violence of Northern ghettos, but it does so in highly problematic ways. McKay does not contest the racial essentialism which underpins the discourse of black primitivism. Instead, he attempts to challenge the idea of violence as an innate element of the primitive character. This creates a number of inconsistencies within his novel, chiefly the discrepancy between the protagonist Jake and his society. Although Jake is portrayed as happy and at home in Harlem, and a paradigmatic primitive in all other aspects of his behaviour, he completely lacks the conventionally primitivist tendencies towards violence which pervade his milieu. As Nathan Irvin Huggins notes, Jake is "ashamed and sick on the two occasionswhen he is movedto violence."37 McKay deploysa strategyof denial copied by much later American writing, as we shall seein later chapters,purging his focal characterof violenceto make him a viable, sympathetichero for white readers. All the violence is projectedonto characterswho remainOther to the text, and manifests itself in a form many critics condemnas a commerciallymotivated imitation of white primitivism. One contemporaryreviewer describedit as "Nigger Heavenin a larger and more violent dose", and more recent critics such as Bernard W. Bell and Nathan Irvin Hugginshave reached similar verdiCtS.38 This discrepancybetween the representationof Jakeand his sensationaliscdsociety also deconstructsMcKay's attemptsto redefinethe primitive characteristicsof blacksas positive. A fight between two minor characters, Zeddy and Nije, at a party exemplifies the representationsof black violencein Hometo Harlem:

Half-sffffling andcareless-like, he plantedhis boot uponZeddy's toes. "Get off my feet," Zeddy barked.The answerwas a hard blow in the face.Zeddy tasted blood in his mouth. He threw his muscularbody upin the tall Nije and huggedhim down to the floor. [... ]

37N. 1.Huggins, Harlem, p. 125. 3gD. P. Jones,7he ChicagoDefender, March 17*, 1928,13.W. Bell, Afro American,p. 116and N. L Huggins,Harlem, p. 126. 60

11isknee on Nije's chest, and a hand on his windpipe, Zeddy flashed the gleaming blade out of his pocket. The proprietress let loss a blood-curdling scream, but before Zeddy's hand could achieve its purpose, Jake aimed a swift kick at his elbow. The razor flew spinning upward and fell chopping through a glass of gin 39 on the pianola.

Like many such scenesin Harlem Renaissancefiction, this passagefocuses on the physicalstrength of the combatantsand the dramaof the spectacle.McKay combinesthe strategiesof denial and demonisationin a manner typical of the discourseof exotic primitivism. His total occlusionof social and cultural causesinevitably demonisesblack violence as natural and innate. We are given little senseof the motives for this fight, beyondthe fact that it involvesan unpaiddebt. The speedand easewith which thesemen enter into murderous violence can only undermine McKay's attempts, through the characterof Jake,to refute the naturallink betweenblacks and violence. Such figurations of black violence encouragereaders not to regardAfrican Americansas equal humans, and thereforeto enjoy their violence without any sensethat it involves serioushuman suffering.They supportJerry H. Bryant's assertionthat in African American"primitivist" novels,violence forms part of the color of the folk world: knifings, shootings,razor rights between men, hair-pulling fights between women. Such violence was the yeast that vitalized the dancing, gaming, drinking and loving that went on among the carefree blacks."'O In places,McKay doesattempt to achievea more serious,analytical perspective on violenceand its causes.On the first occasionJake commits violence, he is goadedinto giving his girlfriend Rose"two savageslaps full in her face" (81). He then overhearsher telling a friend:

My, my dear,but he did slap the daylightsoutta me. When I cameto I wantedto kiss his feet, [ ]. A hefty looking like him, ... one alwaysacting so nice and proper. I almostthought he wasgetting sissy. But he's a ma-anall right (82).

39C. McKay, Hometo Harlem, (London:The X Press,2000), pp. 35-36.Subsequent references to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 401 H. Bryant, Vicfims,p. 143. 61

This episode makes black women even more explicitly responsiblefor promoting a dysfunctional,violent model of black masculinity,which plaguesHarlem throughoutthis novel, than the similar passagewe consideredin Nigger Heaven. No wonder Hazel Carby, who readsthis novel as a narrative of urban "black masculinity in formation," claims degenerateembodiments of the feminineare representedas the greatestobstacle to this proceSS.41 Jake has to refuse the "pathological and distorted form of masculine power" Rosedemands "to proceedon his journey" towards"wholesome masculinity. "42 As this readingimplies, Home to Harlem makesvery little attemptto connectHarlem's violence to the various forms of oppressionwhich shapeAfrican American life, even though it begins with Jake desertingthe army becauseit offers black men only racist mistreatment.McKay repeatsVan Vechten's principal strategyof denial, dissociating black violencefrom white racismto ensureit will provide commercialentertainment for white readers. A rare deviationfrom this strategyoccurs early in the novel, when Jakeaccepts a job which involves breaking a strike by white workers. This producesincidents where black men are forcedto fight for their lives againstangry mobs of white pickets(30-33). However,the novel gives little considerationto how the racist, exclusionarypolicies of businessesand unions createdthis divisive economicsituation. Jake quickly leavesthe job, piously refusingto be a "scab," and rejectinghis friend Zeddy's argumentthat black men have to take any employmentavailable, when "white men done scabbedniggers outta all the jobs they usedto hold down" (35). Apart from this, however,McKay tends to focus on black criminality and intraracialHarlem violence in isolation. The narrative subordinatesserious analysis of this violence and criticism of white racism to the production of sensation,' drama and comedy. For example,near the end of the novel, when Felice is worried aboutthe violencewhich may result from her ]cavingZeddy for Jake, she recalls a fight betweentwo Caribbeanwomen. This seemsinitially to be a critical, admonitoryexample of violencein Harlem society.But McKay is seducedby the opportunitiesfor sensationthis spectacleoffers. He describesthe womenstripping naked, in accordancewith an "old custom,perhaps a survival of Affican tribalism, [which] has

41 42 H. Carby,"Policing the Black Woman's Body", Critical Inquiry, 18: 4 (1992),738-755, p. 749. IL Carby,"Policing7, p. 750. 62 beenimported from someremote West Indian hillside into a New York backyard"(215). Not only doesthis introducean elementof prurienceand exoticisminto the scene,it also implies this ritualised violence representsan ahistorical element of black character, further underminingthe novels efforts to refute the link betweenblack primitivism and violence. McKay goes on to make a dramatic spectacleof the fight, supplying vivid details of the women's attempts to injure each other (215-216). Felice finishes her reminiscenceon a note of pure entertainment,reflecting- "a hen-fight is more fun than a cock-fight, hens pluck feathers,but they never wring necks like the cocks" (216- 217). McKay maintains a more serious tone in representing a fight in which a black man smashesa bottle in the face of a love rival. After witnessing this fight, Jake debates the problem of violence in Harlem with a ffiend, arguing that violence over women occurs everywhere, among all races (197). His friend counters that Harlem is worse than elsewhere because:"We're too thick together in Harlem. We're all just lumped together without a chance to choose and so we naturally hate one another" (197-198). The implied criticism of white racism in this statement provokes praise from James P, Giles. He claims this exonerateswomen for the violence of Harlem and enablesthe reader to "guess blacks in whose fault McKay thinks it is - the white society that has packed together Harlem so thickly that they cannot breathe easily.'*43 But the oblique nature of McKay's criticism ensuresthat "guess" is all the reader can do. McKay does not articulate a direct link between racism and black violence, which reinforces the impression that commercial successwas his primary concern in his representationsof black violence in this novel. Witnessingthis fight convincesthe pacifist Jakeof the needto carry a guriýwhich he is forced to threatenZcddy with, when he attackshim with a razor,over Felice. Once again,Jake is ashamedby his own violence,reflecting:

Thesemiserable cock-fights, beastly, tigerish, bloody. They had alwayssickenedý saddened,unmanned him. The wild shrieking mad woman that is sex seemed jeering him. [ ] he infinitely disgusted himself to think that he had at ... was with just been moved by the samesavage emotions as those vile, vicious, villainous white men who, like hyenasand rattlers, had fought, murdered,and clawed the

43j. IL Giles, ClaudeMcKay (Boston:Twayne Publishers, 19761 p. 83. 63

entrails out of black men over the common,commercial flesh of women (228- 229).

This passageadopts an interestingrhetorical strategy,throwing both the primary burden of responsibilityfor violenceand the tropological associationswith animalismfrom the hegemonicwhite discourseon black violence back onto the white world. But it is virtually unsupportedby the bulk of the novel, which depictsand discussesonly black violence in isolation. Jake claims to have witnessedwhite violence in various places during his nomadiclife, but this is neverdirectly representedto the reader.Also, there is another strong suggestionthat women are ultimately responsiblefor violence in the personification of sex as a "wild shrieking mad woman"; this implies female responsibilityfor the violent disputesover sexualpossession of them by men. A passagein the final pagesof the novel exemplifies,many of the problems McKay facedtrying to refigurethe white discourseof primitivism into a positive form of black identity containingno racially determinedelement of violence.McKay describesa scenein a Harlem nightclubwhich typifies the backgroundof the novel:

Haunting rhythm, now sheeringover into mad riotous joy, now, like a jungle mask, strange,unfamiliar, disturbing, now plunging headlonginto the far dim depthsof profundity and rising out as suddenlywith a simple,childish grin. And laugh. They [ ] That type the white visitors seethe grin only. ... gorilla wriggling his hands hugginghis her tonighL [ ) therewith so strangely mate,may strangle ... Simple, raw emotions and real. They may frighten and rcpcl refined souls, becausethey are too intenselyreal, just as a simplesavage stands dismayed before nice emotionsthat he instantlyperceives are false(234-235).

As JamesR. Giles states,this passageasserts that, " the black psycheis more complex than the superficialglimpses" the white world insistentlylimits itself to.44 It also attempts to make primitive black emotions superior to false, civflised white ones. Yet it still repeatsand reaffirmsthe idea of blacksas naturallyand unpredictablyviolent which was part of this superficialwhite perspective.It also exemplifiesthe problem createdby the animal imagerywhich McKay frequentlyemploys to describehis black characters.Some critics interpretthis as a positiverefiguration of the white racistclassification of blacksin

44J. R. Giles, Claude,p. 84. 64

animal terms. Roger Rosenblatt insists these animal associations "are never dehumanizingin the senseof suggestingthe brutal."43 But the close associationthey oflen havewith descriptionsof black violencesometimes brings them perilously closeto repeatingthe associationsof blacknesswith bestiality from white racist discourse.For examplein the fight betweenZeddy and Jake, Zeddy was describedas: "like a terrible bearwith openrazor" (227). Despitehis attemptsto critique and refigure the white discourseof primitivism in ways which were positive and empoweringfor blacks, McKay could not transcendthe essentialelements of it in Home to Harlem. This inability to challengewhite ideology fundamentallymay be attributableto the total white control over accessto the literary marketplace.Langston Hughes offended his patronby adoptinga politically radical tone in his poetry. African American authorscould only make coded,subtle hints about the origins of black violence if they were to achievepublication. Perhaps this explainswhy the Harlem Renaissancefailed to producedepictions of black violence which genuinely contestedthe racism of begemonicimages. Certainly, one of the few novels to attempt this sufferedlow sales. Wallace Thurman's,Infants of the Spring (1932) is commonly read as a caustic satire on every aspect of the Harlem Renaissance.46 I believe it also satirises this movement's representationof black violence, through a rarely discussed, minor character,Bull. The portmyal of Bull critiques the tendencyto deploy black violence to createexcitement, humour and vivid spectacle.Consider the scenewhere the protagonist Raymonddiscovers Bull fighting with the white characterStephen over his relationship with a black woman:

Stephenand Bull were locked together,wrestling. Both were quite drunk. Tearswere streamingdown Bull's virile, scarredface. [... ] "The bastard'strying to kill me." Stephenwas red-facedand panting.Bull was [ ] weak with rage. ... As Raymondrelaxedý Bull regainedhis strength,thrust Raymondaside, and with fists [ ] frightened clenched, ... turnedupon the Aline.

45P, Rosenblatt,Black, p. 93. 46See for example:D. Walden,"The CankerGalls... Or, The ShortPromising Life of WallaceThurmae, Harlem RetiaissariceRe-Ewmined, pp. 234-235. 65

"Thussy [ ] Ycr You You ... own race ain't good enough? want a white man? bitch, I'll kill " [ ] goddamn you. ... Aline, seeinghim come toward her, struggledto her feet, becameentangled in the fell heavily to the floor. Stephen in the Raymond rug and snored chair. 47 againthrew himself into Bull's way only to biesent crashing into the comer.

This chaotic scenereduces violence to a sordid, messyand drunkenstatus. There is no graceful, athletic display of black physical strength,nor does the scenegenerate any tension or obvious comedy. Furthermore, in stark contrast to most other Harlem Renaissancefiction, Thurmanfigures Bull's violence as a direct threat to white people. Indeed,the narrativecontains suggestions that Stephencomes to Harlem out of an erotic fascinationwith blackness,making him a representativeof the very kind of white readers who were excited by the violence of earlier Harlem Renaissanceliterature. This emphasisesThurman's refusal to pander to commercial demands and produce representationsof black violence which would entertainwhite readers.As one reviewer observed,this novel was "written with no weathereye on a possiblewhite audience."A" Later an argumentover a LangstonHughes poem about white rapeof black womenleads to anotherchaotic and drunkeninterracial melee (85-88). This implies that the interracial contact producedby the Harlem Renaissancecould never lead to harmoniousracial relations,based as it was on inaccurateracial stereotypesand latent white racism and sexualdesires. Candid exchanges of opinion inevitablylead to violence. Despite giving him an animal name, Thurman carefully dissociatesBull's violence from the kind of essentialistexplanations which shadowedearlier Renaissance representationsof black violence.His resemblanceto a bull is kept purely metaphorical. Thurmanlocates the origins of his violent bitternessand obsessivedesire for vengeance on the entire white race in the lynching of an uncle who was falsely accusedof raping a white woman(3940). Bull explainshis violent obsessionas:

Havin' ev'ry white woman I kin get, an' by hurtin' any white man I kin. I hates the bastards.I getsdrunk so's I can beat 'ern up an' I likes to maketheir women

47W. Thurman,Infivits of theSpring (London:The X Press,1998), pp. 35-36.Subsequent references to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 48M. Gruening,"Two Waysto Harlem".Saturday Review ofLiterature (le March, 1932),585, p. 585. 66

suffer. But if I ever catch one of the sonsof bitches messin' 'round one of my women,hell's doorswon't openquick enuff to catchhim (3940).

In contrastto much earlier Harlem Renaissancefiction, this passageacknowledges the angerand bitternesswhite oppressioncreates in the black mind, and positsa very direct and powerful link betweenthis and black violence. But Thurman refusesto ennobleor justify this violence in any way, perhaps fearing that he may still appear to be romanticisingviolence as part of the beautyof exotic prin-dtivism.Furthermore, Thurman evenundermines Bull's statusas braveavenger and the extentof the threathe represents to white people by saying that he commits this violence out of fear. Raymond,who appearsto be Thurman'smouthpiece, declares that Bull is "so afraid of the white man, [ ] that his is to floor Should ... only recourse oneat everyopportunity and on any pretext. one suddenlyturn the tablesand smashhim back he'd run away like a coweddog7 (89). Eventually,Bull disappearsfrom the narrativeafter punchinghis girlfriend for becoming pregnant(165). Thus his violence is emphaticallynot depictedas the basisfor a positive model of black masculinity-,there is no sensefighting back against white oppression producesgenuine black manhood,as later literature implies. InsteadBull's violence is shown to be dangerouslyindiscriminate and ultimately more likely to harin more vulnerableblack victims than white oppressors.The harshnessof the portrayal of Bull, like almost every other black character in Infants of the Spring, seems to reveal Thurman's self-hatred.Although he perceptivelycritiqued and exposedthe excessesof this era's obsessionwith primitivism, his self-hatredprevented him from formulating a positive alternativeform of African American identity and seeingany real positive or sympatheticelement in rebellious black violence. Bull always remains marginal and Other to the text. It would be left to future authorsto attemptto articulatethe origins of black violence fully, by entering the minds of black characterswho commit the most extremeviolence. 67

CHAPTER THREE

BLACK VIOLENCE, WHITE MASK: RECONSIDERING RACIAL INDETERMINACY IN FAULKNER'S LIGHTINAUGUST

William Faulkner is widely praised for perceptively exposing the psychic consequencesof constructinga culture basedon racial difference for white America. James Baldwin has written that "the Negro-in-America is a form of insanity that overtakes white men," and, as Philip Weinstein observesý"Faulkner pursues and diagnosesthat insanity with unequalled power."' But Faulkner's representationof African Americansthemselves often clide black subjectivity and employ conventional, ob cctifying Southerntropes of blackness,such as the faithful, loving mammy or the comic, wfly darky. His fiction strugglesto transcendthese stereotypes and exposethe humanity they mask with the same power and intensity which charactcrisc his representationsof white subjectivity. I believe this problem is bound up with another limitation. Toni Morrison has praisedFaulkner for the "refusal-to-look-awayapproach" he adopted towards the extreme and horrifying forms of violence racial conflict produced,yet he struggledto maintain this approachwhen he attemptedto represent black violence.2 Richard Gray hasdescribed black charactersas an "absentpresence" in Faulkner's fiction, a phrasewhich also seemshighly appropriateto his depictionsof black violenCe.3 He repeatedlyintroduces or gesturestowards this theme,yet refusesto confront the full range of potential motives for and meaningsof black violence. In particular, Faulkner always struggles to acknowledge the possibility of a direct relationshipbetween this violenceand the experienceof racistoppression. His novelsarc structuredby a tension betweenconfronting the realities of black violence beneaththe demonised.tropes generated by racist fantasies,and denyingthis violence. Light in 4ugust (1932), constitutes Faulkner's most sustained, unflinching interrogationof Southernblack experience.Although the protagonistof this novel is neverestablished to be evenpartially black, many elementsof Joe Christmas'scharacter

J. Baldwin,"Stranger in the Village, 7hePrice ofthe 2-icketp. 88. P. Weinstein,WNWFJseBuILove?, 39. Quotedin: D. Fowler and A. J. Abadie,eds, Bazilkier and Women.Faulkier modYokq%*mpha 1985 jJackson:University of MississippiPress, 1996), p. 297. K Gray, YheLife of William Faulkner (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996),p. 41. 68 ensurehe constitutesFaulkner's most trenchanteffort to anatomiscthe meaningof black violence. As Philip Weinstein observes, Faulkner "cntcr[s] blacknessý"in an unprecedentedway in this novel, replacingthe "surfacetranquillity" which charactcrised his earlier representationsof blacknesswith a view of "thc unmasterableanguish that race can foment in black and white alikc."4 Joe cannotbe seenas a "black" characterin an uncomplicatedway. His total estrangementfrom black culture is well summarisedby Weinstein:"Joe experiencesblackness not as a cultural resource(a shareddimension of innumerablehuman beings, out of which they generatelife narrativeslike and unlike everyoneelse's) but as a white man's intolerablesecret. "s Joe lives exclusively on the white side of the colour-line until adulthood,which determineshis perceptionof black people.When he lives with a black woman,rather than trying to know her as a subjective human being, he 'Ides to breath into himself the dark odor, the dark and inscrutable thinking and being of negroes."6 At one point he finds himself lost in the black areaof Jefferson, feels "surroundedby [ ] invisible They to him and ... negrocs. seemed enclose like bodiless voices murmuring talking laughing in a languagenot his" (114). He is excludedfrom the signifying economyof the black communityand is no more able to perceivethem as individual humanbeings than a normativewhite Southerner. These aspectsof Joe's characterisationhave led many critics to regard him as almost psychologicallywhite. Andre Bleikasten has written that his grandfatherand McEachemalmost completely determine his subjectivedevelopment, teaching him "race hatred" and "the harsh virtues of white Protestantvirility. lie claims: "Mentally and if he did believe emotionally he is indeed a white Southernmale - or would be not himself to be tainted by blackness."7 While there is ample textual evidenceto support suchinterpretations, it is alsopossible to view Joe'scharacter in a radicallydifferent way. Similarly, critics usually attribute Joe's violence to his racial indeterminacy.For some, such as Lee Jenkins and Andre Bleikasten,the horrific sensationof contaminationby

'P. Weinstein,What, pp. 39-40. P. Weinstein,What, p. 40 W. Faulkner,LJght in August(New York: Vintage, 19901pp. 225-226.Subsequent referciriccs tO this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 7 A. Bleikastcn."The ClosedSociety and its Subjects",NewE&wys on 1:ight in Augusfýed. by K Millgate (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 84. 69

alien blood makesJoe violent" Others,such as Philip Weinstein,attribute Joes violence to the mental turmoil he suffers becausehe cannotattain any coherentsense of self or agencyin a societywhere identity is basedon a racial binarism.9 Olga Vickery, Richard Gray and Michael Walchoz seeJoe's violence as a deliberatestrategy to underminethe racial binary which underpinsidentity in his culture by meetingany attempt to classify him as black or white with violence.10 All these interpretationsare valid, because Faulknerhas massively overdetermined Joe Christmas.Yet it is also possibleto seeJoe's racial indeterminacyas a masking device for the investigationof a form of violence which both fascinatedand terrified Faulkner. Joe's racial indeterminacyexposes a tension which pervadesLight in August between shattering demonised stereotypesof black violence, and taking refuge in strategies of denial. As Juda Bennett observes, Joe's indeterminacy plants a "deconstructiveseed of not knowing in the text"" It gives this novel the potential to "reread and even critique all past representationsof blackness"which Joe intersects; exotic primitive, tragic mulatto,Black BeastRapist and sacrificial lynching victim. 12Joe exposesthe discursive,constructed nature of humanidentity basedon supposedlyinnate racial characteristics.Concomitantly, he forces readersto consider black violence as somethingother than the productof innateracial characteristics.13 He exposesthe forms of black violenceportrayed as historical reality by TbomasDixon as constructsprojected onto Affican Americansfrom within white minds.As Philip Weinsteinobserves: "Black may now appeartransparently as a murderouslyprojective state of the white mind when traditionalmarkers of racial differencehave lost theirnative' authority." 14

'L. Jenkins,Faulkner andBlack-H%iteRelations (New York- ColumbiaUnivcrsityl`ressý 1981), p. 64, 9 P. Weinstein,Faulkner`sSubjectA CosmosNo One Owns(Cambridge: Cambridge University press. 1992),pp. 104-107. 10See: 0. Vickery, 2heNovels of William Faulkner (BatonRouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), p. 69, IL Gray,Life, p. 185and M. Walcho7,"Marginality and William Faulkner'sLight in Augusr, Cultural Differencearullhe Literivy Text,ed. by W. Siemerlingand Y, Schwenk(Iowa City- Universityof Iowa Press,1996), p. 140. 11J. BenneM77)e Passing Figure: Racial Confusion/it ModernAmerican Literature (New York: Peter Lang. 1998),p. 100. 12J. Bennett,Passing, p. 104. 13See: J. Bryant Wittenburg,'Race in Light in August:Wordsymbols and ObverseReflectionsr, 7k CambridgeCompanion to William Faulkner,ed. by P. Weinstein(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),for the most detailedexample of sucha reading.R. Gray,Life, pp. 177-193and P. Weinstein, Faulkner's,pp. 104-107,also interpretthe novel in this way. 14p. Weinstein,Faulkner's, p. 52. 70

However, Joes racial indeterminacy also limits the text's deconstructive, subversivepotential concerningstereotypes of black violence. BecauseJoe is never definitively shown to have black blood, and is so insistently isolated from the black community, Faulkner occludes the possibility his violence says something universal about the relation between white racism and black violence. Instead, his violence constitutesa specialcase, fundamentally different in termsof causesto normativeblack violence. In early drafts of the manuscript,when Joe Christmasdefinitely had black blood, Faulknerseems to havebeen wary of articulatinghis characteroffering only a few brief glimpsesof his consciousness.15 The removal of any definite connectionbetween Joe and blacknessseems to allow Faulknerto get closer to his psychology,although, as we shall see, he maintains many gaps and ambiguities regarding Joe's motives for violence.It seemsFaulkner was unwilling to considerthe terrible suspicionwhich Joe's story raises;that white racismproduces the sameanguish and the samedesire to commit violenceit producesin JoeChristmas in all African Americans. The historical lynching which seems to have inspired Joe Christmas's fate corroboratesmy theory.In 1908,Nelse Patton, a black bootleggerin Oxford, Mississippi, was arrestedfor slitting the throat of a white woman,almost severingher headfrom her body. She tried unsuccessfullyto defend herself with a gun. lie was later taken from Oxfordjail and hangedfrom a telephonepole by a furious mob, not more thana thousand yardsfrom Faulkner'schildhood bome. 16 The similaritiesbetween this incidentand Light inAugust lead Joel Williamson to "Clearly, [ I he the Patton "17 claim: ... recalled affair. Faulkner appearsto have been thinking about what could drive a black man to such terrible violence,but he could not acceptthe possibilitythat the rootsof suchviolence lay in generalpolitical dissatisfactionamong Mississippi's black population.Thus he could only allow a realistic conceptionof black anger and violence into his writing in a distortedform, disguisedin whiteface. The use of this disguiseplaces Light in August in a long literary tradition of portraying white-looking African American charactersas more human,intelligent and

13X Fadiman,Faulhner's, P. 196. 16 See:J. Williamson,Firulkwr amlSouthernHistory (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993), pp. 157- 162. 17L Williamson,FaulAner, p. 159. 71

sensitive than fully black characters.Ironically, one of the founding texts was the apparentlyanti-racist Uncle Tom's Cabin, which representedslavery as a far more humiliating, agonisingexperience for the almost white Georgeand Eliza Harris than for the darker Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima.18 Even early African American literature reproducedthis ideology, authors like FrancesE. W. Harper and Pauline E. Hopkins reduce dark-skinned characters to comic stereotypes,while the burden of racist oppressionis only really sufferedand understoodby light-skinnedprotagonists. 19 In the sameway, Faulknernever explores whether racism causes normative African Americans the samemental agonies Joe Christmassuffers. As Judith Wittenburgobserves, the few black charactersare kept Other to the text becausethe reader'saccess to them is always doubly 20They lack Joe's dissatisfaction; mediated. angerand they arc reconciledto their situation in some inscrutable way Faulkner does not try to analyse. Joe's racial indeterminacyalso suggeststhat, as Philip Weinsteinputs it, Faulknercould only begin to focus properlyon the experienceof being black in his society,"by imagining himself as, impossibly,nightmarishly, one of thcm."21 Faulkner could not transcendthe equation of whitenesswith true humanitywhich wasaxiomatic in Americanliterature. Critics, including Philip Weinstein,often describeLight in August as Faulkner's most violent novel: "Its graphically detailed violence is unmatchedelsewhere in Faulkner's [ ] There is beating, handslaid brutally bodies in work ... more more upon Light in August than in any other of Faulkner'snovels. "22 What also marks out Light in August is the proportionof this violencewhich crossesthe colour-line.As Scott Romine observes,this novel is highly unusualamong Faulkner's novels in "lacking evena vestige of paternalisticrhetoric" and excluding the "benign stercoqW of the "good nigger."23 These elementsare replacedby Faulkner's clearestacknowledgement of the brutality inherentto the Southernracial order. Faulknersaid later that during the writing of Light

1111.Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1979). 19See: P. E. Hopkins, A Love Supreme (London: The X Press, 1995) and F. F. W. Ifarper, Iola Leroy ýBoston: Beacon Press, 1987). 0 J. Wittenberg, "Race7, p. 161. 21P. Weinstein, fflial, p. 40. 22P. Weinstein, Faullawr's, pp. 50-51. 23S. Ronýne, 77teNarrative Forms ofSouthern Community (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999)p. 150. 72

in August, he fclt something"pushing inside him to get OUt."24 Eric Sundquistinterprets this as the black elementof Faulkner's psychein general,but I regardit as specifically his fascinationwith the anger and potential violence which he suspectedlay beneath black acquiescenceto Southernoppression. 25 The provenanceand form of the novel supportthis view. Light in August beganas the story of Gail Hightower and Lena Burch, but as Faulkner worked on the manuscript,the story of Joe Christmasbecame central to the novel. He increasedthe focus on Joe's consciousness,and the six chapterflashback on Joe's childhood was the last major section of the novel to be written.26 This suggests Faulknerbecame increasingly fascinated with the figure of Joe Christmasas he worked on the text. Many critics have noted the fierce tension within this narrative betweena centrifugal force which threatensto tear the novel into dispersedfragments and an equally powerful centripetalforce which holds the narrativestructure together, "keeping the volatile materialsof the novel just below the flashpoint."27 This centrifugal energy stemsfrom the central act of black violence which this novel strugglesto contain.Ille killing of Joannaconstitutes the traumatic centre of Light in August, a moment the narrative revolves around but can never actuafly articulate, always shifting when it reachesthis point. Tle centripetalenergy stems from Faulkner'sdesire to articulatethis violence, which is shown by his repeatedreturns to it from different perspectives.The novel entersJefferson after the killing hasoccurred, and chapter four containsan account from Byron Bunch of the incident which is at leastthird hand.Ile narrativethen jumps back to the night of the killing in chapterfive, but the chapterends just beforethe crucial event occurs.Tben, six chaptersnarrate Joe's life history untiL in chaptertwelve, the

24Gwyn andJ. Blotner,Faulkwr in the University(New York. RandomI louse, 1965),p. 77. 25E. Sundquist,Faulkner. - Me HouseDivided (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press,1983), p. 79. 26See: R. Gray,Life, pp. 77-78and R. Fadiman,Faullater's Light in August:A Descriptionand Interpretationofihe Revisions(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975),pp. 64-67and pp. 79- 79. 27Nt Kreiswerth,'Plots and Counterplots:The Structure Light in Augusr, NewF-tva o ight in of .pn1: August,pp. 57-58.See also: S. Romine,Nwrative, p. 151, andC. Brooks, William Faulhiwr.,7he YoknalapawphaCounty (New I laven: Yale University Press,1963, p. 52 andp. 69. Eric Sundquist interpretsthis tensionas a consequenceof the threatto the systemof racial distinctionsthat underpinswhite Southernidentity which the story of JoeChristmas produces. lie claimsthis threatleads the novel to a "violent distinctions[ I from lives assertionof ... tearingaway eachother and storiesas they threatento becomejoined, " producing"a violent andalienating narrative form. " E. Sundquist,Foullaper, p. 91 andp. 73

narrative again reachesthe night of Joanna'sdeath. This is the closest we get to a narrationof the actual event,but just beforeJoe kills Joanna,we jump forward to what happensafterwards. The narrative voice of Light in August also suggeststhe difficulties; Faulkner experiencedarticulating Joe's violence. Scott Rominedescribes it as the most "unstable featureof the novel's intricatedesign, [its] complexshifts in focalizationand voice work to underminewhatever subjective stability it might seemto offer."2" Although bigoted certaintiesare often positedas truth, the narratoralso frequentlyemploys the languageof approximation, as Richard Godden notes.2' These approximates are particularly prominentduring attemptsto articulateJoe's consciousness.As a child, Joe is described as preparingto be whippedby McEachernwith "pride perhapsand despair"(149). When he first entersJoanna's house through the window, the narratorsays: "Perhaps he thought of that other window which he had usedto useand of the rope upon which he had hadto rely, perhapsnot" (230). Although the narrative is often focalised through Joe, and fleeting momentsof his subjectivityare articulatedin italics, the narratornever has total accessto his thoughtprocess. This suggestsFaulkner both desiredand fearedto articulate Joe's view of events.The narrativebecomes most uncertainwhen attemptingto describe Joe's motivations for violence. When Joe considerskilling Lucas Burch the narrator states:'Terhaps thinking hadalready gone far enoughto tell him This is not the right one Anyway he did not reach for therazoe, (104). This uncertaintysuggests the general epistemological instability of the narrative stems from Faulknees anxiety about articulatingthe motivesbehind black violence.It reinforcesthe impressionFaulkner was too troubled by the thought of what he may discover to undertake a genuine representationof black consciousness.Ilowcvcr, Joe's Othernessdoes not make him a screenfor the projectionof represseddesires like ThomasDixon's Black Beast figures. Joe's skin is repeatedlydescribed as "parchmentcolor[ed], " and, as we shall see, the

94.1 believethis tensionalso resultsfrom the difficulty Faulknerexperienced articulating and containing Joe'sacts of violencewithin a novel. 28S. Romine,Nwrative, p. 151. 29P, Godden,"Call Me Niggerl': Raceand Speechin FaulkneesLight in Aagus#7,7heJoul7mcdof Ameriam Slu&es, 14:2 (1980),235-248, p. 244. 74

attemptsof white peopleto inscribe their notions of blacknessupon him are explicitly analysedand exposed as misguided.30 Faulkner'sunprecedented concentration on black violencein Light in August was related to the historical moment of the novel's production. Although, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Black Beast image receded in American culture in the twenties, 31 horrific "spectacle lynchings" still occurred in the South well into the thirties. 'Me Black Beast fantasy may have become less prominent in the white mindset, but could still become operative again at times of crisis when a scapegoatwas required. The onset of the Depression increased racial tensions in the South and produced new outbreaks of black violence. In Alabama in 1931, while Faulkner was writing Light inftust, a sheriff was shot attempting to break up a black sharecroppers' union meeting, leading to a wave of repressive white violence in the state.32 Other similar incidents plagued the South during 33 the 1930s, usually in response to the worsening economic conditions of black life. Faulkner would never directly acknowledge systemic problems within his society as causesof black violence and Joe's violence bears little direct relation to the economic and political circumstances of Southern blacks. Nevertheless, there are signs within the novel Faulkner was deeply aware of how these circumstances were straining race relations in the South.34 Furthermore,Joe Christmasembodies a racist fantasyfrom the moment of this novel's productionas accuratelyas the Black Beastcharacters in ThomasDixon's novels. Joel Williamson claims that as the Black Beast was "pushed below the threshold of 35 consciousness," the wishful, fearful fantasiesinvested in this figure were displaced. White Americans began "to fear hidden blackness,the blackness within seeming

" WhenJoe first appearshis skin tone is describedthis way, (34) andalmost every subsequent reference to his skin or flesh repeatsthis trope. 31See: G. E. 11ale.MaAhig "iteriess, pp. 215-227for detailsof how "spectaclelynchinge continuedto occur, albeit with decreasingfrequency, until 1934. 32See: 11. Shapiro, "ite PolencewidBlack Response(Amherst: University of MassachusettsPress, 1988).pp. 226-229. 33See: 11. Shapiro, Write, pp. 231-3and 289 for examplesof other similar incidentsfrom the 1930s. 34For example,consider the angerof the white workersat the planingmill, whenLucas Burch tells than: "Lay into it, you slavingbastardsl" (45) Thesemen have been compelled to take traditionallyblack jobs by the worseningeconomic conditions and they are paranoidabout being identified as black. Suchpressures leadto a moreinsistent and violent assertionof racial distinctionsthroughout Jefferson society. 33j. Williamson,Crucible, p. 464. 75

whiteness.They beganto look with great suspicionon mulattoeswho looked white.-36 The socio-economicchanges wrought by the GreatDepression exacerbated this paranoia. In a nation which adheredto a "one-drop" theory of blackness,there was a need for knowledgeof people's racial lineage if the colour-line was to be policed effectively.37 But declining cotton prices forced many black and white farmersand sharecroppersoff the land to becomeitinerant strangers,like Joe Christmas,searching for work in towns and cities. As Philip Weinsteinobserves, in this environment"of untrackedstrangers and unknowngenealogies, race distinctions take on a new anxiety,for anyonecould turn out to be black."38 During this period, the literature of 'ýpassing7increasingly sought to exploit white anxieties about racial indeterminacy.James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), which was initially published anonymously,purported to be a work of non-fiction by a man who really had adopteda white identity. Nella Larsen'sPassing (1929) also implied that large numbersof African Americans were passingunnoticed into white society, and even marrying white men without provoking their suspicion.39 George Schuyler chose to focus his 1930 satire on race relations on the proliferation of a scientific formula which whitens black skin, leading, to the horror of white society, to the dissolution of racial distinctions in 40 America. Black No More plays on the samewhite anxiety which Faulkneranalyses in more seriousterms. However, the differencesbetween Joe's story and other passingnarratives arc highly significant.In novels like TheAutobiography ofan ex-ColoredM an, Pas. sing and Black No More, charactersare awareof their true racial origins and adopt whitenessor blacknessas consciousperformance. The only novel which placesits protagonistin a remotelysimilar situationto Joe Christmasis Sinclair Lewis's KingsbloodRoyal (1947). But Neil Kingsblood.only discovershis possibleblack ancestryas an adult. Although this is a profoundexperience for him, which radically altershis characterand his perspective

36J. Williamson, Crucible, pp. 464465. 31 The 1930 US Census carried the following instruction: -A person of mixed white and Negro blood should be returned as a Negro no matter how small the percentageof Negro blood. " C. Vann Woodwardý American Counterpoint., Slmwry and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston: Little. Brown, 1971). p. 86. 38 P. Weinstein, Faulkner's p. 52. 39N. Larsen, QuIcAsandarki Passing (London: Serpent's Tail, 2001). 40G. Schuyler, Black No More (London: The X Press, 1998). 76

on his society,being identified as black from a racist perspectivenever condemns him to 41 the self-laceratingextremes which Joe suffers. Joe's putative blacknesshas to go deeper,it has to be a fundamental,pre-conscious part of his psyche to make him a suitable vehicle for the investigation of black violence. Yet at the same time, this blacknesshas to remainindeterminate because Faulkner would not properlyacknowledge the relation between Joe's violence and the effects of racism on the wider black community. In Joe Christmas, Faulkner createsa unique mask to investigateblack violence. Joe's experiencessuggest Faulkner did want, on one level, to understandand articulatethe generalrelationship between racism and black violence.To understandthis, it is f irst necessaryto considerthe generalwhite attitudetowards blacks in this novel. The white community in Light in August cannot perceiveblacks as autonomous,subjective individuals. When the sheriff arrives at the crime sceneafter Joanna'sdcatbý he simply demandsof his deputies:"Get me a nigger" (291). He proceedsto questionthis arbitrary "nigger" as if his blacknessensures he will know the detailsof this crime, committedby anothermember of his race, becausehe views blacks collectively. When Lucas Burch sendsa black youth with a note for the sheriff, he percicvcshim in the following wa)r

Standingbeside the porch now, materialisedapparently from thin air, is a ncgro who may be either a grown imbecile or a hulking youth. His face is black, still, also quite inscrutable. They stand looking at one another. Or rather Brown [Burch's pseudonym]looks at the negro.He cannottell if the ncgro is looking at him or not (435).

This encounter is immensely revealing. Burch is unable to perceiving the black man's age, intelligence or even to intercept his gaze, anticipating Ralph Ellison's concept of Invisibility. To be black before the gaze of this society is to be an object, a particular manifestation of the shadowy, amorphous Other which black people collectively constitute. This "Other" role is best demonstratedby a simile which is highly suggestive of the way whites define themselvesas discrete, autonomous individuals in opposition to amorphous blackness. As Joe Christmas emerges from the darkness in the beam of car headlights, he watches: "his body grow white out of the darkness like a kodak print

41S. Lewis,, VngsbloodRc5W (London: Jonathan Cape, 1948). 77 emergingfrom the liquid" (108). As PatriciaMcKee observes,this imageof photographic developmentimplies that: "the white shapeenters representation only in contrastto the black [ ] it is development, before shapelessmass. ... a meansof a medium necessary entry into mediaof representation.A2 In this context, the connectionsbetween normative black experienceand Joe's experiencesof racism become clear. Joe's experiencesof dissolving into a selfless, inhuman black massmay appearmore extremeand unrelentingbecause he grows up under the full glare of white racism, without the mediation of black folk culture. However,his terrible psychologicaldifficulties reflect problemswhich theoristsof black psychologyhave identified as universalfor blacks in a racist society.David Marriott has written that:

Thereis [ ]a between imago the fantasy black ... remarkablecorrelation the - - of in life black Behind images[ ] lurks dark men cultural and self-images. those ... a intruder, albeit framed by a black (and white) vision of black identity, an imago stalkinga little black child throughhis memoriesand dreamS.43

Joe Christmashas no "black vision of black identity" to frame the "dark intruder" in his childhood 'ýmemoricsand dreams." From his earliestinterpellation, he is only offered a racist, phobic imago as the basis of self image.44 The other children at the orphanage, probably motivated by Doc Hincs, hail him as "nigger," embeddingthis label as a traumatic insult in the structureof his self-imagebefore he even discoversits spccific implications.This gives the term "nigger" and the racist imagesit connotesgreat power over Joe, for as Faulkner repeatedly states: "Memory believes before knowing remembers"(119). Noel Polk unpacksthis to mean:"Memory (the unconscious)believes (retains all of the trauma) before knowing (consciousness)remembers (brings it to the surface)."43 At the age of five, Joe is hailed at a momentwhen be is absorbedin self- contemplation:"He was not bearinganything now. Very likely he would not haveheard a

42P. McKee,ProduchW American Races (Durham: Duke UniversityPress, 1999), p. 135. 43D. MarriottýOn Black Alen. p. 14. 441 use the terms"interpellatiorr and"hair in Louis Althusser'ssense, to describehow a personenters societyin a particularsubject position. See: L Althusser,"Ideology and IdeologicalState Apparatuses7, Lenin widPhilosophy wxl Odier&Ws, trans.by B. Brewster(London: New Left Books, 19711pp. 127- 186. 45N. Polk, Chiliken p. 85. 78

[ ]. He be in himself, himself gunshot ... seemedto turned upon watching sweating, watchinghimself smearanother worin of toothpasteinto his mouth" (122). TIIis moment of self-regardevokes the crucial Lacanianmoment in subjectformation when the child perceivesa reflection of its body and introjccts it as an imago of selfhood.For Joe, this moment is interruptedand fatally inflected by the dietitian calling him a "little nigger bastardl" (122). This momentdramatises an experienceFrantz Fanon believed all blacks suffer; the replacementof the "corporealschema" the child obtainsthrough identification with its miffor image with a "historico-mcial schema.""s The "historico-racialschema7 refers to the dominantimage of the black man constitutedby the white racist culture in which be lives out of a "thousanddetails, anecdotes,stories. rA7 In Joe's culture, these "stories" associateblacks with bestiality,uncontrollable sexuality and violence.Thus, his self-image is tainted by phobic images of blacknessbefore he becomesa conscious subject,beginning a processof alienationfrom his body which contributesconsiderably to his violence. After he is adoptedby the McEachems,Joe continuesto suffer this senseof himself as a despisedblack object.As Lee Jenkinsobserves, Joe can only understandMr McEachem'sobsessive, Calvinist view of him as predestinedfor sin and corruptionas a referenceto his statusas "nigger," even though McEachernis unawareof his possible black origins (79). Joe strugglesto repressthe effectsof this treatmentto an unconscious level and constructan egobased on a more positiveself-image. He is severelyhampered, however,by his total alienationfrom the black folk culture which could supportsuch an image.As RichardGray observes,he "cannot,even in his mind, stepoutside the termsof moral and social self-definition predicated in the word 'niggcr' even though he instinctively knows them to be wrong."'s His ego is always extremely vulnerable to external confirmations of his unconsciousself-image. He suffers sclf-fragmcntation wheneverhe comesunder the glare of white racism throughouthis life; he is gradually destroyed,mentally and physically, by the pressureto perform the fantasiesof white society. This situation may appearmore extremethan normativeblack experience,but once again, there is a remarkablesimilarity with Fanon'stheories of black psychology.

46F. Fanon, Black Skh4 "ite Masks,p. I 11. 47F. Fanon, Black, p. 112. 79

As David Marriott has written, for Fanon,"to be black is to be alreadyinterfered with, violated by a whitenesswhich comes from the inside ouL A whitenessthat not only distrustsbut hates.But what to do with an unconsciousthat appearsto hateyou? "9 The only answerJoe Christmascan discoveris to externaliseits agonisingpsychic cffects in extremeviolence. Joe's adult perceptionsof his body emphasisethe extentof his alienationand the influence of the white racist gazeover his bodily self-relation.During his relationship with Joannahe "beganto seehimself as from a distance,like a man being suckeddown into a bottomlessmorase' (260). In its context,this sensationappears to result from Joe's moral outrage at the degradednature of his relations with Joanna.However, it also suggeststhe effectsof racismon his self-image.His tendencyto perceivehis body "from a distance"in posesof disintegrationshows how racismhas alienated him and dissipated his senseof self, evoking comparisonwith W. E. B. DuBois's concept of double- consciousness.DuBois claims that America "yields [the Negro] no true self- consciousnessbut only lets him seehimself throughthe revelationof the other world."50 Joe lacks a "true self-consciousness"and can only contemplatehis body from an alienated,third personperspective, betraying the intrusion of the white racist gazeinto his psyche.Philip Weinsteinhas written that at the root of Joe's psychopathologylies his inability to "achieve individuation, [he] cannot bring into focus either his mind or his body.01 lie can only view his mind and body through the Icns of a violently distorting white racist perspective.After he kills Joanna,he rcflects on the white possewho are chasinghim: "It seemedto him that he could seehimself being huntedby white men at last into the black abysswhich had been waiting, trying for thirty yearsto drown him" (331). This may seemtypical of his tendencyto essentialiscblackness as an amorphous substancewhich destroysindividual selihood. However, at this point, white society is working strenuouslyto force Joeinto the role of Black BeastRapist. The "black abyss"is not blacknessas a physicalsubstance, but the demeaning,amorphous status to which the white racist gaze reducesblacks. Therefore,this thought makesexplicit the extent to

43 &Gray, Life,p. 186. 49D. Marriott,Black, p. 79. 50W. E. B. DuBois,Souls, p. 5. 51P. Weinstein, O'hat, p. 171. 80

which Joe's problemsof self-imageand subject formation, his frequent sensationsof dissolutionand loss of sel&controlare a consequenceof the pressureof being reshaped and dissolvedby the white racistgaze. The narrative of Joe's childhood offers many alternative explanationsfor his violencewhich obscureand distort the devastatingeffects of racismon subject-formation. This is the clearestexample of the strategyof denial in Light in August.Joe's childhood is plaguedby cruel and violent carers,particularly his foster father McEachernwho beats him regularly,setting an examplehe clearly imitates.On one occasion,McEachern whips him with a strap: "It rose and fell, deliberate,numbered, with deliberateflat reports" (159). This is undeniably similar to Joe's beating of Lucas Burch "with those hard, slow, measured blows, as if he were meting them out by count" (103). Furthermore, these carers inculcate extreme attitudes towards religion, women and sexuality in Joe's mind which offer obvious explanations for much of his later violence. His affair with Bobbie Allen, where many of his sexual problems begin, was the last section added to the flashback his 52 This on childhood. encouragesthe reader to attribute the violent breakdown of his relationship with Joanna to the same sexual problems. Joe also encountersviolent criminals during this affair, who have a clear influence on him. He picks up the phrase"for sweetJesus" from Max, encouragingthe readerto attribute his later "hard-boilecr attitude towards violent criminality to Max's influence. Faulkner massivelyoverdetermines Joe's psychologyto concealthe disturbingimplications of his story aboutthe effectsof the kind of racismJoe suffers on the wider black community. Faulkneralso heavily overdeterminesJoe's acts of violence,but they nevertheless usually coincide with attemptsby white people to fix him within a racist image of blackness.This violence is more than just the outrageof suffering the most grievous insult possiblewithin that society,being labelled a "nigger," becauseof Joe's agonising suspicionthat blacknessis an internalconstituent of his selfbood.The white racist gazeis always alreadyinternal as well as external for Joe. lie spendshis life fleeing from the demeaning,agonising effects of this gaze. But at moments when he is externally identif ied as black, his "white' unconsciousoverwhelms the fragile boundariesof his ego becauseits perspectiveis replicatedby externalreality. Joe is plaguedby sensationsof

53See: R. Fadiman,Faulkmr's, p. 93. 81

self-fragmentationand loss of individual agency,repeatedly thinking: "Something is going to happento me" (118). Being identified as black causeshim to lose his senseof self-intcgrity and agency.Only violenceenables him to externalisehis mentalchaos and anguishand obtaintemporary feelings of calm and self-control. Joe first becomesviolent in the novel when LucasBurch explicitly attemptsto fix him within the categoryof "nigger." Burch tries to asserthis superiorityover Joe through referenceto the normativeSouthern racial hierarchy,saying: "You're a niggcr, see?You [ ] But I'm said so yourself ... white. I'm a wh -" (104). Joeviolently cuts off this verbal demonstrationof racial differencebecause he cannottolerate being reduced to a degraded object, subordinateand inferior to the authentic humanity of white men; he even considerskilling Burch. This explains Joe's apparentlymotiveless attack on a black prostituteas a teenager.In the darknessof the sawmill shed,the black girl's body takes on a formless,blurred quality from Joe's perspective,symbolising everything he fears aboutblackness:

Then it seemedto him that he could seeher - something,prone, abject; her eyes perhaps.Leaning, he seemedto look down into a black well and at the bottom saw two glints like reflections of dead stars.Ile was moving, becausehis foot touchedher. [ ] lie kicked her hard, [ ] hitting her blows, ...... at with wide, wild [ ] by haste(156-157). ... enclosed the womanshenegroand the

The compound neologism "Womanshenegro"sums up how blackness and female sexuality combine terrifyingly in this scene for Joe, threatening to swallow and destroy him. Joe perceives her eyes as "dead stars"; black holes threatening to draw him in and reduce him to black nothingness.Joe's fears were made clearer in a manuscript version of the novel, where Joe hears "the falsetto voices of children" shouting "Nigger, niggcr! " as 53 he attacks the girl. These are presumablythe voices of his infant tormentorsat the orphanage,confirms his violence stems from his fear of the psychologicaleffects of being identified as black. But the publishedtext veils Joe's motives, claiming no one "knew why he had fought And he could not have told them" (157). Tlis has led many critics to interpretthis attack as a result of the sexualneuroses and the fear of merging with femininefluidity engenderedin Joe's mind by McEachcrn'supbringing. But evenin 82 its published form this attack still contains a significant racial element becauseit contrastswith Joe's later sexualencounters with white women.lie can consummatethese relations,even though they are strainedby ambivalentfeelings of desire,disgust and fear, without breaking down into violence. This exemplifies how Faulkner ovcrdetermines Joe's violenceto disguiseits implicationsregarding the links betweenracism and black violence. However, Faulkner did not modify the text exclusively in ways designedto reducethe racial resonancesof Joe's violence;he vacillatedbetween disguising them and interrogatingthem more thoroughly in ways which suggesthis ambivalenceabout this subject.The attackon LucasBurch consideredabove was addedto the manuscriptquite late in the compositionprocess. 54 Even occasions when Joe becomes violent in apparently racially innocent situationshave connectionswith his fear of being identified as black. This cmphasises Faulkner's tendency to investigate black violence in disguised ways. Consider McEachern'sattack on the teenageJoe for secretlyattending a dance:"perhaps it wasnot face [ ] he had that he struck the of that child ... whom nurturedand shelteredand clothed" atý"since it was not that child's face which he was concernedwith, but the face of Satan, which he knew as well" (204-205).Joe can only understandMcEachern's perception of him as inherently sinful as a referenceto his blackness.For McEachemto deny his humanity by reducinghim to a manifestationof Satanis an intolerable,self-dcstroying experiencefor Joe.By striking back and felling McEachcmwith a chair, Joeexternalism this intolerablesensation in physicalviolence and gainsa new senseof individual agency and self-control.lie exultantly declares:"I have done itl I have done itl I told them I would!" (207). This is strikingly similar to the mannerin which Bigger Thomasgains a new senseof agency,a senseof control over his own life throughviolence in NativeSon, as we shall see. However, by keeping this scenefree of any racial element,Faulkner suppressesthe disturbing possibilitiesit raisesabout the cffects of committing violence for the wider black population. One of the most potentially radical yet confused and ambiguousscenes of violence occurs when Joe enters a black church, attacking an elderly churchgoerand

$3P, Fadimar4Fmilkner's, pp. 82-83. $4R. Fadiman,Faulkier's, P. 144. 83

cursingboth God and the congregation"with his handsraised like a preacher"(322-323). This violence may be an expressionof Joe's anger at the passivity and resignationof black Southernreligion. He could be cursing the congregationfor acceptingthe racist images of blacknessas innately sinful which he has always associatedwith religion. However, during this extraordinaryscene, the narrator is almost totally excluded from Joe's consciousness,no attempt is made to articulate his motives, his thoughtsor the words he says to the congregation. We only regain a direct perspectiveon his consciousnesswhen he begins to passively accept his blackness. This reaffirms Faulkner'sambivalence about representing black angerwith the socialorder of the South. The black congregationbelieve Joe is white, so Roz Thompson'sattempt to attack Joe with a razor for knocking down his grandfatherconstitutes the one definite momentof black violencedirected against a representativeof white racismin the text. However,this subversivemoment is immediatelyrepressed when Roz is fclled by one blow from Joe Christmas(323-325). The onemoment of seriousviolence which completelyviolates the paradigmI am tracing throughthe text occurswhen Joe savagelyattacks a Northernwhite prostitutefor not caring about his possible black blood. Here, Joe appearsto becomeviolent not becausehe is perceivedfrom a racist perspectivein termsof a degradingstereotype, but becausehe is not. After this he is "sick" for two years,and he switchesfrom fighting white men who dare to call him black, to fighting "the negro who called him white" (225). Theseincidents constitute another example of how Faulkneroverdetermincs Joe's violence.They are narratedquickly andbricfly in the last major sectionof the narrativeto be written, and they are situatedjust before Faulknerreturns to the narrationof Joe and Joanna's relationship.This suggeststhese incidents were a late addition to the text, designedto make Joe's violence and its motives appearunique, not "black" in any nonnativeway. The central act of black violence in Light in. August is always clidcd by the narrative,and becomesa contestedsite on which conflicting groupsinside and outside the text attemptto imposemeaning. Even the significanceof omitting the actual act of violence from the narrativeis debatable.Philip Weinsteinclaims "Faulkner deliberately leavesthe physical event shrouded,so that its ideological repercussions(its alignment 84 within a racist discourse)can operatemore visibly."55 This is one effect of omitting this event,but I believethe reasonsfor this omissionmust also involve Faulkner'sanxieties about representingblack violence.Faulkner structured the novel in a way which offers a wealth of potential motives for this violence, placing the accountof Joe's childhood betweenthe two allemptsto narrateJoanna's death, but he neverpinpoints one of these motivesas a definite cause.This may show Faulkner'sawareness of the impossibility of circumscribingextreme violence within any singlelinguistic act However,it also enables Faulknerto avoid citing a specific connectionbetween Joes experiencesof racism and this violence.A close readingof the details aboutthis killing that Faulknerdoes give us suggestshis elision of this moment was not designedto promotethe type of fantasies Thomas Dixon's novels encouraged.Nevertheless, by omitting this act of violence, Faulknerleaves its meaningopen to interpretationand increasesthe possibilitythat critics will read it as an attemptto reinforce racist stereotypesof black violence.For example, Myra Jehleninsists this story of a "New Englandold maid," who is sexuallyfascinated by black being "murdered [ ] in her bed by " is "so men, ... a razor-toting nigger, [ ] it be ironically intendedto stereotypican event ... one wonderswhether might not depict racismas a self-fulfilling white concoction."56 She rejects this possibility of ironic intention, however,claiming the rest of the novel participatesin the definition of raceas biological andessential, not cultural andarbitrary. This readingpositions this novel in the tradition of ThomasDixon's fiction, an admonitorytalc about the dangersof allowing sexually violent black men into contact with white women, but it lacks subtlety and attentionto detail.The very fact of Joe's racial indeterminacyprevents him being labelled a "razor-totingnigger" eventhough the white communitystruggles to force him into that role. Furthermore,to raise anotherpoint of critical controversy,Joe's killing of Joanna cannoteven be definitively labelledas murder. As John N. Duvall notes, "nearly every critic in the political spectrum from CleanthBrooks to the Marxian Myra Jehlenagrees that Joemurders Joanna. "57 However, even though Byron Bunch, the white community and the narrator all label this act

55P. Weinstein,Faulkner's, p. 126. m M. Jehlen,Class aid CharacterIn Faulkner's South(New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1976), p. 88. 57 J. N. Duvall, Faulkner'sMarginal Couple(Austin: Universityof TexasPress, 1990), p. 19. 85

"murder," the narrationof the build up to it problematisesthe level of volition involved. Before killing Joanna,Joe readsa pulp fiction magazine"of that type whosecovers bear either picturesof young womenin underclothesor picturesof men in the act of shooting one anotherwith pistols" (110). Although Joe appearsto be thinking about Joanna,the descriptionof how he readssuggests the languageof this magazineis enteringhis mind at a deeperlevel: "Ile would not move,apparently arrested and held immobile by a single word which had perhapsnot yet impacted,his whole beingsuspended by the single trivial combinationof letters" (112). His lack of agencyand autonomousselfhood makes him easily influencedby suchlanguage; he is alwayspicking up phrasesand performingroles inspired by others through the novel. This suggestsFaulkner is emphasisingblack violencehas cultural, not biological origins and that Joe's violenceis literally scriptedby the influencesof his culture. Thus, this act of violence foreshadowsBigger Thomas's overdeterminedkilling of Mary in Native Son. Philip Weinsteinsupports such a reading, declaring that: "The body, overloadedwith cultural tracking, is about to explode from abuse."58 However, Faulkner never directly explains Joe's deadly violence, and the description of Joe's motives for going to Joanna'sroom with a razor arc vague and ambiguous.As Scott Romine observes,the narrative's general lack of stability and authority increaseswhenever "it beginsto concernitself with questionsof causationand motivation."59 Joe's chiasmaticphrase before he kills Joanna:"Something is going to happento me. I am going to do something," exemplifiesthis "problem of volition and agency" (104).60 Faulkner's attempt to articulate Joe's thoughts at this moment is complex and convoluted:"he believed with calm paradoxthat he was the volitionless servantof the fatality in which he believed that he did not believe.lie was saying to himself 1hadlodoit alreadyin the pasttense; I had to do it. Shesaid so herser (280). These problemsreflect Faulkner's anxiety about admitting the possibility of a direct connectionbetween the effects of white racismon the black psycheand black violence. He cannotdirectly and openly attribute Joe's killing of Joannato the cffects of racism, becauseto do so would raise the possibility that all African Americans could react

5' P. Weinstein,Faulkner's, p. 126. 39S. Romine,Narrative, p. 159. 86

similarly. His description of their relationship vacillates between exposing this connectionbetween racism and black violenceand disguisingit. In Joe's relationshipwith Joanna,her racist perceptionof him brings to crisis point his problems regarding his self-image. Joanna exemplifies the wishful, fearful complex of affects white Americansinvested in their imagesof blacknessat this time. David Marriott has written that existing on the "ground upon which phobia and fantasy meet" inevitably has "self-destructive,lacerating" consequencesfor the black man.61 Joanna compels Joe to exist on this ground during their relationship. During the conversationshe haswith Joe abouther family history, Joannaexplains that initially she regardedAfrican Americansas things, like "rain, or furniture, or food, or sleclP (252). But her father's descriptionof them as the "white race's doom and curse for its sins" causedher to revise her image of blacknessinto "a shadowin the shapeof a cross," which white children are somehowboth nailed to and suffocatedby (253). This image revealsthe pathologicalextent of her negrophobia.She never perceived blacks as genuine human subjects, then she reduced them from depersonalised,object status to an incorporeal,nightmarish, symbol of the evil whites commit and suffer. Not surprisingly, Joe is "sullen" and "brooding" after this, saying he "know[s]" why Joanna'sfather did not kill Sartorisaficr he shot her grandfatherand her brother(253-254). What he knows is that Joanna'sfather blamed Sartoris's crimes upon black people, and that she has acceptedhis teachingthat her "grandfatherand brotherare lying there,murdered not by one white manbut by the curseGod put on a whole race" (252). Joe has suffered the effects of this theologically grounded association of blackness with evil and a divine curse through his whole life, from his earliest experiencesof the religiousextremism of Doc Hines and McEachcrn.It infuriateshim to discoverthat Joannaalso perceiveshim in such terms,and their relationshipinevitably descendsto ever more violent and mutually degradinglevels after this conversation.I disagreewith LauraDoyle who regardsthis conversationas havinga unique"structure of hoperather than despair," becauseit is the one momentwhere characters stop performing ideological scripts which predestinetheir futures. lnstcadýshe claims, they express

60S. Romine,Narrative, p. 157. 61D. Marriott, Black, p. 13. 87

genuinethoughts and emotionswhich "open up other possiblefutures, " exemplified by Joe'squestion, "when do men that havedifferent blood in them stop hatingone another?- (249). She seesthis as an open dialogue which representsa "momentary purging of racial-sexualmyth" from their relationship.62 In fact, however,Joanna's contribution to this dialogue ensuresracial myth will destroy their relationship.By displacing onto a single woman of Northern ancestrythe Southerntendency to blame and despiseAfrican Americansfor the effects of racism upon them, Faulknerfinds a way to investigatethe effects of Ncgrophobiaupon the black psyche without implicating the white South. Although he acknowledgesthe generalracism of white Southernsociety at other points in the text, he cannotdo so at a momentwhen this racismis so obviouslyand closely linked to the productionof violencein the black mind. But Joannaalso investsdesire in her imageof blackness,as her sexualbehaviour demonstrates.Light in August is unusualfor its time in making white femaledesire for the black maleexplicit, and more radicalthan the first publishedversion of Native Son,as 63 weshallsee. Joannacompels Joe to perform,to becomethe fulfilment of, her fantasies aboutblack malc sexuality.Initially, shemakes him breakinto her houseduring the night and force her into intercoursein a performanceof the Black Beast rape narrative.Joe reflects that: "Even after a year it was as though he enteredby stealth to despoil her virginity eachtime anew" (234). Later, she makeshim discoverher hiddennaked in the garden,and cries: "Negrol Negro! Negrol [whilst] in the wild throesof nymphomania7 (259-260).This transferenceof sexualityfrom bedroomto gardenbetrays her association of black male sexuality with the primitive and bestial. Being perceivedthis way puts intolerablepressure on Joe's body image: "In the less than halflight he appearedto be watching his body, seemingto watch it turning slow and lasciviousin a whisperingof gutter filth like a drownedcorpse in a thick still black pool of more than water" (107). This passageevinces Joes senseof revulsion at Joanna'sfeminine sexuality,betraying the puritanical, Calvinist influence of McEachcrn on his perceptionsof women and sexuality.He has alreadyvisualised Joanna's body in similar ways, seeingher as "two

62L Doyle, "Body", pp. 353-354. 63 This desire is not limited exclusively to the outcast Joanna; the white Southern women who come to the crime scene observe "with secret and passionate and glittering looks and with secret frustrated breasW (290). 88

that in the body [ ] drowning in creatures struggled one ... struggling alternatethroes upon the surface of a black thick pool,'S and imagining that beneathher "clean, austere garments"lies a "rotten richnessready to flow into putrefaction"(260 and262). However, this insistent figuring of Joanna in images of moral and sexual corruptionwhen the narrativeis focalisedfrom Joe's perspectivefeels falseand strained. Joe has never experiencedsuch intense moral or sexual revulsion in his previous relationships,most of which have been with prostitutes.During his affair with Bobbie, the only other relationship we receive a detailed account of, Joe is horrified by menstruation,but this does not lead him anywhereclose to the kind of violence he ultimately inflicts on Joanna. It seemsFaulkner introduces sexual problems in this relationship which, although clearly connectedto the racial problems, also serve to disguise these racial problems and make Joe's violence seem less like a responseto racism.If we set asidethese sexual implications, his sensationof bodily dissolutionhas powerful racial connotations.In Black Skin, "ite Masks,Fanon describes the experience of being perceived by the white phobic gaze as "an amputationýan excision, a hemorrhagethat spatteredmy whole body with black blood."64 He claims the phobic "my body [ ] back distorted, reactions of white people gave ... to me, sprawled out recolored."63 If we interpret the "black pool" of "more than water," which Joe felt his body dissolving into as blood, then the similarity betweenhis sensationsof dissolution and Fanon's experienceis clear. For both men, the white phobic gaze producesa sensationof physical, bloody fragmentationinto inchoateblackness. As I noted above, Fanon regards such experiencesas evidence of the replacementof the "corporeal schema"which humanselfhood is basedon with a -historico-racialschema. "66 Joe has struggledto repressthis latter schema,but the pressureof Joanna'sracist perceptionof him causesthe unconsciousself-image he inculcatedas a child to overwhelmhis fragile ego,hence this disintegrationof his bodilYself-relation. It is damagingenough for Joe to be compelledto perform certainblack roles for Joannabecause she perceiveshim as black. But it is completelyintolerable when she

64F. FanoNBlack, p. 112. '63F. Fanon,Black, p. 113. 89

beginsto demandthat he actually becomea black man in the eyesof the whole Southern society, and this leads quickly to their relationship'sviolent climax. Joe can no longer containthe laceratingeffects of Joanna'sracism in his mind, he hasto externalisethem in violence. Her demandthat he becomea black lawyer radically undermineshis senseof agency.His mouth speaksindependently of his mind's control. Ile can only reassertself- control through violence, telling his mouth, as he begins to hit Joanna:"Shut up that drivel. Let me talk" (277). This sameproblem of agencyand self-controlis hinted at in Joanna'sdeath scene, when Joe's body respondsto Joanna'scommand to light the lamp independentlyof his mind: "his body seemedto walk awayfrom him. It went to the table and his handslaid the razor on the table and found the lamp and struck the match" (282). Critics often interpretsuch sensations as consequencesof his racial indeterminacy.Philip Weinsteinclaims Joe lacksa coherentsense of self and self-controlbecause his refusalto live as either black or white preventshim from taking up a subject position in the SymbolicOrder of his society.67 However, the fact that thesesensations so often coincide with momentswhen Joe experiencesa racist gazesupports my theory that they can also be attributedto the effectsof beingperceived in termsof racistimages of blackness. Joe is also unableto tolerateJoanna's attempts to pray over him, which causean intensemoment of subjectivecollapse. His mind becomesconsumed by.

[V]oices, [ ] his murmurs, whispers: ... own voice; other voices evocative of names,times and places- which he had been consciousof all his life without knowing it, which were his life, thinking Godperhapsand me not knowingthat [ ] God loves (105). too ... me ioo

Joanna'spraying recalls all the voiceswho haveused religion to label Joe as evil, voices which shapehis mind, "which were his life." For Lee Jenkins,it revives the senseof blacknessas an inherent,inevitable sinfulnesswhich Doc Hines and McEachemtaught Joe to associatewith people praying for him." The repressedwhite racist gaze he intemalised as a child returns to overwhelm his consciousness.Significantly, Joe's

66Fanon describes this experienceas causing his "corporealschema7 to crumble,-its placetaken by a "racial epidermalschema, " a phrasewhich seemsto havea similar meaningto -historico-racialschema. " F. Fanon,Black, p. 112. 67p. Weinstein,Suhject, pp. 104-107. 68L. Jenkins,Faulkier, p. 79. 90

attemptto resist thesevoices is articulatedin italics which, I agreewith Scott Romine, represent"non-reflective consciousness- that is, consciousnessnot yet articulated in language."69 Joe is strugglingto resistthese voices by thinking God loveshim too, but his inability to articulatethis in languageshows the futility of this attempt.Ultimately, he can only overcomehis sensationsof self-collapseand mental anguishby projecting these sensationsinto extremeviolence. Just before going to Joanna'sroom, Joe saysto himself, in his most explicit, direct commentabout why he kills her "It's becauseshe started prayingover me" (105). In an earlier versionof this scenethe narratoralso statedthat: "it was becausehe believedthat the love and prayerswere on the black blood in him and not the man,"' and Joe went on to think, "you prayedon the nigger."70 The removalof these crucial associationsof prayerwith racismreaffirms Faulkner's refusal to posit direct links betweenJoe's experiencesof racismand his most extremeact of violence. Joanna's death scene, as Diane Roberts observes, is initially figured in conventionalterms. Joanna is armed with a conventionally"'white' weapon,a gun, and Joe is "black" "straight [ ]a righting armedwith a conventionally weapon,a razor ... street or quiet murderinginstrumcnt. "71 These were the weaponsNclsc Pattonand his victim were armed with, reafflirminghow that historical caseinfluenced Light in August. The straight razor was the clichdd weaponof "bad niggers:' but, in every other respect,this scenerevises established tropes of black violence. The associationsof beastlinessare madewith Joanna,not her putativelyblack killer, in a reversalof ThomasDixon's tropes. The shadowof her arm and the gun upon the wall are describedas "both monstrous,the cockedhammcr monstrous, back-hooked and viciously poisedlike the archedhead of a snake;it did not waverat all" (282). Ile associationof Joannawith a predatorycreature showsthis sceneis focalisedthrough Joe; the imageryof the scenereflects his fears,not Joanna's.This too contrastswith Dixon, who focalised such scenesfrom the terrified perspectiveof the white femalevictims, encouragingthe readerto empathisewith them. Olga Vickery interpretsthe shadowplayrepresentation of the final momentsof this scene as proof that theseare "phantomweapons directed at phantomopponents. For eachsees

69S. Romine,Narrative, p. 159. 70R. Fadiman.Baullater's, pp. 105-106. 71D. Roberts,FauLlawr mid SouthernWommlhood (Athens: University of GeorgiaPress, 1994), p. 183. 91

embodiedin the other that racial myth which has dominatedtheir lives."72 Joanna has always failed to perceiveJoe as a human being becauseof his possibleblack blood. MeanwhileJoe perceivesJoanna as the personification,the sourceof the demeaninggaze which plagueshis self-image.This kind of inability to perceivethe Other's humanityis a central causeof black violence in many of the novels we will consider.Focussing on shadowsof the action also placesFaulkner at one removefrom a scenetoo troubling to articulatedirectly. In anotherdeparture from the mythos of black violence ThomasDixon helped establish,Joanna's dead body is not exploited as a text upon which the horrorsof black violence are inscribed. Nevertheless,the grotesquedescription of her head as almost totally severedevokes the superhumanstrength associated with Black Beast figures in white fantasy.Because Joe is neverproven to be biologically black, the extremity of his violence could be interpretedsimply as evidenceof the power of the mental anguish racism produces,rather than the result of innate characteristics.However, this incident, combined with Joe's fracturing of Roz Thompson's skull and possible killing of McEachernwith single blows, suggestsFaulkner had an unconscious,irrational fear of black violence. He perceivedit as a monstrouslypowerful force becausehe feared it would overwhelmand destroythe social order he investedin if it was ever unleashed. The condition of Joanna'scorpse echoes Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), wherean orang-utanslashes a woman'sthroat so violently with a razor, that when her corpse is picked up her head falls off.73 Recent Poe criticism has demonstratedpersuasively why antebellumreaders would haveassociated the orang-utan with black men and how this story refractsantebellum fantasies about black violence.74 Eric Sundquistinterprets this resemblanceas "an intentionalmiffor image," but I believe it is an unconsciousconsequence of Faulkner's anxieties about the power of black 75It illustrateshow it is for become in the tropes violence. easy any author to entangled

720. Vickery,Novels p. 72. 73E. A. Poe,"The Murdersin the RueMorgue, SelectedTales, (oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1992), 113. See:L. BarTett,"Presence of Mind: Detectionand Racializationin 'The Murdersin the RueMorgue'", pp. 157-177,and E. Lemire," 'The Murdersin the RueMorgue': AmalgamationDiscourses and the Race Riots of 1838in Poe'sPhiladelphia", pp. 177-205,in Rommicing1he Shadow Poe andRace,ed. by J. G. Kennedyand L. Weissberg(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2001). 73E. SundquistýFaulkner, p. 87. 92 produced by previous racist fantasies when those tropes constitute the culturally dominantmethod of representingblack violence. In TheSound and The Fury, Quentin Compsonobserves that: "a nigger is not so much a personas a form of behaviour,a sort of obversercflcction of the peoplehe lives among.v76 This statementinforms Light in August, particularly in the descriptionsof Jefferson'swhite communityafter the discoveryof Joanna'sbody. Faulknershows how white societycreates the violent black man, forcing him to performcertain scripts:

[They] believedaloud that it was an anonymousncgro crime committednot by a negrobut by Negro and who knew believedand hopedthat shehad been ravished too: at leastonce before her throat wascut andat leastonce aflcrward (288).

In contrast to Thomas Dixon, Faulkner exposesdeliberately, not inadvertently, how tensions,frustrations and conflicts within the white community are projectedonto the fantasisedimage of a Black Beast Rapist. The transition from "a negr6" to 'Wegr6" reaffirms their denial of black individuality. They repeat the demonisedstereotype ThomasDixon representedas the truth of black male violence,but in this context,when we havealready partially witnessedreality of Joanna'sdeath, it is exposedas fantasy.As ChapterOne showed,the Black Beast Rapist playeda crucial role in the formation of white identity and the maintenanceof segregation.These men needto project the Black Beastfantasy onto the new phobic figure of the "white niggcr" which Joe representsto maintain the taboo on sexual relations between black men and white women, and reinforce the colour-line against the threat of changing social conditions. The townspeopleare alreadysuspicious that Joannaand Joe were havinga consensualsexual relationship,but this must be deniedand replacedby a conventionalnarrative of black savageryviolating white femalepurity. Joe must be caughtand sacrificedin a way which reaffirmsthe colour-lineand terrorises others who might crossit. The depiction of Joe's violent death highlights the tensionsand ambivalences regarding the representationof black violence I have traced throughout the text particularlythe narrativeof Joe's behaviourwhich leadsto his death.It appearsFaulkner could only articulatesuch raging black violence in literary form while knowing it would

76W. Faulkner,77w Soumland the Fury (London:Picador, 1993ý p. 74. 93 ultimately turn on itself and ensure its own destruction. Significantly, this self- destructivenessemerges after Joe appearsto acceptthat he is black while on the run. After eating with a black family, he reflects: "they were afraid. Of their brother afraid" (335). Joe then losesall inclination towardsviolence, allowing white men in Mottstown to captureand beat him (350). Then after escapingfrom the sherifrs men, he allows Percy Grimm to kill him despitehaving a "loaded and unfired pistol in his hand" (449). The only subsequentact of violencehe commitsis to hit Hightower(464). Gavin Stevens articulates this wishful belief that self-destructivenessis a natural element of black violence in his explanationof Joe's final actions.Initially, he conformsto the traditional stereotypeof blacks as naturally violent, declaring: "it was the black blood which snatchedup the pistol and the white blood which would not let him fire ir (449). But he then also figuresblack blood as self-destructive:

It was the black blood which swepthim by his own desirebeyond the aid of any man, swept him up into that ecstasyout of a black jungle where life has already ceasedbefore the heartstops and death is desireand ful f ilment (449).

This convoluted,ambiguous sentence implies Joe's black blood producednot only a desire to commit violence,but also a desire to suffer it. Stevens'sexplanation is not a reliable articulationof Faulkner'sown views, but the climax of Joe's story suggeststhat here Stevensis reflecting somethingFaulkner wanted to believe. Like ThomasDixon, Faulknercould not fully acceptthe idea of blacksopenly and directly targetingviolence againstthe white powerstructure. During Grimm's pursuit and murder of Joe Christmas,Faulkner describesthe actions of both charactersas determinedby " the Player" and "Fate" (460464). These terms may show Faulkner is seeking to deny the cultural, historical causesof black violence. Faulknerelevates the relationsbetween white racist fantasies,black violence and oppressivewhite violence which the whole novel has sought to interrogate,and which reach their climax in this scene, to an eternal, natural, unchangeablestatus. However,I believethis terminologyironically exposeshow Grimm and Joe are playing out a culturally determinedscript which their culture has taught them to regard as divinely predestined.Richard Goddcn interprets this imagery as a symbol of the 94 community's passionate,deterministic faith in the Black Beast narrative:"A power as remorselessas "Fate" is releasedby the equation 'nigger' - 'mpe' = 'Iynch'. "77 Once they have labelled Joe as Beast, they have to fulfil the ritual through which they traditionally deal with suchevents. But the Black Beastfantasy and the methodof destroyingthis scapegoatfigure as an embodimentof social tensionscannot be mappedonto Joe as the "white nigger." His refusal to behaveaccording to Beastnorms producessevere cognitive dissonancein the white community:"It was as if the very initial outrageof the murdercarried in its wake and madeof all subsequentactions something monstrous and paradoxicaland wrong, in themselvesagainst both reasonand nature" (296). This senseof disorientationproduces an almosthysterical anger:

That was what madethe folks so mad. For him to be all dressedup and walking the town like he daredthem to touch him, when he ought to havebeen skulking and hiding in the woods,muddy and dirty and running. It was like be nevereven knew he wasa murderer,let alonea niggcr too (350).

The community is desperateto force Joe into this "nigger murderer" role because violence is part of what they project onto the black Other to form their stable,civilised, self-image.They cannotallow Joe to blur the boundariesbetween black and white once they blame him for killing Joanna.Until LucasBurch accusesJoe of being black, Burch himself is the sherifrs main suspect,and with good reason; much of the evidence incriminateshim. 79 Yet after this, no one doubtseither that Joehas black blood or that he killed Joanna. The novel exposes what Scott Romine calls the "socially essential meaning" of black blood as a "magical substance that contains violence" for this community. In different ways, the ranting of Doc Ilimes, the self righteous violence of Percy Grimm and the elegant theorising of Gavin Stevens all bear testimony to this. By the logic of what Romine calls "a kind ofpostfaclo causality," they try to interpret Joe's

77F_ Godden."'Call" 243. 4hop. 78See: S. E. Mears, Killed JoannaBurden? -, MississippiQuarterly, 24 (1971),271-277 for a summaryof the textual evidencewhich makesBurch prime suspect. 95

violenceas proof that he is black 79As the gossipof the communityputs it: "Ile dont look any more like a niggerthan I do. But it must havebeen the niggerblood in him" (349). However,Joe's deathonly underminesthis willed connectionbetween blackness and violence more forcefully. Faulkner's portrayal of Percy Grimm collapses,with seemingly deliberate skill, the boundary between black and white violence Dixon struggledto maintain.Like the lynch mobsof Dixon's novels,Grimm masksthe pleasure he takes from inflicting extreme violence upon blacks by casting himself as a law He declares:"We [ ] We let representativeof and order. got to preserveorder, ... must the law take its course"(451). Yet three times, during his pursuit of Joe, he is described as acting with a senseof "joy" (460462). When Hightower attemptsto provide an alibi for Joe, he immediatelyassumes they were having a sexual relationship,exclaiming: "Has every preacher and old maid in Jcfferson taken their pants down to the yellowbellied son of a bitch?" (464). Grimm's obsessionwith racial and sexual transgressionbetrays his projection of repressedsexual desire onto black people. His castrationof the dying JoeChristmas shows how he satisfiesthese desires under the guise of eliminating them. This gratuitous act is savagelybrutal and clearly motivated by enjoyment,and thereforeindistinguishable from the kind of violenceattributed to Black Beasts.Joe's murder producesan aporia; the play of binary oppositionsessential to languageand culture breaks down. Blackness merges with whiteness,civility with barbarism,law and orderwith chaos.For RichardGray, it is a moment:

When the vocabulariesevolved by a group to enablethem to conceiveof and begin disintegrate,dissolve into irrelevance.[ ] The managethe world to ... choked cry that one of the observesutters here is one of those momentsof absolute inarticulacy [ ] define limits 80 that ... seemto the of vocal acts.

This is the opposite of the reaffirmation of crucial divisions which lynchings were intendedto produce,through the elimination of a concentratedembodiment of the threat to these oppositions.The anxietiesabout the effects of lynching rituals on the white perpetratorsin ThomasDixon's novelsreaches a new, moreserious level here.

79S. Romine, Narrative, pp. 194-5. soR. Gray, Life, p. 187. 96

However, Faulkner circumscribesthe radical import of this scene.Ile does not attempta mimetic representationof the real painful and gruesomenature of Joe's death. As PatriciaMcKee observes,the "orgasmic" imageryof Joe's castrationis "far removed from the experienceof having genitals cut off. "81 Instead,he elevatesthe sceneto a symbolic level, culminating in a flight of Arcadian rhetoric, concealingthe aporia of Joe's deathaesthetically. It seemsFaulkner understood the extent to which the figure of the violent black male underpinnedSouthern white identity and ideology,but he was not preparedto deconstructthat figure totally and risk dismantlingthese things. Furthermore, Faulkner exoneratesthe generalcommunity from responsibilityfor Grimm's violence. Although previously they were portrayed as a mob looking for someoneto crucifyý Faulkner radically changeshis representationof them as the moment of Joe's death approaches,insisting on the "quiet squareempty of people peacefullyat suppertables, about that peacefultown and that peacefulcountry" (454). He limits blame for Joe's murderto PercyGrimm and Doc Hines,who standapart from the main community,even thoughthey shareits valuesin exaggeratedform. Faulkneravoids completely dissolving the boundary betweenblack and white violence. Ile maintains a difference between Grimm's fanatical violence and the standardmethods of racial control and oppression usedby the hegemonicforces in Southernsociety, which are never subjectedto such a devastatingcritique. In conclusion, then, I disagree with critics who interpret Joe's death as a successfulsacrifice which restoresthe hierarchy,the binarismsessential to Jefferson's 82 community. Only by forgetting what they have seenand learrit at this failed ritual can the people of Jeffersonmaintain faith in their society's crucial ideological nonns. As Richard Goddenobserves, the narrativeshows "Jefferson will 'lose'" what they witness whenJoe dies:

Faulkner's Arcadian touch indicateshow far the town will go to blind itself to Joe's lesson,especially when the twin institutions of Law and Educationstand firm behind presently constituted categories.Gavin Stevens' precise blood

11P. McKee,Afaking, p. 145, 82 Thesecritics rangefrom conservativeNew Critics to recentcritics writing from radicaltheoretical perspectives.See: Cleanth Brooks, William Eaulkner.- Ae YoknqpatawphaCountry (New I laven:Yale University Press,1972), p. 71, J. Williamson,Faulliner. p. 413 and S. Romine,Xorrative, pp. 191-192. 97

percentiles restore those black and white demarcationsthat make "nigger" meaningful. Faulkner records the conversationbefore letting readers into the kitchen.Moral? What is seenis soonforgotten. 83

The return of the narrative to the same comic, pastoral tone used to introduce Lena Grove's story at the start suggestsFaulkner himself participatedin this forgetting,as his only way of concludingthis story of black violence.

93& Godden,-Call", p. 243. 98

CHAPTER FOUR

"A SHADOW ATHWART OUR NATIONAL LIFE": FANTASIES OF BLACK VIOLENCE IN RICHARD WRIGHT'S NATIVE, SON

As the work of an Affican Americanauthor, set in a Northern,urban environment, Native Son (1940) is a very different novel to Light in August.But it too constitutesa key literary document of how the Depression affected American perceptionsof black violence. In his essayon the compositionof Native Son, "How 'Bigger' Was Borný" Wright wrote:

[W]e havein the oppressionof the Negro a shadowathwart our nationallife dense and heavyenough to satisfy even the gloomy broodingsof a Hawthorne.And if Poewere alive, he would not haveto invent horror, horror would invent him.'

Recentscholarship has often linked imagesof blacknessin nineteenthcentury writing to white perceptionsof the Affican presencein America, most notably Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark.2 But I believe this quotation shows Wright reaching towards a similar conclusion, recognising the power of fantasiesabout African Americans in American culture. For Wright it is not just the "oppressionof the Negro" in itself which creates"a shadowathwart our national life," but also the wishful, fearful and guilty fantasiesthis oppressioncreates in the white Imaginary,which manifestthemselves in the "gloomy broodings" of Hawthorne and the "hoffor" of Poe. Thus in Native Son, he attemptsto removethis "dense","heavy" shadowof oppressionby first shatteringthese fantasiesabout African Americans. Dan McCall claims: "nineteenth century writers could erectfantasies in the head.Wright wastrying to rid himself of the fantasyin hiS."3 I believe Wright was principally attempting to rid his society of the fantasy gestured towards by nineteenthcentury literary images of blackness.In doing this, he had to negotiatea difficult path betweendenial and demonisation.He experiencedpressure to deny black violence,describing a "mental censor- productof the fears which a Negro feels from living in America," which urged him to soften his portrayal of Bigger so it

1K Wright, "How'Bigger'WasBom", Native Son(New York: IlarperPerennial,1998), p. 462. 2 See:T. MorrisonPkying in the Dark: H*iieiiessatidiheLiterwyhnagiriation (London:Picador, 1992). 3 D. E. McCall, 77ieExmnple ofRichard Wright (New York: I larcourt,Brace and World, 1969),pp. 76-77. 99

could not support the prejudices of "reactionary whites."4 But Wright defied this pressure,choosing instead to inhabit the imagesand tropesof demonisationin an attempt to underminethem. I-fis principal methodof doing this is to enter the mind of his most violent black character,to exposehow racism producesthe types of behaviour white ideologyuses to demoniseblack masculinity. Wright saw little value in the resourcesof African American folk culture in attemptingthis difficult task. Jerry H. Bryant has shownthat many elementsof the "bad niggee, tradition in African American folk culture inform the characterisationof Bigger, but for Wright this paradigmis merelya point of dcparture.5 It offers an imageof black violence he co-opts and usesin completelynew ways. Not only is interracial violence unusualwithin this tradition, the folk-talesand balladsabout badmen contain none of the sociological and psychological analysis crucial to Wright's novel, as Bryant acknowledges.6 Wright also rejectedthe ambiguouslegacy of earlier African American literature, such as the Harlem Renaissancenovels consideredin Chapter Two. He regardedthis tradition as inadequatefor articulatingthe full horror of black violence,and the racismwhich motivatesit, claiming it was incapableof penetrating"with a deepand fearless will down to the dark roots of life."7. Wright chose instead to adapt the techniquesand perceptionsof white writers, which he claimedoffered him a meaningful way to gaugethe realitiesof black life in America! The naturalist,social protestfiction of authors like TheodoreDreiser and the modernist articulationsof psychic extremes performedby authorssuch as Faulknershaped his literary voice. But, as we have seen, the languageand imagery of these literary traditions arc freighted with racist fantasies and ideologies.To adapt them to his own purposes,Wright usesa strategysimilar to signifying. Shadowingdemonised images of black violenceso closelycarries risks which JonathanElmer has summarisedwell: "Wright's text can never be entirely free of the suspicionthat its representationsarc repetitionsrather than revisions,contributions to

4p , Wright, "Bigger", p. 448. I IL Bryant, "Born in a Mighty Eadbuid". YheViolentMan in African AmericanFoIllore widEklion, pp. 64-66. J. H. Bryant,Born, p. 64. 7 P, Wright, "Bigger". p. 443. 8K Wright, "Bigger", p. 443. 100

mcial impasse and the violence of stereotype rather than exposks of thern."9 Native Son has often been criticised on these lines, most famously by James Baldwin, whose criticisms I consider during this chapter. But more recent African American writers, such as David Bradley and Percival Everett have also attacked this novel, illustrating how representations of black violence remain controversial in contemporary American culture. 10 Wright's first task in Native Son is to demonstrate how the lived experience of racist oppression shapesblack subjectivity in ways which produce violence. The onset of the Depression, whose effects on Southern perceptions of black violence we saw in the previous chapter, also changed attitudes in Northern, urban culture. Whereas the economic prosperity and political stability of the twenties permitted the African American presence in Northern cities to be figured as exotic, entertaining and unthreatening, the crisis of the Depression revived images of blackness as a dangerous excess. African Americans had been encouraged to migrate to provide unskilled labour for an expanding industrial economy. Now, in a shrinking labour market, they suffered the worst effects of unemployment and poverty, creating white fears they would become a force for criminality and political unrest. When he first goes to the Dalton house, Bigger worries the police will interpret his presence in a white neighbouthood as an attempt "to rob or rape somebody."" This shows how the Depression revived fears of the mere presenceof African Americans in white urban spaceas violent and violating, which we saw in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in Chapter One. Plainly, Wright understood how economic crisis revived rape as the shaping metaphor in white perceptions of black movements across the colour-line. As we shall see, he attempts to exploit this to his advantagein Native Son.

9 J. Elmer, "Spectacle and Event in Native Son", American Literature, 70:4 (1998), 767-798, p. 771 10 During the nineteen-eighties, David Bradley said he hated Native Son "with a passion," accusing Wright of selling "his people down the river to make a buck. " (Quoted in 11.Rowley, "IMe Shadow of the White Woman: Richard Wright and the Book-of-the-Month Club". Partisan Review, 66:4 (19991625-634, p. 626.) In his recent novel, erasure (2002), Percival Everett imagines a scene in which Wright thanks D. W. Griffith for praising his novel. This suggestshe believes Native Son reproduces the demonised stereotypes of blackness displayed in Birth ofa Nation. (P. Everett, erasure (London: Faber, M), p. 218. 11 R. Wright, Native Son, (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998), p. 44. Subsequentreferences to this novel will appear in parenthesesin the text. 101

In this socio-historicalconteA Foucault'stheory of the modemproduction of the criminal as a charactertype helps explain the racist power relations which structure Bigger's subjectivity.Foucault attributes the high rate of recidivismamong offenders in modem societiesto the penal system.Designed not to punishparticular offences, but to producedelinquents as a specific classof "pathologized"subjects, who can be isolated 12 from societyand disciplined,it createsan illusion of masteryover the problemof crime. Hence:"It is not crime that alienatesan individual from society,but the fact that one is in 13 societyas an alien. , This theory seemshighly relevantto Bigger's superfluousposition 14 as a black man in Depression-eraChicago. As Max states at his trial: "His very existenceis a crime against the statel" (400). The only useful, visible role Bigger can assumefor white authority is that of delinquent, whose punishmentfrightens other African Americans into obedienceand satisfies white desires for tough measuresof crime-prevention.With no Prospectsof employment,he hasalready entered on the cycle of crime, imprisonment,release and re-offencc, which characteriscsdelinquency for Foucault,when the novel begins.Ile hasspent time in ReformSchool for the thcfl of auto tyres.The files of the police and social servicesdefine him as pathologicallycriminal and in needof constantsurveillance, shaping white perceptionsof him, including that of Mr 15 Dalton. Bigger feels constantlywatched by the disciplinary gaze of white authority, symbolisedby his encounterwith a posterof StateAttorney Buckley,whose eyes seem to watch him constantly(13). The gazebecomes an elementof his own psyche.Hence his claim that white peopledo not live "across the 'line', " but "[rlight down here in my stomach"(2 1). This Foucauldianinterpretation explains what Valerie Smith describesas -the "' relentlessplottedness" of the novel. The many symbols and propheciesof Bigger's ultimate fatc, emphasischow white societyovadetermines his life andhis violencefor its own purposes.Thomas Dixon sought to disguise the crucial role of the Black Beast

12 M. Foucault,Discipline widPunish, trans.by A. Sheridan(London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 275-277. 13M. Foucault,Discipline, pp. 275-276. 14 Virginia WhatleySmith also observesthe relevanceof Foucault'stheory to Bigger's situationin: "Aafitme Son asDepiction of a CarceralSociety", Approaches to TeachingNative Son,ed. by J. A. Miller (New York: Modem LanguageAssociation of America, 1997).pp. 95-102. 15 Mr Dalton teUsBigger the "relief people haveinformed him aboutBiggees pastmisdemeanours (49). 16 V. Smith,"Alienation and Creativity in the Fiction of RichardWright", Richard Wright.- Critical PerspectivesPast ond Present,p. 434. 102 narrativein underwritingwhite supremacistideology and maintainingwhite racial unity, but Wright deliberatelyexposes the crucial role Bigger's violence plays in maintaining the political order of his society. Bigger's lawyer Boris Max complainsin his defence speechthat Bigger's crimes have been used to whip up race hatred.Focussing public discontenton the scapegoatfigure of a black criminal diverts and dissipatestensions generatedby proletarianpoverty and the oppressionof tradeunions (385-386). Max goes on to declare:"Maybe we wantedhim to do itl Maybe we would have had no chanceor justification to stageattacks against hundredsof thousandsof people if he had acted sanelyand normallyl" (395). Bigger's violence enableshim to function as a monstrous double of white society'sworst fearsand most unacceptabledesircs in a similar manner to Joe Christmas.His violencetoo is immediatelyincorporated into a Black BeastRapist narrative,despite the absenceof evidence.During the searchfor Bigger, two policemen discussan attractiveblack girl, saying:"I wonder what on earth a nigger wantsto kill a white woman for when he has suchgood-looking women in his own race" (352). Wright demonstratesthat interracialsexual attraction and the conflation of sex with violenceare taboo desireswhich white society projectsonto black men. The samefantasy that such troubling desirescan be eliminatedthrough the destructionof one manovertakes Chicago as it did Jefferson,Mississippi. The mob hysteria,the demonisationof Bigger by the media and the wild accusationsmade in State Attorney Buckley's prosecution demonstratethat all the emotionsof a Southernlynch mob are presentunder a thin veneer of disinterestedjustice. But Wright soughtto do more than depict the heinoussocial circumstanceswhich overdetermineBigger's violent fate. Ile also wantedto articulatethe experienceof this racismfrom Bigger's perspective,to showhow it producesviolence from within Bigger's mind. To achievethis, he employs a narrative perspectiveresembling that in Light in August. Events are focaliscd through Bigger, but the third person narrator can also penetrate beneath Bigger's consciousnessand expose emotions Bigger cannot acknowledge.Faulkner fearfully drew a veil over many of Joe Christmas'sthoughts and emotions,but Wright grantshis narrator full accessto Bigger's psyche.Like Faulkner, Wright is attemptingto articulateexperiences crucial to the formationof his protagonist's subjectivity, yet excluded from his protagonist'sconsciousness. Just as Joe Christmas 103

was unconsciousof the formative,"primal scene"at the orphanage,Bigger repressesthe shamefulbut character-shapingdetails of his family's existence:

He knew that the momenthe allowed himself to feel to its fulnesshow they lived, the shameand misery of their lives, he would be sweptout of himself with fear and despair.So he held towardsthem an attitude of iron reserve;he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting.He knew that the momenthe allowed what his life meantto enter fully into his consuousness, he would either kill himself or someoneelse (10).

Bigger's psycheis fissuredby the needto repressthe traumaticpain and angercreated by the conditionsof his life and keephis consciousnessanaesthetised. At momentsof crisis, he is overwhelmedby these powerful repressedemotions, and he has to project his mentalturmoil into apparentlygratuitous violence to restorehis normalpsychic state. For example,Bigger's repressedfear of white peoplethreatens to overwhelmhim when his gangare preparingto rob a white store.Ile thereforeseizes on a trivial motive to attackGus in the pool hall. Becauseof his unusualperspective, the narratorcan tell us this constitutesa transferenceof Bigger's fear and hatredof whites, despitethe fact that Bigger "kept knowledge[ ] firmly down in him" (42). Ralph Ellison this ... thrust argued in an essaypublished five yearsafter Native Son that the physicality of black life is not evidenceof primitive simplicity, but the manifestationof hystericalsymptoms. African Americans,he claimedare trapped in "the reverseof a cataleptictrance, wherethe body, rather than the mind, reactsto the pressureswhich the stultifying constrictionsof racism "block off from the concept-creatingactivities of the brain. Acts of black violencewhich appeargratuitous and futile often representthe conversionof "thwartedideational energy [ ] into "17Native Son theory, how ... unsatisfactorypantomime. anticipatesthis showing racism engenderspain and rage in the black psychewhich cannotbe expresseddirectly against white oppressorsand is too traumatic to contain in consciousness.Outwardly, Bigger conforms to the stereotypeof black men as usually docile and lethargic but occasionallyand unpredictablyviolent: -These were the rhythmsof his life; indifference and violence; periods of abstractbrooding and periods of intensedesire; momentsof silenceand momentsof anger" (29). But by enteringBigger's mind, Wright exposesthe

17R. Ellison, "Richard Wright's Blues", CollectedFmys of RalphEllison, p. 139. 104

environmentaland cultural pressureswhich produce this behaviour. This illustrates Wright's controversialstrategy of signifying on demonisedimages of black violence by inhabiting and deconstructingthem. JamesBaldwin accusedWright of depictingBigger as: "that fantasy Americans hold in their minds when they speak of the Negro: that fantasticand fearful imagewhich we havelived with sincethe first slavefcll beneaththe lash."18 As we shall see,Wright risks evoking this fantasyrepeatedly, but, in contrastto Baldwin, I arguethis is a deliberatestrategy, designed to exposehow racism createsthe imagesof blacknessthese fantasies naturalise. In seekingto highlight a gap betweenBigger and dcmonisedfantasies of black men, Wright doesnot attemptto evokeunambivalcnt sympathy in the reader.Admittedly, as KatherineFishbum observes:"In limiting himself to Bigger's perspective,Wright is asking the reader to identify with his hero and to try to understandhis motives and actions."19 But Wright did not want to repeatthe "awfully naTvemistake' he believedhe had made in Uncle Tom's Children, creating characterswho "even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about."20 Ile knew that pitiable, saintly protagonists,in the tradition of much earlier African American fiction, did not fully expose the effects of racist oppression.21 Only an unflinching representationof the appalling psychologicalconsequences of racism could achievethis. In contrastto most American novels, Wright locatesthe most extremeblack violence in a focal character without in any way understatingor softeningthis violence.Some critics haveinterpreted Bigger as a conventional,sympathetic hero, such as Joyce Ann Joycein Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy,but this entailsmodifying the detailsof his character.For example,Joyce claimsBigger fleesto Bessiefor companionshipafler Mary's bonesare discoveredin the furnace,but there is no indication of this in the text.22 The only motive offered is that Bessiehas the moneyhe stoic from Mary's purse,which he needsto escape.

11J.Baldwin, "Many Thousand'sGone", 7U Price ofthe 77cketp. 71. 19K. Fishburn,Richard Wright'sHero. - Me Facesofa Rebel-Victim(Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 19771 p. 12. 20R. Wright, "Bigger, p. 454. 21The mostobvious examples of suchcharacters occur in nineteenthcentury black novelssuch as F. E. W. Harper'sIola Leroy, but as we haveseen in previousAfrican Americannovels in this thesis,twentieth centurywriters remainedwary of creatingunsympathetic, violent black characters,fearing they would endorseracist stereotypes. 22j. A. Joyce,Richard Wright'sArt of Tragedy(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,1986ý pp. 68-69. 105

Readings which acknowledge Bigger is not a conventional hero are able to marshal more convincing textual evidence. Laurel J. Gardner claims: "Wright undercuts any sympathetic identification with Bigger that the reader may develop with deeper 23 insights into Bigger's monstrousness., He cites Bigger's continual fantasies about 21 killing people who may become obstacles to his ransom plans, including his brother. Wright's intention, in offering such intimate knowledge of Bigger's mental processes, was not to create sympathy or excuse his violence, but to shock readersinto accepting the full horror of racism's psychological impact. Wright refuses even to use the murder of Bigger's father in a race riot, during his early childhood in the South, as a justification for his violence, or as a significant factor in his psychology. Although Bigger tersely reveals the fate of his father when questioned by Jan and Mary, he makes no other references to it, and the narrator never uses it to explain Bigger's violence (74-75). This contrasts sharply with Wright's strategy in his earlier short stories in Uncle Tom's Children, where his black protagonists only become violent in response to extreme pressures. It shows Wright's new determination to create a violent character who is representative of all African Americans, and show that even the quotidian conditions of black life, the experience of normative forms of racism, could produce extreme violence. In "How Bigger Was Bom". Wright states explicitly that Bigger's violence is simply a different expression of the same pain most African Americans cope with through alcohol, music or 25 religion. One of the most painful psychologicalproblems racism inflicts upon Bigger constitutesa form of double-consciousness.As we have seen,a disciplinary white gaze has a shaping influence on Bigger's subjectivity, and he becomesobsessed with the imageof himself reflectedby this gaze.lie developsan acutesense of white perceptions of him as a defencemechanism in an environmentwhich is alwayspotentially hostile. In encounterswith white people,he transformshimself into what he believesthey want to see,enacting the stereotypeof the shuffling, subservientdarky (48). Ile is so reliant on this Other perspectivethat when he meetsthe blind Mrs Dalton, he feelshe is "talking to

23L. 1. Gardner,"The Progressionof Meaningin the Imagesof Violencein RichardWright's Utwle Tom's Chikh-enand Native Soh", CollegeLanguage As"lation Jout7ial,3 SA (1994-1995),420-440, p. 437. 24L. Gardner,"Progression7', p. 437, and see:I 10-111in NativeSon. 25R. Wright, "Bigger", p. 349. 106

someonewho he himself could scarcelysee" (61). But he is deeplytraumatised by what Du Bois the "sense looking throughthe [ ] calls of always at one's self eyesof others, ... through the revelation of the other world.iiM Like Joe Christmas,he has suffered the intrusion of a white, phobic imago into his self-image.Having grown up within the black community,Bigger ought to possessthe "black vision of black identity," which we saw Joe Christmas lacked, to oppose to this imago.27 But, in keeping with his general devaluationof black folk culture, Wright portraysBigger as gaining no senseof identity from his community.Bigger's only self-imageis the one offered by white society,which has a profound influenceon his violence. In Fanon'sterms, a "historico-racialschema" hascompletely replaced Bigger's "corporealschema. "28 Consider his reactionwhen State Attorney Buckley questionshim in his prison cell: "White men were looking at him, waiting for his words, and all the feelings of his body vanished7(309). Like Joe Christmas,he suffers a painful alienation within his bodily self-relation, producing a disgustat his own blackness.When Mr Dalton interviewshim, he feels that: "The man was gazingat him with an amusedsmile that madehim consciousof every squareinch of skin on his black body" (46). He becomesnervous and clumsy:"Ile hatedhimself at that moment.Why washe acting and feeling this way?" (47). Experiencingthe racist gaze producesviolent impulsesin Bigger in a slightly different way to Joe Christmas.Not confirmationsof the racist gazehe has intemalised, but encounterswith white peoplewhere he is unsureof their perspectiveupon him, cause his greatestinner turmoil. Bigger's reactionsto driving in the car with Jan and Mary are exemplary:

He his black [ ] Did despise black wasvery consciousof skin ... not white people a [ ] Maybe did despisehim? But him feel his black skin? ... they not they made skin byjust there looking him [ ]. Ile felt he had standing at ... no physicalexistence at all right then; he was somethinghe hated, the badge of shamehe knew was attachedto a black skin. It was a shadowyregion, a No-Man's Und, the ground from black he [ ] At that separatedthe white world the that stood upon. ... that he felt towardsMary Jan dumb, inarticulatehate. [ ] moment and a cold and ... Suddenlyhe wantedto seizesome heavy object in his handand grip it with all the

26W. E. B. Du Bois, 7heSouls qfBIack Folks, p. 5. 27D. Marriotý Ott Black Men, p. 14. 28F. Fanon,Black Skii4 "ite Masks,p. I 11. 107

his body [ I in strengthof ... and stand naked spaceabove the speedingcar and with one final blow blot it out - with himself andthem in it (67-70).

Jan and Mary's liberal transgressionsof conventionalinterracial behavioural codes, their attempts to recogniseBigger's equal human subjectivity, painfully disorientate him, producingcognitive dissonance, and an evengreater alienation from his own blackness." He cannotaccept they do not despisehim in the way twenty yearsof American life have conditionedhim to expect from white people.He becomesmarooned in a "No-Man's Land" between the self-image he usually sees reflected in white behaviour and the indecipherableimage created by their behaviour.He is so desperateto escapethis inner turmoil and re-establishhis usual anaesthetisedmental state that he fantasisesabout extremeviolence. Despite creating such compelling moments, Wright seemsto have remained anxiousabout whetherhe had representedthe pain of racismas adequatemotivation for Bigger's violence. Hence he attemptsto co-opt the power of the most emotive image within the discourseof demonisation:rape. He attemptsto reversethe paradigmaticrole of rapein perceptionsof black intrusionsinto white socialspace, to createa metaphorfor intrusionsof white power into black spaceand black psychology.Consider how Bigger expandsthe meaningof rapeto expresshis experienceof rucism:

But rape was not what one did to women. Rapewas what one felt when one's back had [ ]. Ile was againsta wall and one to strike out ... committedrape every he looked into face. [ ] But it he in hate time a white ... was rape when cried out deepin his heartas he felt the strainof living day by day (227-228).

Marlon B. Rossreads Wright's metaphoricaluse of rapeas a consequenceof the:

[S]carcity languagefor -pains" [ ] of representing of the mind and spirit ... Becauseendangerment to the psychecannot be markedon or cut into the flesh

29Of courseJan and Mary do not completelytranscend racist behaviour towards African Americans. Nevertheless,Wright createsa clear sensethat within the racialised,oppressive structures of American society,attempts to reachacross the racial borderin friendshipare almostimpossible, and are actuallynwe likely to produceblack violencethan conventionalracist behaviour. 108

writers seekto narrateand thus to mark undetectablepsychic wounds,with the explosiveagency of rape.30

There is a shortage of terminology to describe pain which leaves no mark, which is not caused by physical violence, yet produces physical suffering, particularly before the development of the types of trauma theory we will see assist Toni Morrison's efforts to articulate the effects of racism in Paradise in Chapter Eight. Rape offers a potent metaphor for violations of the psyche by the racist gaze. Wright attempts to change rape from a symbol of the inherent horror and violence within blackness, to a sign of the cruelty and brutality of racism's impact upon African Americans. Ile then also attempts to use the shocking power of the rape metaphor to emphasisethe horror of black violent responses.As Abdul JanMohamed observes: "the deep, violent penetration of the black subject by racist discourses and the black violent response are represented as rape by Wright., 01 However,this redefinition of rapethreatens to erasethe forms of physical,female suffering the novel also depicts.The narrativefigures Bigger's violence principally as a metaphoricalrepresentation of black male pain and anger,which Wright feels unableto articulate in conventional psychological vocabulary. As Bigger puts it, his crimes constitutea way of flinging "into their faces his feeling of being black" (310). As we shall see,the physicalsuffering this violenceinflicts on its femalevictims, particularlyon Bessie, is only of secondaryimportance. Deploying rape as a metaphorfor Bigger's painful experienceof racism also threatensto reproduceracist stereotypesof black violence. Like Faulkner in Light in August, Wright choosesthe most emotive and controversialform of black violenceas the crucial expressionof Bigger's psychology,a male attack upon a white woman. The stereotypicalconsequences of allowing black male-white female contact,according to racist ideology, are played out with a strong sense of inevitability. In both novels, this drama is open to interpretation as a

30 M. B. Ross,"Race, Rape, Castration: Feminist Theories of SexualViolence and MasculineStrategies of Black Protest",Masculinity Stu&esandFeminist 7heory,ed. by J. V, Gardiner(New York: Columbia University Press,2002), pp. 309-311.1 31 A. JanMohamed,"Sexuality on/ of the RacialBorder: Foucault, Wright andthe Articulation of 'RacializedSexuality'". Discourses of Sexuality.FromAristoile toNDS, ed. by D. C. Stanton(Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press,1992), p. 109. 109 confirmationof racist fantasiesabout black violence.32 Like Faulkner,Wright strugglesto articulate the social and cultural reasonsfor the inevitability of this violence. Bigger echoesJoe's senseof ineluctabledoom: "Sometimes I feel like somethingawful's going to happento me" (20). He suffersa similar lack of independentconscious agency to Joe, becomingviolent not in a premeditatedplan of rebellion,but becausethe psychological pressureof racismcauses him to explodein violence. The lack of consciousmotive and senseof inevitability in Bigger's violence underliesJohn Reilly's explanationfor Wright's use of such a stereotypedscene, as a form of signifying:

Through a strategy resembling jujitsu, Wright throws the weight of stereotype back upon its source to create a greater shock than the murders - the recognition that those very acts of violence are consequenceof the social and linguistic events that Bigger 33 created .

According to this reading, Bigger's killing of Mary demonstratesthat the demonising discoursewhite Americansbelieved gave them the knowledgeand power to understand and control the excessivelylustful and violent black man actually created him. The cultural, political power of this discourseengenders the complexof fear, fascinationand hatredBigger feels towardsMary. It leadshim to panic so desperatelyat the thoughtof being discoveredin her bedroomthat he kills her, his actionsgoverned by the penetration of fear deep into his psyche,rather than by consciouscalculation. This point is made most forcibly in a sectionof Max's defencespeech omitted from the original publication:

What would a boy, free from the warping influenceswhich have played so hard on Bigger Thomas,have done that night when he found himself alone with that drunk girl? He would have gone to Mr. or Mrs. Dalton and told them that their daughter drunk. [ ] There havebeen But the have was ... would no murder. way we treatedthis boy madehim do the very thing we did not want (395).

32We sawMyra Jehleninterpret Light in Augustas a warningabout the consequencesof allowing black male contactwith white womenin the previouschapter, Some Southern reviewers interpreted Native Son in the sameway. 33J. Reilly, "Giving Bigger a Voice: The Politics of Narrativein NativeSoyi% New Fmays on Native Son, ed. by K. Kinnamon(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990), p. 53. 110

As Bigger carriesMary to her room, Wright tells us: "He felt strange,possessed, or as if he were acting on a stagein front of a crowd of people"(84). Wright deliberatelyevokes the sensethat the violent black man is performinga script createdby white fantasywe saw inadvertently created by Dixon in his representationof Gus's hypnotised re- enactmentof his crime. So completelyhas a phobic imago of blacknessoverwhelmed Bigger's psyche that his actions, or, perhapsmore appropriately,his reactions,upon finding himself alonewith a white woman,are determinedby white fantasy. Even allowing for this intention, however,Wright's use of the terminology and imagery of the discourseof demonisationto describeBigger's violence is problematic. He uses highly sexualised language:"Mary's body surged upward and he pushed downwardupon the pillow with all of his weight." Ile describesBigger growing "tight and full as though about to explode" (85). In the moment of violence, Bigger is transformed into what Jonathan Elmer calls the -fantasmatic phallus of the white supremacistfantasy, " just as Dixon transformedGus into a wild animal as he attacked Marion.34 This suggeststhat like Faulkner, Wright could not entirely transcendthe demonised tropes of black violence encoded within American literary discourse. Hegemonicideologies of black violence, which are an inescapableinfluence on white American literature, also powerfully affect African American narratives of black violence. But I think Wright's use of this discourseis largely a deliberatestrategy. He depicts the enactmentof white readers' worst nightmareas the most powerful way to make them recogniscthe terrible effectsof racism.As JonathanElmer hasobserved, the blind witnessingof this sceneby Mrs Dalton symbolisesthe impossibility of perceiving this traumaticmoment from a white perspectivewithout projectingfantasies about black violence onto it.35 Rather than engagein a futile attemptto excludethese fantasies by scrupulously avoiding sexual language, Wright seeks to turn these inescapable associationsto his advantageby co-opting their emotive power. This is the central and most controversialelement in his overall strategyof inhabitingdemonised tropes in order to alter their meaning.He attemptsto redefine rape as a metaphorfor black violence

34J. Elmer, "Spectacle, p. 780. 33J. Elmer, "Spectacle",p. 790. III

againstwhite womento revealnot black bestiality,but the full horror of what racismdoes to black subjectivity. However, to do this effectively Wright needs to open a gap between the paradigmaticBlack BeastRapist narrativeand his own images.The alterationswhich he was compelledto make to this scenethreaten to close this gap. The figuratively sexual language Wright uses to describe Bigger's inadvertent violence against Mary is accompaniedby literal depictionsof sexualarousal. The momentbefore Bigger becomes aware of Mrs Dalton's presencebehind him, he lays the drunken Mary on her bed: "Something him to leave but he leaned her, [ ]. Ile tightened urged at once, over excited ... his fingers on her breasts,kissing her again, feeling her move toward him" (84-85). In isolation, thesesentences imply Bigger is about to commit rape, encouragingreaders to interpret the rape imagery in which Bigger's violence is figured according to conventional white ideologies of black violence. But Wright changed the sexual implicationsof this sceneso NativeSon would obtain selectionby the whitejudges of the Book-of-the-MonthClub, which offered immensecommercial advantagcs. 36 Sentences describingMary's overtly sexualresponse to Bigger's advanceswere cut: "Ile tightened his armsas his lips pressedtightly againsthers and he felt her body moving strongly. [... ] He kissedher again and felt the sharpbones of her hips move in a hard and veritable grind" (84). This hardly constitutesan acceptableform of "consent" in modem legal discourse,but it crucially alters what Hazel Rowley calls the "delicate balanceof desire, guilt and responsibility" in this scene:"Bigger has becomethe archetypalblack beast pawing the sleeping beauty.07 Closing the gap between Bigger and Mary and stereotypedroles in this rape drama heavily compromisesWright's subtle efforts to deconstructthe fantasy underpinning white perceptionsof black violence. Mary is transformedfrom a womanwhose sexualised perception of black men contributesto his sexualinterest in her to a passivevictim of black male sexualaggression. Furthermore,Wright was also compelledto exciseearlier scenes,which showed Bigger and his friends masturbatingbefore watchinga cinemanewsreel. Prurient scenes

36See H. Rowley,"Shadow", for a Ul accountof the changesWright waspersuaded to make.The original text wasfinally publishedby The Library of America in 1991.This versionconstitutes the sourceof all my quotationsin this Chapter,except those which I specifycome from the 1940publication. 37YL Rowley, p. 631. 112

of Mary Dalton on a Florida beachwith her boyfriend arc accompaniedby a voiceover declaring:"Oh; boy, don't you wish you were down here in Elorida?" When Bigger's friend Jack "Somebabies [ ] I'd like be Bigger "You comments: ... to there, replies: can, [ ] but be hangingfrom like bunch bananas..." (32). This demonstrates ... you'd a tree a of how American culture's simultaneouspromotion of fctishisedimages of white female sexuality and prohibition of black malc accesson pain of death affects Bigger. The removal of these scenesreduces the sensethat Bigger's culture has pathologisedhis sexuality,making him reactto white femininity with an explosivecombination of desire and mortal terror. This detracts from Wright's efforts to depict sexual violence as somethingother than a naturalelement of black masculinitythrough Mary's deathscene. Like Faulkner, Wright tries to depict the radical distortions racist ideology inflicts on black men and white women's perceptionsof each other as a major cause of black violence. But his alterationsto the novel reducethe senseof how Mary's sexualised perceptionof black men and Bigger's pathologicalattitude to white female sexuality contributeto his violence. The continual returns to the moment of Bigger's violence strongly imply that Wright himself experiencedanxieties about this scene.In Light in August the narrative circled round an act of violenceFaulkner could not adequatelyarticulate. In Native Son, the characterswithin the narrative repeatedlyattempt to representor re-cnact the traumatic crux of Bigger's violence, but they never succeed entirely. Like Joe Christmas'skilling of Joanna,Mary's death becomesa contestedsite both inside the narrative, as charactersattempt to project different ideological meaningsonto it, and outsidethe narrative,where critics continuethis process.Within the novel, manyof these attemptsare designedto critique the processesthrough which racist authority inscribes black violence in the discourseof demonisation.Various institutions of cultural and political power seekto fix the definition of this eventwithin the termsof the Black Beast narrative,exposing their profound psychologicalneed for black violence to perform a particular function. Newspaperreports describeBigger as an archetypalBlack Beast Rapist, before he has been tried and convicted (279-280). Police and newspaper photographers'attempt to makeBigger re-enacthis crime, seekingto createan imagelike Dixon's descriptionof Gus attackingMarion Lenoir in The Clansman,which will evoke 113

the projection of white phobias and represseddesires (335-336). State Attorney Buckley's prosecutionspeech operates in the same way. Like Dixon, he deliberately leavesspaces in his narrative of black violence designedto elicit particular responses from his audience,to evokefantasies of black bestiality.He claims,"the factsof this evil crime are so fantastic and unbelievable,so utterly beastlikeand foreign to our whole conceptof life, that I feel incapableof communicatingthem to this court" (373). But even as he proteststhe inadequacyof wordsto articulatethe savageryof Bigger's crimes,he is using words to shapehis audience'sperception of these crimes. lie uses the lack of evidence of these crimes to make readers project fantastical elements onto them, suggestingBigger burnt Mary's body to conceal"evidence of offencesworse than rape," including teeth marks on her breasts(412). This insinuationof cannibalismencourages thejury to regardblack male sexualityas savageand pathologicallyviolent However,it is the attemptsto reiterateBigger's violenceoutside this conventional discourseof demonisationwhich reveal Wright's anxieties about this scene.Jonathan Elmer claims Boris Max's defencespeech reveals a compulsive need to recapitulate "action throughexplicit commentary.s938 Max attemptsto define Bigger's violencewithin Marxist terms. He explicitly separatesit from the Black Beastnarrative, stating directly and with repetitiousemphasis what Wright hassought to showthrough dramatic action in his depictions of Bigger's life. He argues that Bigger's violence is not racially determined,but a productof. "The hate and fear which we have inspiredin him, woven by our civilization into the very structureof his consciousness,into his blood and bones, into the hourly functioning of his personality"(400). This underscoresWright's doubts abouthis highly charged,ambiguous representation of Mary's death.Native Son displays an anxiety which, as ChapterEight shows,is also visible in Toni Morrison's Paradise. Both novels anxiously fix the meaningof the traumaticviolence at their ccntrc through explicit commentary.However, inscribing Bigger's violencein Max's Marxist discourse risks retreatinginto the strategiesof denial Wright assiduouslyavoids in the early partsof Native Son. Although Max appearsto acknowledgethe extent of Bigger's rage,he then attemptsto align it with white proletariandissatisfaction with industrial capitalism.He claims "there are millions of others,Negro and white," whoselives havebeen reduced to

39J. Elmer, "Spectacle", p. 791. 114

a potentially violent craving for sensualsatisfaction by the stultifying, impoverished conditionsof urban life (402). He deniesthe particularityof black violence,the specific effects of racial.oppression on black subjectivity, which all the earlier descriptionsof Bigger's thoughtsand actions have insisted upon. Wright seemsto have beenaware of the limitations of Max's articulation of the meaning of Bigger's violence, even though he echoes its terms in "How 'Bigger' Was 09 Born. Despite the extreme limitations of Bigger's voice, Wright attempts to use it to articulate the meaning of his violence in different terms, which are racially spCcific. From immediately after his at least partially accidental killing of Mary, Bigger displays a complete willingness to embrace it as the quintessential expression of his humanity, of his feelings towards the world:

He had killed many times before, only on those other times there had been no handy dramatichis kill. [ ] Ile victim or circumstanceto makevisible or will to ... hidden meaningof his life -a meaningwhich othersdid not see,and which he had alwaystried to hide - hadspilled out (106).

Bigger endorsesthe sensewe have already seen Wright attemptingto create that his violence representsan objectivecorrelative of his experienceof racism,of what racism has done to him psychologically.The problem with Bigger's attemptsto articulate the meaningof his violenceis that they are intimately boundup with the new senseof self he obtains through killing. He believes lethal violence enableshim to realise his own humanity, becauseit shattersthe barriers we have seenfissure his psyche,ending the need for repressionwhich reduced him to an anaesthetisedautomaton. Now he can acknowledgethe true conditionsof his existenceand his feelingstowards the world. As Jerry H. Bryant observes, Bigger's violence develops his awarenessof his own intelligence. Concealinghis crimes requireshis talents for dissimulation,cunning and creativity to be used in ways his servile, constricted social position has previously 40Bigger feels he has last become prohibited. at someoneother than a product of white

39In this essay,Wright cWms thereare millions of Bigger Thomasesin the world, white aswell as black. See:F- Wright, "Biggee, p. 44 1.1 interpretthis as a further attemptto conformto communistideology and avoid losing what, aswe shall see,Wright felt was the only viable theoryto explainthe political situation of African Americansavailable to him. 'IH. Bryant, Victimsand Heroes.ýRacial Poletwe in the African AmericanNovel, p. 20 1. 115

oppression.He now performs the shuffling darky role in front of white people as consciousdeception. However, despite these undeniablepsychological developments, it is debatable whether Bigger has really escapedbeing in thrall, to a white image of blackness. Arguably, this new subjectivephase simply involves performinga different racist script. If Bigger embraceshis violence as the meaningof his existence,the essenceof his humanity,is he not just acceptingdemonising stereotypes which also define this violence as the essenceof blackness?The text repeatedlyforces us to consider this question, particularly when it reproducesmedia representationsof Bigger's crimes. After killing Mary, Bigger remains heavily dependentupon white recognition of his humanity, continually seekingout newspaperreports about his crimes.He believeshis violencewill end his invisibility, compellingthe pressto recognisehis humanityand print "his story," the feelings which have been "buried and burning in his own heart" through his whole life (222). But all he discoversis his inscription within the most powerful dchumanising trope of black masculinity,as a "Negro sex-slayer"(279).The newspapersrefuse even to believehe was solely responsiblefor writing the ransomnote (245). As in TheMarrow of Tradition, a black man can only achievevisibility in the mediaof hegcmonicculture as a demonisedcriminal. Although Wright intendedBigger's crimesto expresshis experience of racism,I do not believehe wantedsuch violence to be readas the sum,the essenceof black humanity.Bigger is representedas misguidedin believing this violence has made him humanin the eyesof the world and, as we shall see,he later ]carnshis humanitycan only be realisedin different ways. Perhapsthe novel's most powerful indictmentof the effectsof racismis that Bigger can only rebel in terms definedby the white regimehe is attemptingto rebel against. This readingoffers an explanationfor the disturbingrole of Bigger's secondact of lethal violencein the developmentof his new senseof selt Bigger claims that he kills Bessiebecause she represents a dangerto his escapeplans. Yet onceMary's boneshave been discoveredin the furnace,there is nothing significant she can tell the police about Bigger's crime they do not alreadyknow. Bigger's decisionthat, "he would haveto kill her. It was his life againsthers, " seemsto owe moreto his needto confirm his new sense of his own humanity than the exigenciesof his fugitive situation (236). Michel Fabre 116

claims this killing transformsBigger from a naturalistcharacter, overdetermined by his environment,to an existentialisthero, to kill 41 who chooses as an act of self creation. This aspectof the novel hasalways troubled feminist critics. Abdul JanMohamedtypifies the strongestfeminist criticisms: "The fundamentalpremise of Nalive Son,which Wright entirely fails to examinecritically, is that the protagonistcan becomea 'man' through rape and murder and overcomethe racializationof his subjectivity."42 Bigger does not achieve self-realisationby violently assertinghimself againstthe oppressorswho deny his humanity, like Frederick Douglass in his fight with the slave-breakerCovey. 43 Instead,he mimics the processof violently subjugatinga more vulnerableOther, through which whites construct their racial identity. His new senseof self conflates being authenticallyhuman with being a real man, and his understandingof genuinemasculinity is leamt from patriarchal, racist culture as dominance over inferior others. Only over Bessie can Bigger achieve this mastery. As Farah Jasmine Griffith puts it: "he takes her violently because her body is the only space where he can enact unbridled agency and authority. -)A4 The descriptionof Bigger's killing of Bessieis highly revealing:

He lifted the brick again and again, until in failing it struck a soddenmass that gavesoftly but stoutly to eachlanding blow. Soonhe seemedto be striking a wet wad of cotton, of some damp substancewhose only life was the jarring of the brick's impact(237).

Like Byron Kasson in Nigger Heaven, Bigger violently projects the dehumanising, racist gaze he has internalised so painfully onto another black person, reducing Bessie to a "'sodden mass," just as Byron perceived Randolph Pcttijohn as an "ugly black mass." Through violence, Bigger appropriates the human sclfhood he is struggling for, reducing Bessie's "life" to an effect of his energy, his agency. Previously, Bessie has been a

41M. Fabre,The UnfinishedQuest ofRichard Wright,trans. by 1. Bamm, 2nd edn.(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,1993), p. 171. 42A_ JanMohamed,"Sexuality", p. 108. 43Although the importanceDouglass gives this fight in the realisationof his humanitymay endorse hegemonicnotions of violenceas essentialto manhood,he doesat leastturn this violenceback against his oppressors.See: F. Douglass,"Narrative of the Life of FrederickDouglass", The Orford Frederick DouglassReader, ed. by W. L. Andrews(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1996). pp. 67-69. 44F. J. Griffith, "On Women,Teaching and Native Son",Approaches to TeachingNative Son,p. 79. 117

constricting force, an obstacleto Bigger's new senseof masculinity, asking awkward questionsand pointing out the realities of his desperatesituation. 45 But by killing her, Bigger achievesthe total dominancehe had fantasisedabout earlier in the novel. He imagined violently destroying the independent,subjective Bessie, who is beyond his control, and putting her "some deep inside him [ ] keepingher just feel place ... there to and know that shewas his to haveand hold wheneverhe wantedto" (140). After killing her, Bigger reflectson the desperationof his situation,yet still feels:"

[T]here remainedto him a queer senseof power. He had done this. Ile had brought all this about. In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happenedto him. Ile was living, truly and deeply" (239).

From killing Bessie,Bigger obtainsa senseof independentagency and power, qualities figured as properly masculineby hegemonicideology, which he has never previously experienced. By showing Bigger undergoing mental growth through committing violence, Wright sacrificesfemale characters to malecharacter development, establishing a patternin African Americanfiction we will seeToni Morrison accusedof repeating. However, I believe Wright is maintaining a critical distance from Bigger's behaviour here, and offering further evidence of how racism has warped Bigger psychologically.He createsa subtle sensethat Bigger's seconddeadly act of violence is as scriptedby white ideologyas his first was. Bigger describeshis decisionto kill Bessie as "handeddown to him by somelogic not his own, over which he had no control, but which he had to obey" (229). Just as white popular culture determinedhis reactionsto Mary, it seemsto determinethis decision.As Ross Pudaloff notes, Bigger gleans his tenuous motives for killing Bessie from hard-boiled detective stories and gangster 46 movies. At one point Bigger reflects:"A woman was a dangerousburden when a man was running away. He had read how men had beencaught because of a woman" (142). Bigger is seekingto enacta hard-boiledconcept of masculinityas absoluteindependence

45See for example144-147, where Bessie asks many questions about Bigger's ransomscheme, and predictshe will inevitablybe caught,and 227, whereBessie forces Bigger to recognisehe will be accused ofrape. 461- Pudaloff,"Celebrity asIdentity: Native Sonand Mass Culture", Richard Wright.- Critical Perqvctives Past ardPresent, ed. by H. L. Gatesand K. A. Appiah (New York: Amistad, 19931p. 163. 118

and violent control. The killing of Bessieresembles earlier momentswhere Bigger uses violence in ways he believes confirm his masculinestrength, but the narrator clearly shows expose how fear and how white racism has warped him. Bigger's senseof manhoodwas also at stake in his Pool hall attack on Gus, when he used intraracial violenceagainst a more vulnerableother to externalisethe feelingsof fear and impotence which preventedhim robbing a white store.As critics such as Abdul JanMohamedand SabineSielke have noted, Bigger's violence feminisesGUS. 47 His threat to "slice your tonsils" and his forcing Gus to lick his knife symbolically castratesand rapesGus (38- 39). At momentsof crisis, Bigger usesviolence to bolster his embattledmasculinity by projecting his fears onto a feminised Other, whose subjugation confirms his own masculinedominance and power.The rapeand murderof Bessieconstitute more extreme ways of combattingthe terrifying senseof vulnerability Bigger feels as a black fugitive, wantedfor the rapeand murderof a white woman.As SabineSielke notes,he projectshis fears onto Bessie, through rape and murder he extcrnaliscs his sense of being disempoweredand violated. 48 Despitethe presenceof this critical perspectiveupon Bigger's violence,Wright's descriptionof the rape of Bessiealmost participatesin the erasureof her humanityand her suffering which Bigger performsthrough violence. This becomesparticularly clear demanded when we considerhow Wright revisedthis scenewhile makingthe alterations by the Book-of-the-MonthClub. The original versiondescribed the rapein the following terms:

His desirewas nakedand hot in his handand his fingerswere touchingher. Yes. Bessie.Now. He had to now. don't Bigger don't He was sorry but he had to. He. He help it. [ ] He feeling bad how she would feel but he could not ... was about could not help it now. Feeling.Bessie. Now. Bigger. Now. All. All. Now. All. Bigger... (234).

In the versionrevised for publication,Wright substitutesthis passage:

47A- JarLMohamed,"Sexuality", p. 110 and S. Sielke, p. 109. 48S. Sielke, p. 113. 119

He had to now. Imperiously driven, he rode roughshod over her whimpering protests, feeling acutely sorry for her as he galloped a frenzied horse down a steep hill in the face of a resisting wind, don't don't don't Bigger. And then the wind became that it lifted him high into the dark [ ] faintly, [ ] he so strong air, ...... heard don't Bigger don't don't At a moment he could not remember he had fallen; and now he lay, spent, his lips parteCL49

In neither version doesWright achieveany representationof the physicalreality of rape. His first attempt focusessolely upon the characters'thoughts and voices. His second attempt relies on an extendedmetaphor which has little relation to the act of rape and which inserts anotherlevel of mediation betweenthe readerand the act, reducing the immediacyof our witnessing.This supportsSabine Sielkc's claim that the rapeof Bessie possessesno "signifying power.`50 Because of the way the text redefinesrape, "what he does to her hardly qualifies as rape."51 The revised scenealso reducesour senseof Bessie's suffering. Her already muted voice is representedless frequently, and she is metaphoricallyreduced to a formless,invisible substance,a "resisting wind," ratherthan articulatedas a suffering humansubject. Wright's redefinition of rapeas a metaphorfor the effects of racism preventsit also functioning as a form of misogynistabuse. Wright maintains the focus upon Bigger's suffering, upon how racism has warpedhis psyche, and permits no distractionsfrom this theme through representationsof black female suffering. Despite this textual erasure of female suffering, Wright still does not endorse Bigger's use of misogynist violence to bolster his masculinity. The sense of empowerment Bigger gains from violence is short-lived, underscoring Wright's intention to make readers perceive it as illusory, a misguided route to scif-realisation. As Sabine Sielke observes, the fears Bigger projects onto Bessie in raping her rebound upon him 52 immediately after, particularly in the revised version of the text. Bigger is described as "fallen" and "spent," lying with "his lips parted" and "his legs wide apart.,3%5 11c then goesto the greaterextreme of killing her, but only a pageafter articulatingthe new sense

49 p Son(1940 (London: Vintage,2000), 264. , Wright, Native text) p. 50S. Sielke,Reading, p. 113. 51S. Sielke,Reading, p. 107. 52S.Sielke, Reading, pp. 112-113. 53P, Wright, NativeSon, (1940 text) p. 264 120

of power and control I quotedabove, he becomesunsure about what he has gained.Ile wonders:

But what was he after? What did he want? What did he love and what did he hate?He did know [ ] he did believe it not ... not want to make that was solved, makebelieve that he was happywhen he wasnot (240).

These doubts lead Bigger to imagine a different way of realising his humanity. lie dreamsof being able to "merge himself with othersand be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself" (240). Later, in prison he becomesconvinced that humanwholeness can only be achievedthrough intersubjective contact and recognition:

If he [ I touched [ ] therebe [ I reachedout ... and other people ... would a reply? ... in that touch,response of recognition,there would be union, identity, there would be a supportingoneness, a wholenesswhich had been denied him all his life (362).

This suggeststhat Bigger, and indeed Wright, are searchingfor an alternativeway to realise black humanity,but the only terms in which Wright can articulatethis are highly problematic.The sensethat misogynistviolence and the subjugationof othersrepresent a misguidedroute to selfhoodis not matchedby any clear or convincingnarrativisation of an alternative, suggestingwhy critics such as Abdul Jan Mohamed have interpreted Native Sonas an endorsementof this model of manhood.54 Bigger has always rejected intersubjective contact with other African Americans as a route to self-realisation.While in prison, he remains convincedthat only white society can offer meaningful recognition and validation of his humanity, and Wright seems to share this view. The reconciliation with his family which occurs seems unimportant to his characterdevelopment. 55 Instead, in an often-criticisedscene, Jan forgives Bigger for killing Mary and offers to help him. Bigger experiencesan epiphany, an unprecedentedrecognition of humanityacross the colour-linc:

54A JanMohamed,"Sexuality". p. 108. 121

A particle of white rock had detacheditself from the looming mountain of hate For the first time in his life a white man had becomea humanbeing to him; He sawJan as thoughsomeone had performedan operationon his eyes,or as thoughsomeone had snatcheda deformingmask from Jan's face(289).

Bigger transcendsthe objectifying distortions of racist ideology. StephenK George interprets this as a pivotal moment in the novel, marking "a fundamentalchange in Bigger's perceptionof himself and others., 56 He claims this is Bigger's first genuine "face-to-face encounter"in the Levinasian sense,where the othernessof the other is recognisedas exceedingegocentric expectations and ideologicaldistortions and servesas an interdict againstviolence. Wright seemsto posit this sceneas the first stepto resolving racial violence,but it is besetby problems.Not only Jan's forgivenessof Bigger,but also Bigger's ability to perceiveJan's humanity,feels forcedand inadequatelymotivated. The changesBigger has undergonein prison in his discussionswith Boris Max seemtoo brief and minor to alter the deeply ingrained fear and hatred of whites which motivated Bigger's violence. JamesBaldwin was particularly critical of what he saw as a purely rhetorical redemptionof Bigger, becauseit displayswhat I call the strategyof denial. Rather than resolving the problems which createblack violence, it simply decidesto ignore them:

[T]hough there are whites and blacksamong us who hateeach other we will not; thereare thosewho are betrayedby greed,by guilt, by blood lust, but not we: we will setour facesagainst them andjoin handsand walk togetherinto that dazzling future wherethere will be no white or black.57

However, Wright seemsto have sensedthe inadequaciesof this redemption, becauseit doesnot constitutehis last word on Bigger's fate. Ile final sceneillustrates Wight's acute ambivalence about the competing articulations of Bigger's violence within the novel. In a last attempt to inscribe the meaning of Bigger's violence within Marxist discourse, Max presentsthe Chicago skyline to Bigger as a socialist vision of community.

53In prison,Bigger acknowledgesthat: "His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit" (298). But he remainsunable to communicateproperly with thm and soonasks Max to stopthem visiting him. 56S. K George,"The Horror of Bigger Thomas:The Perceptionof Form Without Facein RichardWright's Native Son",African AmericanReview, 31: 3 (1997),497-504, p. 502. 122

He envisagesa society where all people's strivings towards self-realisationthrough the productionof artifacts,of which thesebuildings are examples,could be accommodated, if the capitalist strangleholdon wealth and resourceswas brokcn.58 The energiesBigger was only able to expressthrough violence, he implies, could easily be translatedinto productiveforms througha changein the economicorder of America.This view involves repeating the equation of racism with the oppressionof the proletariat, denying the particularity of black rage. Max claims the capitalists, "say that black people arc inferior," but, "they say that all peoplewho work are inferior" (428). But Bigger rejects this diagnosis,responding with laughter.He insists on his violence as an expressionof preciselywhat racism hasmade him, shouting:"what I killed for I am!" (428). Although Bigger's embraceof his murdersas the essenceof his self is not representedpositively, Wright still intendedhis final outburstto be a legitimateand unavoidableexpression of black anger. Max respondswith fearful incomprehension:"Max's eyes were full of terror," he "groped for his hat like a blind man"(429).This return to the blindnessmotif connotesthe limits of his understandingof black anger,his refusalto faceit fully. Bigger's inability to articulatewhat he sensesis wrong with Max's Marxist vision revealswhy Wright cannottotally reject Marxism in this scene.Bigger thinks: "Ile had lived outside of the lives of men. Their modesof communication,their symbols and images,had been denied him" (422). Similarly, Wright could not discover a symbolic mode adequateto articulatethe black experienceof racism. Becausehe rejectedblack folk culture and literary traditions, only communism offered a clear alternative, a discoursepossessing cultural authorityand white recognition,but it involved a degreeof denial. In an essay,Wright claimed: "anyone destituteof a theory about the meaning structureand directionof modemsociety is a lost victim in a world he cannotunderstand or control."59 This suggestsa fear of renderinghis writing impotent preventedWright from definitively rejecting the communistdiscourse whose inadequacieshe sensed.As we have seen,he fearedhis attemptsto signify on the discourseof dcmonisationwere inadequateand open to misinterpretation,and he was not prepared to leave his

57j. Baldwin, "Many", p. 78. 58My interpretationof Max's vision is indebtedto C. Scruggs,SWet Home.Invisible Cities in theAfro- AmericanNovel (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press,1993), pp. 92-93. 123 representationsof black violencefloating outsideany authoritativediscourse, where they could easily be co-opted into racist interpretations.This difficulty with signifying effectively on demonised,images of black violence perhapsexplains why subsequent authorshave rarely copiedWright's audaciousstrategy.

by Fabre E. Wright (New 59 IRLWright, "Blueprint for Negro Writins7, Richard Wright Reader, ed. M. &nd York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 45. 124

CHAPTERFIVE

"THE HORROR, ITIE ACTUALITY OF OUR BLOODY PAST, AND POSSIBLE FUTURE": (RE)WRITING THE VIOLENCE OF SLAVE REBELLION

After World War 11,changed economic and political circumstancesled to the demise of the naturalist, protest school of African American fiction. Black violence largely disappearedfrom the African American novel for a long period. The nineteen fifties witnessedthe emergenceof what RobertE. Washingtoncalls the "moral-suasion" school of black literature! Black authorssought to challengeracism not by frightening white readerswith representationsof the violent effects of racism, but by appealingto white Americansto live up to their own professedmoral principles in their treatmentof blacks. The canonicalAfrican American texts from this era exhibit clear strategiesof denial. This is not to repeatIrving Howe's assumptionof the ability to set appropriate levels of anger and protest for African American literature, which Ellison famously denial in these texts from criticised.2My sensethat strategiesof are at work stems intriguing momentswhere repressedviolence seemsto erupt through the surfaceof the text. Thesemoments strongly suggestviolence is being repressedelsewhere to support the moral suasionideology. For example,the focal characterof Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison is largely free of violence.But momentssuch as his brutal attackon a white man who fails to perceive him in the introduction suggestviolent anger is being repressed.Invisible man exhibits a degreeof fury in this attackwhich is neveradequately explained, and rarely matched, in his other descriptionsof the experienceof racial invisibility. 3 Ellison's admissionthat he wrote Ras the Exhorter/ Destroyer'spassionate advocation of violence in the fight against racism after pcrsonal experiencesof

1See: R_ E. Washington,Ae IdeologiesofAfirican AmericanLiterature, p. 233. 2 Howe criticisedthe lack of political protestin InvisibleMan, insistinga black mancannot -put pcn to paper" in Americawithout feeling "someimpulsion to protest." See:1.1 lowe, "Black Boys andNative Sons",A WorldMore Attractive (New York: Horizon Press,1963), p. 100WW pp. 111-115.Ellison attackedthis presumptuousclaim by a white manto understandAfrican Americanexperience and dictate the parametersof black fiction. See:IL Ellison, "The World andthe Jug", YheCaected&says ofRa" Ellison, pp. 158-159. 3 See:K Ellison, InvisibleMan (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1965), pp. 7-8. 125

4 discrimination is unsurprising.I Yet when Ras does take violent action, it is represented comically from a satirical distance as futile and inappropriate. It seems this rejection of violence is necessary to enable the epilogue's expressions of faith in American democracy as offering peaceful solutions to the problems of racism.5 Another Country (1962) by JamesBaldwin also exhibits denial. It initially focuses on a character whose rage at American racism matches Bigger 71omas's, and who expresseshis rage in scenesof sexual violence against a white woman. Baldwin seemsto want Rufus's relationship with his white girlffiend Leona to express the complex, ambivalent combination of love and hatred his essaysclaim exists between the raccs in 6 America, but Rufus's hatredand fury overwhelmany senseof other emotions. Consider the descriptionof their first sexualencounter:

[S]hortly, nothing could havestopped him, not the white God himself nor a lynch mob arriving on wings. Under his breath he cursed the milk white bitch and his betweenher [ IA groanedand rode weapon thighs. ... moan and a cursetore through him while he beat her with all the strengthhe had and rclt the vcnom shootout of him, enoughfor a hundredblack-white babies. 7

As in Native Son,the imageryof black rapeis usedin wayscalculated to outragewhites, and to expressblack anger with maximal force. This scenedepicts consensual sex, but later Rufus frequentlybeats Leona. However, as RobertE. Washingtonnotes, the lack of explanationfor Rufus's violence makes it appear"more the product of a personality disorderthan of racial.abuse. "8 Thus Baldwin fails to challengeeffectively the dcmonised stereotypesregarding black masculinityhe accusedWright of reproducingin imagesof Bigger's violence.Furthermore, suicide eliminates Rufus from the text lessthan a quarter of the way throughthe novel. The rest of the narrativefocuses more on white characters, except for the sister of Rufus, who lacks his rage at racism and establishesless antagonistic interracial relationships.This circumvents the need to representblack

4 SeeR. Ellison, Invisible, pp. 298-303and L. B. Holland,"Ellison in Black and White: Confession, Violenceand Rhetoricin Itivisible Mwi", Black Fictiori: NewSimbes in theAfro-American Novel Sitice 1945,ed. by A. R. Lee (London:Vision Press,1980), p. 70. 5 See:R. Ellison, lirvisible, pp. 461469. 6 Seefor example:J. Baldwin, "Many Thousand'sGone", 7hePrice of the 7-icket,pp. 76-77,which I quote from below in discussingStyron's representations of sexualisedblack violence. 71. Baldwin,Atioilrer Counfty (London:Michael Joseph,1963), pp. 28-29. 8 R. E. Washington,Ideologies, p. 259. 126

violence and enables.the novel to endorsethe peaceful,moral suasionattitude to race relationsexpressed in Baldwin's essays. Black violencealso virtually disappearedfrom white fiction during this era. It did not return until the very different political circumstancesof the late sixties, in a novel which reaffinns the highly chargednature of all representationsof black violence. The ConfessionsofNat Turner (1967) by William Styronhas generated a level of controversy comparableto ThomasDixon's novels.The novel was publicly condemnedin a volume entitled William Styron's Nat Turner. Ten Black Writers Respond (1968). At the symposiumsand conferenceshe attendedto defend his novel, black militants accused Styron of misrepresentinga hero of African Americanhistory, to endorsewhite fantasies aboutblack men.9 Eventually,Styron abandoned his cfforts, leavinghis novel "lodged in kind black JndýxExpurgatorius [ ] The a of ... along with such overtly racist novels as Clansman."10 As I will show, the strategiesof denial and dcmonisationcharacteristic of white American representationsof black violenceare on display in this novel, bound up with cultural anxictiesprovoked by contemporaryracial tensions.When 7he Confessions was written, recent summershad witnessedmassive riots in urban ghettos and the peacefulCivil Right's Movementwas beginningto splinter into militant, often separatist fragments.These events brought black violence back to the fore of American public consciousness.The quotationin my chaptertitle comesfrom a note Styron wrote in his copy of William Drewry's The SouthamptonInsurrection, a history of Nat Turner's revolt. The difficulty of confrontingthe "horror" of racial violencein America's "bloody pastand possiblefuture" shapedStyron's version of the Nat Turner story,and contributed to makinghis novel so controversial. Styron's militant critics often accusedhim of distorting the facts about Nat Turner's revolt out of fear of black violence. Addison Gayle claims 7he Confessions exemplifies white anxieties about black violence contemporaneouswith the novel's production. He claims the developmentof the peaceful, integrationist Civil Rights movementinto militant groupsinspired by Fanon'stheories of violent revolution,made it

9 See:"The Usesof History in Fiction", Commersationawith William Somi, ed. by J. L. West,III (Jackson: University of MississippiPress, 1985), pp. 114-144, for examplesof heatedexchanges between Styron and his black critics. 127

inevitable that a book like The Confessionswould "be written and adopted as the definitive commentaryon black revolution and revolutionaries."" Critiques of Yhe Confessionsby Black Arts critics, however,tended to identify its shortcomingsthrough contrastwith an ideal image of a heroic black revolutionary,simplistically proposedas the historical truth aboutNat Turner. Styronwas able to arguein responsethat he simply held a different view of slavery and rebellious slave activity, predicatedon different evidenceand rationalinferences. But, throughclose analysis of the narrative,I exposethe irrational anxietieswhich lie beneathStyron's apparently rationally baseddecisions about the Nat Turner revolt. I am not arguing Styron intentionally wrote a racist novel, just reaffirming the limits of the white liberal imagination and the persistenceof certain imagesof black violence in the American Imaginary. Becausehe could not transcend demonisedimagery in his conceptionsof black violence,Styron could only humaniseNat Turner in what he perceivedas non-racistterms by occludinghis historicalviolence. The "Ten Black Writers" exaggeratedthe importanceof Nat Turner as a hcro in the African Americanfolk tradition. Nevertheless,his statusas a genuinehistorical figure ensuresnovelistic portrayal of him risks even greatercontroversy than purely fictional representationsof black violence. As Ralph Ellison observedwhile participating in a debateon The Confessions,fictionalising historical black figures threatensthe "valuable myth[s]" which nurture black cultural identity in the face of begcmonic racist 12 denigration. The difficulties attendantupon any representationof black violence arc also increasedby attempting to articulate the consciousnessof a slave. As Frederick Jameson has observed, history "can only be approached by way of prior (re)textualization."l 3 To understandslaves as subjects,our only real textual resourceis the slave narratives,which often presentcomplex problemsof authorship.Nat Turner constitutes a particularly diflicult case, because the only source articulating his perspectiveon his revolt is the original "The Confessionsof Nat Turner", a supposedly

10W. Styron,"Nat TurnerRevisited", YheConfessions ofNat Turricr (New York. RandomI louse 1994).p. xxxiv. 11A. Gayle, Me Wayof the New World,p. 284. 12R. Ellison, W. Styron,I, PennWarren, C. Van Woodward,"T'he Uses of I listory in Fiction", Coirversations,p. 142. 13F. Jameson,Ae Political Unconscious(Ithaca: Comell University Press,198 1), p. $2. 128

accuratetranscription of an accountof the rebellion Nat Turner gaveto a white lawyer, ThomasGray, while in prison. Styron adheredto the basic details of the revolt in this document,but he made considerablealterations to the biographicalinformation it suppliesabout Nat Turner. He justified his alterationsby claiming he was faithfully representingthe historical totality of slavery.14 However, all thesealterations combine to createa clear strategyof denial of black violence. Styron relied heavily on Stanley Elkins' controversial book Slavery (1959). For Elkins, the overwhelmingphysical and mental brutality of slavery did not produce the kind of agonised psychic fragmentation and reactive violence racism producesin many black charactersin this thesis. Instead,it reducedslaves to docile children who regardedtheir mastersas fathers.15 Among Styron's slavecharacters, only Nat himself does not feel overwhelminghumility and awe before whites. Styron gives Nat's exceptional rebelliousnesspredominantly white cultural origins, significantly altering historical evidenceregarding Nat's family circumstances.Like Faulkner,Styron finds the ideathat racismcould provokeviolence anywhere in black societyimpossible to contemplate;he can only conceiveof such violenceif it is in someway whitened.Tbus, he gives Nat's father no part in the formation of his subjectivity, but Nat's childhood regard for his masterSamuel Turner is: "very close to the feeling one should bear only toward the Divinity. " 16Styron justified these alterationsas a reflection of the typical unimportanceof the slave family and the perceptionof the master as "father-image" Elkins posited.17 Styronalso contradictshistorical evidence about antebellum Southampton County where the historical Nat Turner lived to isolate Nat's rebelliousnessfurther from black culture. Southamptoncontained no large plantations;most slavcholderspossessed only a few slaves.18 But Styron locateshis Nat Turner on a large plantation,making social and psychological divisions between house and field slaves crucial to his subjective development.This denies him the contact with the black community which probably

14See: G. Lukacs, 7heHistoricalNovel, trans.by 11.and S. Mitchell (London:Merlin Press,1992), pp. 166-167,for the theoryof the historicalnovel behindStyron's justification. 15See: S. Elkins, Slavery,3rd Edn. (Chicago:Chicago University Press, 1976), p. 128-129. 16W. Styron, 7heConfessions ofNal Turner(New York: RandomI louse 1994),p. 126.Subsequent referencesto this novelwill appearin parenthesesin the text. 17S. Elkins, Slavery,p. 129-131. 129

nurtured the historical Nat Turner's rebellious spirit. Most recent African American literaturedepicts the survival of African elementsin slaveculture as an essentialfactor in slaverebelliousness. Sixo in Belovedby Toni Morrison and Orion in Damballahby John Edgar Wideman find the strength to resist slavery through a senseof their African cultural origins. Similarly, Robert Hayden'spoem, "Tle Ballad of Nat Turner," portrays Turner's revolutionaryanger inspired by lbo warriors hangingfrom trees.19 But Styron's Turner is alienatedfrom all things African. He describesthe speechof a freedmanas: "unbearablyhalting and cumbersomewith a wet gulping soundof Africa in it" (262). In this way, Styron deniedthe existenceof any tradition of subversiveviolence within African American culture, which enragedsixties black militants. Styron then representsthe origins of Nat's exceptionalviolence in a way which almost negatesthe possibility of slaveviolence actually occurring.Even though Nat describeshis family as his only educatorsin Gray's "Confessions," Styron depicts him becoming rebellious throughwhite education(16). Nat's educationenables him to perceiveslavery as morally wrong and a contradictionof Americanvalues. It makeshim deeplyangered by the loss of his freedomand the denial of his humanity,and giveshim the rational ability to plan a revolt against slavery. But this educationalso imbues Nat with a senseof humanist, Christian ethics which make him ultimately unableto employ murderousviolence as a weaponagainst slavery. &W. B. Lewis surnmarisedthis in an interview commentStyron agreedwith, saying: "the kind of person who had the capacity to organiserebellion, would also havea sensibilitywhich would forbid his carryingit through."20 Perhapsbecause of his anxieties about contemporaryracial tensions, Styron appearsto have neededto imaginea Nat whoseanger against his oppressorsand desire for revengewas strictly limited. Considerthe feature of Gray's "Confessions"Styron made central to his charactcrisationof Nat Turner: Nat's apparentfailure to kill anyone exceptone girl during the rebellion. Styroninterpreted Nat Turner's explanationsfor this 21 as "patently an evasion," claiming he had a problem with the violence he initiated. While writing the novel Styron insistedthis problemis historicallyaccurate: "I think it's

1SJ.W. West IIL Willi= Styron:A Life (New York: RandomHouse, 19981 p. 354. 19R-E.Hayden, "The Ballad of Nat Turner", YheAratTumerRebeffiotr7heffistoricalEventwx1the Modem Controversy,p. 94. 20C. Vann Woodwardand R. W. B. Lewis, "The Confessionsof William Styron7,Coinvrsations, p. 91. 130

unavoidablein an honestreading of Nat Turner's confessionsthat he himself was almost unableto grapplewith violence,to carry it out successfully. "22 Reaching this conclusion seemsto haveenabled Styron to conceiveof Nat as a fully humancharacter, but only at the cost of occluding all the other evidenceabout the historical Nat Turner in Yhe Confessions.As the controversydeveloped Styron was forced to acknowledgehow much he had alteredhis Nat. He statedin a 1974interview- "I think the historical Nat Turner was an almost insanelymotivated religious fanatic. I took the perfectlylegitimate liberty humanising this by him [ ]a degree of man, or monster, giving ... of rational 23 intelligence. On subsequentoccasions, Styron has been even more candidabout the gap betweenhis characterand the historical Nat Turner, and his inability to conceiveof that figure as fully human.He has describedhim in the phobic terms of conventionalwhite discourseon black violence,calling him a "dementedogre besetby bloody visions,," and acknowledged,"I didn't want to write about a psychopathicmonster. *-24 He has also statedthat splitting Nat's personalityand displacing"the lineamentsof crazedsavagery" onto his henchmanWill was "plainly essentialin order to give him tragic stature."as I believethis processwas actually essentialfor him to give Nat any kind of humanstature. As I will showlater, Will's violencereduces him to a barelyhuman status. The form of The Confessionsalso works to deny black violence.Styron declared during the compositionof TheConfessions that: "to cometo know the Negro,has become the moral imperativeof everywhite Southemer," and to ful f il this imperative,he choseto useNat as a first personnarrator. 26 This compelledhim to representthe mentalprocesses behind Nat's violent rebellion entirely in Nat's own voice, creatingproblems which go beyondjust establishingan authenticsounding voice for a slave character.Languages encodecultural valuesand modesof thinking, making it debatablewhether the violence of a rebelliousslave can be representedwithin the vocabularyof the hegemonicdiscourse in American culture and yet outside racist paradigms.White languagemay seem

21C. Vann Woodwardand R. W. B. Lewis, "Confessions",p. 89. 22R. Canzoneriand P. Stegner,"An Interview with William Styroe, PerlSe,I (Summer1966), 39, p. 39. 23 B. Forknerand G. Schricker,"An Interview with William Styron", Conversationswith William Stpwi, p. 193. 24W. Styron,"More Confessions",Novel History, ed. by M. C. Carnes(New York: Simon& Schuster, 2001), p. 222 and W. Styron,"Nat TurnerRevisited", pp. xxv-xxvi. 25W. Styron,"More7, p. 222. 131

inevitably to reduce Nat to nothing more than a white fantasy of black responsesto racism. Styron's Nat sometimesuses black vernacular,such as in the speechhe delivers to a large assemblyof Southamptonslaves on market day in Jerusalem(307-311). Here, the vocabularyand the biblical imageryare commensuratewith the educationreceived by the historical Nat Turner. This demonstratesStyron's ability to renderAfrican American speechwithout reducingthe speakerto a Sambostereotype. But Styrondid not chooseto narratethe whole novel in the biblical, African Americanvoice of Nat's sermon.Most of Nat's narrativeis couchedin an elaborate,Latinate idiom which soundsmore plausibleas the voice of a white nineteenthcentury speaker. Thus, the subversivepotential of biblical languageto contributeto an African Americandiscourse with somecultural authority in antebellumsociety in which slavescouldjustify rebellion, is largelylost A comparisonwith Light in Augustreveals further limitations inherentto Styron's methodof narration.Styron wantedto penetratethe black consciousnessmore fully than Faulkner, "whose Negro characters"were always "meticulously observedrather than 27 lived. , Yet using a first personnarrator reduces7he Confessionsto a lower level of psychologicalrealism than Light in August.Faulkner rccognised Joe Christmascould not narrate his own story in coherent, comprehensibleterms, becauseof the traumatic splitting racisminflicts upon his psyche.Like Wright in Native Son,Faulkner used a third personnarrator who can penetratebeneath his protagonist'sconsciousness, and reveals his bizarre,fragmentary thoughts occasionally, without having to rely on his perspective to explain the entire narrative. Because StyTon uses an exclusively first person perspective,he cannotpermit Nat to be psychicallyfragmented if his narrative is to be comprehensible.Nat's narrative, although not totally linear, is nothing like the fragmentedthoughts which swirl through Joe Christmas'smind; it suggestsa unified, coherent,hegemonic white subject. Occasionally, the languageof Nat's narrative implies the psychic divisions slavery has inflicted upon him. When Nat describesthe death of his mistress,Sarah Travis, during his insurgency,he claims: I felt an honestwrench of regretat the sight of the blood gushinglike a red sluicewayfrom her headlessneck" (273). Here, the vivid,

26 W. Styron,"This Quiet Dust"l MisQuietDustwid0ther Writings(London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), p. 14. 27W. Styron,"This Quiet Dust", p. 13. 132

almost lurid description of Sarah's demise contradicts the professedremorse. Gavin Cologne-Brooksclaims this examplifies Bakhtinian "double-voicedness," the idea that tone in written language,although obviously not audible,can be implied throughdiction and sentencestructure. He claims a sarcastictone is implied in the imagery of this 28 sentence. 1 would argue, however, that the underlying sarcasmand the outward sympathy towards Sarah Travis are held in tension, creating a tone which is neither definitively sarcastic nor sympathetic.This tension exemplifies both the conflicting mixture of love and hatredwhich characterisesTurner's attitudetowards whites, and the ambivalenceTurner feels towardsthe violenceof his rebellion.However, such sentences are unusual,and the overall style of the novel gives us little senseof Nat as, in Samuel Coale's words,a "charactertorn betweenirreconcilable voices. 'a9 The limitations of Styron's method of narration contribute to the problems regarding the representationof Nat and his motives for rebellion. The factors which provoke Turner's violence owe more to the predicamentof the sixties educatedAfrican American than the situation of slaves.The most psychologicallydamaging experiences for Nat do not involve the brutality of slavery; he receivesonly one lash from a whip throughoutthe novel. Styron occludedthe possibility that his violence was provokedby physical abuse. Gavin Colognc-Brooksclaims Styron may have excluded physical brutality from Nat's experienceof slaveryto emphasise:the 'brutalizing effects' of even the best of slavery on master and slave.30 Styron has corroboratedthis intcrpretation, stating: "the accountsof brutality fade into inconsequenceagainst a backdropin which the total dehumanizationof a racetook place."31 However, even these brutalising cffects are not adequatelyarticulated as motives for extremeviolence. The central trauma of Nat's life, which convinceshim he must rebel, is being sold to the ReverendEppes. Eppes' attempts to abuse him sexually expose how slavery dehumanisesand commodifiespeople. But this experienceis traumatic principally becauseit represents Nat's betrayal by the master who promised him manumission.Ile is compelled to recognisethat the white world, which his educationhas taught him to love and identify

22(i. Cologne-Brooks,Me Novelsof Willimn S(Dxon:From Avmotop to Ifistoty (BatonRouge: Louisiana StateUniversity Press, 1995), pp. 115-116. 29S. Coale, Willi= Styron Revisited (Boston: G. K. 11all, 1991), p. 91 30Cy. Cologne-Brooks, Novels, p. 138. 133

with, regardshim only as property,not as human.This brings to the surfacedoubts about his own humanity which lurk traumatically in the depths of his mind. The effects of slaveryupon Nat resembleDuBois' conceptof double-consciousnessand Fanon'sideas about the intrusion of the white gaze into colonial subjectivity. As we have seenthese theoriescan be usedto depict powerfully the impact of racismon twentiethcentury black psychology,but it is debatablewhether they can be usedto delineatethe cffects of racism upon slavesubjectivity. Through his extensivewhite education,Nat intemalisesa demeaningwhite gaze upon himself as a black person, emphasisedby his use of phrasessuch as: "The life of a little nigger child is dull beyond recounting" (138). fie recalls the effect of seeing the overseer who raped his mother, by saying: "I feel a senseof my weakness, my smallness, my defenselessness,my niggerness invading me like a wind to the marrow of my bones"(150). He is torn between the whites he admires yet hates and the blacks he is disgusted by yet feels a senseof kinship with. However, the tone of these expressions of self-hatred is too measured and distanced to give any impression of the psychological anguish the intrusion of a racist gaze provokes in characters such as Joe Christmas and Bigger Thomas. Nat resembles Bigger Thomas in being driven to violence by the desire to be recognised as human by the white hegemonic culture, perceiving no value in the ethnic community from which he has become alienated. The denial of this recognition produces his most extreme moments of inner turmoil and fury. He becomes murderously angry when he reflects that Mrs. Whitehead regards him as a "Miraculous wheelbarrow," thinking: "Truly, that while flesh will soon be dead' (328). Because of their complete dissociation from the specific brutalities of slavery and Styron's failure to render Nat as psychologically anguished, these moments of fury seem somewhat inadequately motivated and incongruous. This failure to articulate adequately Nat's motives for rebellion emphasises Styron's anxieties about Nat's violence. Having imbued Nat with modern psychological problems, unconnected to the specific brutalities of slavery, Styron could not render him as a murderous fanatic without implying that modern forms of racism could produce such a reaction in all African Americans. This would contradict the novel's general strategy of

31W. Styron,"Slave and Cifizen7,7his QuietDust, p. 37. 134

denial, reducing the violence of slavery in order to downplay the possibility of contemporaryblack violence. Thus The Confessionsmakes Nat appearlargely rational and psychically normal. Styron even depicts the religious visions the historical Nat Turner claimed to have experienced,potential evidenceof how the traumasof slavery damagedhim psychologically,as consequencesof the somaticcffects of fasting. Unlike many charactersconsidered in this thesis, there is no sensetrauma has loosenedNat's grip on present reality. Styron may have avoided this to make Nat appear human according to Western, humanist notions; a rational, coherent intelligent subject. In particular, Styron may have wantedto avoid reproducingthe rhetorical strategyused in Gray's "Confessions"'to eraseNat Turner's subjectivity.As Eric Sundquistnotes, Gray is facedwith the paradoxthat legally, Nat is definedas "at onceproperty and yet capableof volitional acts." By holding him legally responsiblefor violationsof the law, his free will is recognised,but this implies he possessesnatural rights as a human,including the right to rebel against tyranny. Gray masks this deep contradiction within the American ideology of slavery"by feebly assertingthat Turner was actedupon by ideasbeyond his As ideas instigator,Turner [ ] disappears comprehension. the object of ratherthan their ... [ ] demonic 32 as subject,or ratherappears as subjectonly underthe guiseof ... possession. Perhaps,therefore, Styron eliminated evidence of fanaticismfrom his portrayalof Nat to emphasisehe is a humanagent. But he severelyreduces the senseof the impactof racism on Nat, and fails to demonstrateadequate human motives for his violence.To take such extremeaction as this murderousrebellion surely requiresan extrememental stateand Styron little Sundquist "Styron [ ] gives us senseof this. As observes: ... assumedthat 'fanaticism' precluded'rational' political intelligence.I take this to be a fundamental misunderstandingof Nat Turner.03 It seemsto me that for a black subjectin particular, fanaticismprecludes rational intelligencein Styron'simagination. Nat's momentsof murderousrage are also deeplyproblematic because they tend to consistof rapefantasies, which drew fierce criticism from all the "ren Black Writers." Addison Gayle claims this elementof the novel obscuresthe real issuesat stakein Nat Turner's rebellion and endorsesdemonised stereotypes of black violence: "Blacks may

32E. Sundquist,To Wakethe Nations(Cambridge: The BelknapPress of HarvardUniversity Press. 1993), 51. E. Sundquist,Wake, p. 5 1. 135

write injustice [ ]. T'hese,however, of oppression,complain of social ... are simply code [ ] for blacks is words ... which mask the real objectives.Revolution basedon nothing more tangiblethan a desireto seducethe master'sdaughter. *34 However, I believeStyron used these fantasiesto symbolisethe radical emotional ambivalenceNat experiences towardswhites. Styronregarded this ambivalenceas crucial to the structureof American racerelations, an ideahe developedfrom his readingsof JamesBaldwin's essays:

It is not simply the relationshipof oppressedto oppressor,of masterto slave,nor is it motivated merely by hatred; it is also, literally and morally, a blood [ I begin it how relationship, ... andwe cannot to unlock until we accept very much it containsof the force and anguishand terror of love.35

Styron attemptsto depict not just hatredand exploitation producingracial violence,but also frustratedand distortedfeelings of love and sympathy,which ultimately offer hope for a future without racisrn- Nat's anger is never provokedpurely by hatred,but by a combinationof hatred and a confusedsense of affectivc bondswith whites.He himself strugglesto explain the emotional turmoil which overwhelmshim while he is driving Margaret Whiteheadto church:

I filled [ ] long hot desire that am with ... the to reachout and snap white, slender, throbbing [ ] Yet I it it is hatred;it is young neck ... - strange, am awareof - not somethingelse. But what? What? I cannot place the emotiorL It is closer to jealousybut it is not eventhat (92).

Throughout the novel, these moments of radical ambivalencebring Nat closest to violence, violence always described in sexualisedterms. These fantasiesmay seem motivatedby the traumaof havingwitnessed his mother's rape;an experiencewhich has made rape the paradigmaticform of oppressiveviolence for Nat. But I believe Styron also regardedsexual violence as an objectivecorrelative for the conflicting emotionsNat

34A. Gayle, 7he Wayofthe New World (GardenCity: Anchor Press/ Doubleday,1975), p. 236. 351. Baldwin, "Many", p. 76-77.Styron quotes Baldwin approvingly,in a recentessay on 7heConfessionr "each of us 'containsthe other-[... ] white in black, black in white. We are part of eachother. " W. Styron, "Nat Turner Revisited",p. xxxix. 136 could not acknowledgein his narration.36 The rape fantasy Nat experienceswhen a Northern white woman regardsa freedmanwith an expressionof pity seemsto result from the sameconflicting emotionswhich overwhelmedhim while driving with Margaret (264). Nat's emotional ambivalenceis crucial to the depiction of his relationshipwith Margaret Whitehead.Like Light in August and Native Son, The Confessionsuses an encounter between a black man and a white woman as the central element of its investigation into racial relations and violence. Most critics, whether they attack or defendStyron's representationof this relationship,misunderstand his reasonsfor making it central to The Confessions,which are best demonstratedby the representationof Nat killing Margaret.This act can be interpretedas the ultimate rebellion againstthe white social order, as Bigger Thomascomes to view his killing of Mary. Richard Gray argues that Nat's obsessionwith Margaret revealsthat his inner world is as much a white- constructedprison as his outer world, evidencethat the hegemonyof white culture over Nat leadshim to try to embraceits idealS.37 But I believe Styron wantedthe narrativeof this relationshipto revealsomething other than how Nat's desirefor revengeis shapedby his mentalenslavement to white culture. The languagein which Nat describeskilling Margaret suggestsboth Styron's desireto createa central symbol of Nat's emotionalambivalence, and the difficulties he experiencedrepresenting black violence:

Ak how I her, I thought [ ] tripped forwardýbare want ... she arms still outthrust, if beloved long-unsccn.[ ]I heardfor first as to welcomesomeone and ... the time her hurtful, raggedbreathing, and it was with this soundin my carsthat I plunged the swordinto her side(413414).

This stabbing fails to kill Margaret, and Nat has to bludgeon her with a fence rail, not so much to fulfil his murderous intent it seems, as to end her suffering, he does this weeping, in response to her plea: "Oh Nat please kill me I hurt so" (414). Her words recall an earlier incident when Nat killed an injured turtle because Margaret could not

36Perhaps because of the terrible betrayalhe sufferedfrom the one white personhe daredto love, his master,Nat cannever acknowledge his feelingsof love towardswhites, until his characterchanges at the end of the novel. 37& Gray,Literature, p. 302. 137

bearto seethe animal suffer (370). It makesthe killing seemalmost like an act of mercy and tenderness,reinforcing its symbolic importance in reflecting Nat's ambivalence towards whites. The sexual imagery we have witnessedin all representationsof black male violence against white women is presenthere. However, uniquely, this imagery implies genuine and consensualromantic love rather than malignant, rapaciouslust. Styron may have purged this sceneof the vocabularyof the Black Beast narrative to avoid any racist implications, to emphasisehe is using repr=ntations of interracial desire for a very different purpose. But the extraordinarydiscrepancy between the languageand the action of this scenesuggests Styron also experiencedgreat difficulty representingNat as both a humansubject and violent. lie almostdenies Nat the capacity to feel any violent impulses towards whites in the act of committing violence. In Baldwin's attempt to representsexual violence as symbolic of the ambivalencein interracial relations,images of violence and hatredoverwhelmed any senseof love. But Styron's desire to deny black violence ensuresthat in a scenewhich is ostensiblyfar more violent, he only createsa senseof love. Styron doesnot omit the central sceneof black male violenceagainst a white womanin his novel like Faulknerin Light in Auguvi, nor doeshe makethis violenceconsciously accidental, as Wright doesin Native Son. Yet the sceneis less powerful, less indicative of black anger than either of the two earlier scenes.It suggestsblack humanity and violence arc incompatiblein the white liberal imagination,as doesthe other key sceneof violencein which Nat participates. Styron beginshis depiction of the rebellionby stagingan unprecedentedmoment of white corporealvulnerability to black violence in white American literature. Nat's masterTravis is woken by a group of armedslaves in the middle of the night, unarmed and surprised,powerless to resisttheir murderousintentions. This scenarioreflects white cultural anxietiesabout the unprecedentedupsurge in black rebelliousviolence when the novel was written. What Styron calls the "nightmare possibility" of rebellious black violence which Nat believes Travis has always repressedseems to refer equally to Styron's own era (386). Here, a white author finally confronts the ultimate taboo in representationsof black violence, depicting a black man using violence directly and murderouslyagainst a white man. But Nat himself is unableto commit this violence, becausehe is confrontedby a realisationof his master'shumanity- 138

[T]his the first time [ ]I had looked directly into his [ ] It was ... ever eyes. ... was as if by encounteringthose eyes I had found the tom and long missingfragment of a portrait of this far-off abstractbeing who possessedmy body; his face was completenow and I had a final glimpseof who he truly might be. Whateverelse he was,he wasa man (387-388).

The problemsof this scenestrengthen the sensethat black humanityand black violence were incompatiblein Styron's imagination.The rebel who stepsin to completethe killing Nat cannotcommit is not limned as a humansubject. Nat recogniseshis master's humanity in a way his own has never been acknowledgedby any white characterin the novel; even his benevolentfirst master Samuel Turner ultimately regardedhim as a commodity. This passagerecalls Bigger Thomas's Levinasian encounterwith Jan in prison in Native Son. For Levinas, such epiphaniescompel us to acknowledgethe humanityof the Other, and thus function as an ethical imperativeagainst violence. Only when we totalise the other in ideological ways does violence becomepossible. Nat had previouslyobeyed the Southerncustom that a slaveshould not look his masterin the eye.This enabledhim to perceiveTravis as a "far- off abstractbeing, " a symbolof the ideologyof slaveryrather than a humanbeing. Now, looking directly into his master's face, Nat is compelled to recognise this ethical imperativeagainst violence, and he is unableto strike accuratelywith his axe, or to kill any other white personwithout seriousqualms. Like the equivalentmoment in Native Son, this epiphanyis unconvincingand feels unearned.Styron himself is compromising Nat's humanity at this very moment of intersubjectiverecognition, denying him the capacityto desirerevenge so strongly suggestedby the historical evidence.It is difficult not to perceivean elementof wish fulfilment in the relation betweenthis sceneand the historical context,an authorialhope that black and white Americanswfll recogniseeach other's humanityand avert the apocalypticviolence which threatenedin the sixties. One contemporaryreviewer described this momentas an exampleof the "samehope of those white Americanstoday who fear somegreat violent act of Negro revenge:a hope that 139

guilt will stop the Negroes."38 This scene is a liberal fantasy of a space beyond ideology where black and white people can interrelate purely as human beings. In contrast to Wright, Styron makes this weak interracial epiphany a pivotal moment in the plot and Nat's moral growth as a character. Until this point, Nat has expressed a faith resembling black militant interpretations of Fanon in blacks' ability to realise their humanity through violence. When Nat ponders how to make Hark cast off his Sambo persona and "behave with dignity, " he concludes he must be taught to: "gut a white man and gut him without a blink or a qualm" (57). He even declares that Henry, a rebel deafened by a blow from an overseer, will: "leap like a swallow straight up into the hearing [ ] the instant he blood[" (333-334). But realm of ... spilled a white man's after the rebellion, Nat is forced to re-evaluate these beliefs by his own apparently human inability to commýitviolence. His earlier belief that to kill a white man, a slave must "know the object of his hatred," not just regard whites as mere abstractions, is shattered (257-258). He now decides that only those who do regard whites as abstractions can kill them. From this point on, Ae Confessions moves towards a clear rciection of violence as a path to fully realised human selffiood. Styron uses Nat's moral development towards the end of the novel to posit reasonsother than violence for his worthiness as a historical hero and protagonist of a novel. As Jane Flanders observes: "Nat Turner's greatness, in Styron's conception, lies not in his courage to kill, but in the courage to believe in his own dignity - for a slave an astonishing feat of imagination and self-creation."39 Nat's experiences, particularly the crucial encounter with Travis, teach him to regard not just whites but also the fellow slaves he has struggled to love throughout the novel as human beings rather than abstractions. He goes from seeing Hark as an "experiment, " as Samuel Turner perceived him, to recognising his humanity (57). Nat's last description of Hark, as he seeshim carried away for execution, suggestshe has leamt a new definition of human dignity: "Hark's bound and seated shape, like the silhouette of some marvellous black potentate bome in stately procession toward his throne, passesslowly by my dooe, (427). Making Nat's greatest triumph his final recognition of his own and Hark's humanity steers the novel away from providing a historical endorsement for Contemporary black

31Anonymous Reviewer, -Unslavish Fidelity", Times Literwy Supplement (9 May 1968),480, p. 480. 391. Flanders, "William Styron'sSouthern MytV, Me Achievementof WilliamSt)7un, p. I 18. 140

militant violence. Styron claimed he was motivated by philosophicalpessimism about revolutionary violence, saying he was drawn to the Nat Turner story because it exemplifiedthe: "Tragic notion that men in revolutionsdestroy so much of the thing they love, namely,they destroytheir own notionsof humanityby committing actsof violence againsthumanity. "40 This enragedblack militant critics, who wantedthe Nat Turner story to support their own revolutionary aims. However, even if we reject this politically motivated critique of The Confessions,there remains somethingunconvincing about Nat's moral development. Nat is portrayedafter the rebellion as alienatedfrom his religion and his deepest self Like the historical Nat Turner, he denieshe fcels any guilt for his actions,yet his inability to pray, his sensethat he has been "removed from the sight of God" strongly suggestsunconscious guilt (398). The barriers between a modem author and the consciousnessof a slave make it very difficult to map contemporaryýhegemonic moral valuesonto a slave characterin a convincingway. Making a slave characterfeel guilty aboutviolence against representatives of a systemwhich refusedto rccognisehis capacity to make moral choices seemsforced, especiallyas the historical Nat Turner seemsto have adaptedChristian morality to justify any violence against whites. Furthermore, unlike Native Son, which preservesthe gap betweenMax and Bigger Thomasin its final scene,The Confessionsuses Nat's moral reformationas a basisfor endingthe novel with an image of successfulracial reconciliation. Styron cannot reconcile Turner with a genuinewhite characterin his prison cell, so insteadit is a fantasisedimage of Margaret Whiteheadwhich brings Turner back to God (426). But how can we be surethis vision is any different to Turner's earlier fantasies?Samuel Coale complains that the ending suppressesthe complex ambivalenceswhich pervade the text "in a swift vision of fulfilment. [ ] Turner's is too reconciliationand spiritual-sexual ... redemption self-serving and too filled with ironies for us to buy it completely.And yet Styronwants us to."4 1 The troubling ambiguities of this scene cmphasisehow difficult it is for any American novelist to achieveconvincing racial reconciliation,particularly in the contextof slavery, whereany reconciliationis likely to appearfalse and sentimental.

40B. Forknerand G. Schricker,"Interview", p. 193-194. 41S. Coale,William, p. 98 andp. 102. 141

The representationof the characterwho commits most of the historical violence of Turner's rebellion increasesthe senseof somethingfalse and forced in Nat's moral rejection of violenceand his ultimate fantasyof racial reconciliation.Everything Styron repressesin his protagonistreturns in phobic, demonisedform in the characterof Will. The characterisationof Will suggestsStyron unconsciouslysensed his attempt to understandslave violence was inadequate,and guiltily feared the black desire for vengeancewas strongerthan he had acknowledged.According to Gray's "Confessions," the historical Will explainedhis decision to join the rebellion by saying, "his life was worth no more than others,and his liberty as dear to hiM.', 42 This statementsuggests a personwho choseviolence rationally as the only path to liberation. But Styron makes Will a very different figure, displacing the savageviolence which he occludesin Nat almost entirely onto him. During the accountof the rebellion, almost all of the violence describeddirectly, except Nat's aforementionedkilling of Margaret, is committed by Will. But throughoutthis accounthe remainspsychologically other to the text, seenonly from Nat's fearful, uncomprehendingperspective: "His insatiateappetite for blood was [ ] beyond (404). For Nat, Will's dark-skinnedbody ... awesome understanding" signifies a terrifying combinationof blacknessand violence:"the musclesalong his purplish black arms quivered and jumped with murderouspower" (378). Ile describeshim in animal "Will's [ ] has frenzied, boar hog metaphors: madness ... the mindlessquality of a wild corneredhopelessly in a thicket, snarlingand snappingits brutish and unavailingrage" (102). Will also evokesbiblical visions of a terrible, destructivebeast in Nat (38 and 377). Nat's perceptionsof Will echo Styron's own phobic anxietiesabout the historical Nat Turner. Black militant critics located Styron's portrayal of Will in the tradition of racist images of the black male as Beast. Mike Thelwcll writes: "this portrait of an evolutionarymarvel, half-nigger,half-beast, is surelyfamiliar to anyonewho knows such classics of southern literature as Dixon's The Klansman."43 The crucial difference betweenWill and such conventionalracist imagesis that Styron shows Will's savage stateis the result of brutal mistreatmentby his masters,not naturallyoccurring. But there is an even greaterdanger that the use of demonisedimagery will concealthis difference

42T. Gray, "Confessione, p. 417. 43A ThelwelL"Back With The Wind: Mr Styronand the ReverendTurner% William Somi's Nat Tunw. TenBlack Writer's Respond,p. 88. 142

than in the representationof Bigger Thomasbecause we receive no representationof Will's subjectivity. In contrast to Nat's murder of Margaret Will's violence is describedin vivid, grotesqueterms which makeabsolutely clear that extremeviolence is occurring.Consider the descriptionof Will's decapitationof Travis:

IEs small black figure seemedto grow immense,somehow amorous, enveloping Travis's nightshirtedfigure in a brief embrace,almost as if he hadjoined him in a lascivious dance [ ]. Travis's head, blood from ... gushing a matrix of pulpy crimsonflesh, rolled from his neck and fell to the floor with a singebounce, then lay still. The headlessbody, nightshirted,slid down the wall with a faint hissing sound,and collapsedin a pile of skinny shanks,elbows, knobby knees.Blood delugedthe room in a foamingsacrament (389-390).

Loyle Hairstoncondemns such passages for reducingthe missionof an "authentichero in mankind's struggleagainst tyranny" to "mere wantonsavagery. "" However,there can be no denying the extremeviolence of Turner's rebellion, or the preponderanceof female and young victims. Styron's statedpessimism about the cffects of revolutionaryviolence offers a reasonableexplanation why Nat Turner's rebellion is not representedas a heroic struggle. More problematicalhowever, are the invariably sexualisedterms in which Styron describesWill's violence, particularly when it involves female victims. This provoked outrage among black militant critics, becausehistorical records show no evidence of rapes during the insurrection. Mike Thelwell claims this is an inevitable consequenceof the Beast imagery through which Will is always depicted. From his first appearancein the novel, "we recognise his function: he will rape a white woman."45 In fact, however,despite Nat's claim that Will "broods constantlyupon rape,the despoliation of white women mastershis dreams night and day," there is no clear indication in the text that rapeoccurs (102). Critics who claim this usuallydraw attention to one of two scenes.Charles Joyner cites the descriptionof Will's murderof Miss Sarah: "as if by his embracethis scarredtortured little black man was consummatingat last ten thousandold swollenmoments of frantic and unappeasabledesire. Between Miss Sarah's

44 L Hairston,"William Styron'sNat Turner- RogueNigger", TetiBlack Writers,p. 70. 43U Thelwell, "Back", p. 89. 143

thrashingnaked thighs he lay in stiff elongatequest like a lover" (390).46 Mike Thclwell cites the description of Will's murder of Mrs Whitehead:"pressed urgently together againstthe door in [ ]. Then I Will draw back a simulacrurnof shatteredoneness ... saw as if from a kiss and with a swift sidewaysmotion nearly decapitateMrs Whitehead" 47 (412). In both cases,however, the suggestionsof rape are similes projectedonto the violence by Nat's narration,as the locutions "as if' and "like" demonstrate.Will only adoptspositions which suggestrape to Nat to restrainhis victims while he kills them.The desire for rape is within Nat's mind, for reasonswhich, as we have seen,are not the conventionalmotives of the Black Beast.Nevertheless, representing Will's violence in this way, having portrayedhis characterin the phobic vocabularyof the Black Beast narrative, brings him uncomfortablyclose to embodyinga conventionalwhite fantasy about black violence. His entire role in the novel suggestsblack violence could not achievevisibility in the white liberal imaginationoutside the conventionalimages of the Beastnarrative. It might be objectedthat someof the violence during the rebellion is committed by other black characters,such as Hark, who is representedin sympathetic,human terms as driven to violence by the sale of his family. However,this violence is only reported, not witnesseddirectly. Styron also fails to locate Will's violence in the context of the appalling white brutality suffered by many slaves.Nat experiencesalmost no violence during his life, and althoughwe hearreports of brutality to other slaves,we neverwitness such incidents directly in the kind of vivid languageused to depict Will's violence. Seeing the violence of Nat Turner's rebellion isolated from the brutality of slavery threatensto make it appearlike "mere wanton savagery." In The Confessions,Styron soughtto find a new way of portrayingblack violence,from a more internal perspective than Faulkner, which would not negateblack humanity in racist stereotypes.But the powerful influenceof contemporarycultural anxietiesled him to reproducestrategies of denial and demonisation.It appearsthe white liberal acceptanceof African Americansas equal humanbeings at this time could not encompassthe possibility of black violence.

46C. Joyner,"Styron's Choice:A Meditationon History, Literatureand Moral Imperatives",Nat Turner.- A SlaveRebellion in History widMemory, ed. by K S. Greenberg(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2003), Vi 190. M. Thelwell, "BacV, p. 89. 144

The controversy surrounding The Confessionshas made subsequentwhite authors reluctantto articulatea black perspectiveon racial violencein contemporaryor historical America. However, numerousAfrican American authorshave attemptedvery different representationsof slaveviolence. One of the most direct responsesto TheConfessions is DessaRose (1986) by SherleyAnne Williams, an unusualAfrican American text in its representationof femaleinvolvement in violent insurgency. As HaryetteMullen observes,Frederick Douglass's narrative initiated a tendency for male-authoredtexts to focus on heroic, "manly" acts of physical violence against racist oppression.Female-authored texts "focus instead on the oral expressionof the fugitive thought and the resistantorality of the runawaytongue. ""Dessa Roseshows a female slave resisting slavery through both "manly" violence and oral expression. Williams wantedto challengethe assumptionthat womenwere incapableof participating in violent resistanceto slavery,which shefelt the historicalevidence of HerbertAptheker and Angela Davis contradicted.Like Styron,Williams claims a kind of historical fidelity for her novel, althoughit is basedon heavily modified historical incidents,because she believesit accuratelyreflects the totality of slavery.She too basesher understandingof slave violence largely on a single text, Angela Davis's essay"Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Communityof Slaves." Davis arguesslave women had a central 49 role in subversiveactivities overlookedby sexistand racist historiogmphY. This picture of slaveryis equally contentiousto Elkins's thesis,relying not on direct evidence,but on the contentionthat there were many unrecordedacts of femaleTebellion,suppressed to avoid inciting other slaves or causing panic in white society:50 This re-aflirms how literary usesof historical black violence are inevitably subjectto ideologicaldistortion. Williams's desire to recover a lost tradition of subversionand rebellion to empower modem African Americansin their struggleagainst racism influencesher depiction of slavery as powerfully as Styron's desire to deny the possibility of contemporaryblack violence. However, portraying a black woman committing violence liberatesWilliams

43H. Mullen,"Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in UncleTom's Cabin, Our Nig, IncUmIs in theLife of a SlaveGirl andBeloved', Ae CultureofSentiment, ed. by S. Samuels (Oxford: Oxford University PrM 1992),p. 253. 49A. Davis, "Reflectionson the Black Woman'sRole in the Communityof Slaves!*, WordsofFire, ed. by B. Guy-Sheftall(New York: The New Press,1995), pp. 205-207. " Aý Davis, "Reflections"p. 209. 145

from the often overwhelminglypotent history of racist tropesof black male violence in Americanliterary discourse.

Unlike Styron,Williams doesnot locatethe most extremeviolence in characters who remain psychologicallyother to the text and are observedonly from the outsideas physicalbeings. Instead, she attemptsto articulatethe subjectivity of the characterwho commitsthis violence.Williams seeksto representthis violencenot as somethingwhich negatesor calls into questionher protagonist'shumanity, but asproof of that humanity. Becauseshe is a complex, emotional,human being Dessais deeply traumatisedby the horrors of slavery,and her violence is an inevitable response.But throughoutthe novel this aim is contestedby the efforts of slave"expert" Adam Nehemiahto inscribeDessa's violence within the hegernonicdiscourse which figures black violence as evidenceof bestiality. He attempts to reduce her to a violent figure beyond comprehensionas a humansubject, who can only be disciplinedand restrained,labelling her "devil woman." He interpretsher violenceas proof of her "savagery," an innateelement of her character, unconnectedto her experiencesof slavery and white brutality.51 By juxtaposing these discoursesin contestatorypositions throughout the text Williams seeksto exposehow easily certainassumptions about black violenceare reproducedby the actsof writing and reading in American culture, and the gap betweenthese assumptions and the human realitiesof black violence. Williams depictsslave selfhood not as a discretewhole, accordingto hegcmonic notionsof bourgeoissubjectivity, but as constitutedby communaland emotionalbonds, a network inherentlydependent on others.Thus the deathof her lover Kainc after a brutal beating by their master shattersDessa's self. "She had lost Kaine, becomea self she scarcelyknew, lost to family and friends" (58). In contrastto Styron's Nat, Dessadoes not narratethe entire novel. The traumasof slaveryhave inflicted too much damageon her consciousnessfor her to rememberand articulateall her experiencescoherently. The appallingpunishments she suffered after sheattacked her mistressconstitute a traumato which her memorycompulsively returns, yet refusesto articulate:"Dessa came back to that moment again and again, recognisingit as dead, knowing there was no way to

"S. A. Williams, DessaRose(London: Macrnfllan, 1987), p. 21. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 146

changeit, arriving at it from variousdirections, refusing to move beyondit" (58). Unlike Styron, Williams usesliterary form to give us a powerful senseof how the traumasof slavery fragment the psyche,and how this fragmentationmotivates violence. Consider Dessa'sattempt to explain how shereacted to Kaine's death:

Kaine [ ] Emmalina day, Kaine done chosedme. ... when meet me that tell me took a hoe at Masa and Masa done laid into him wid a shovel, bout bus in his head,I jes [ ]. Kaine jes laying head blood, run ... ther on us's pallet, seeping one eye closedone bout gone.Mamma Hattie sittin side him wipin the blood. "He be dead o' sold. Dead o' sold." I guessthat what she say then. She say it so many times afta that I guessshe say it then too (20).

Dessadoes not directly articulateeither her emotionstowards Kaine or her horror at his death in this utterance.But the structureand the rhythms of the passagebespeak her powerful, humanlove for Kaine andthe emotionalturmoil his deathprovoked, creating a credible motive for her violence. The fragmentary,staccato phrases and sentences,and her confusedrecollection of somedetails of this horrific incident mimetically reproduce the thoughtprocesses of her traumatisedmind. This attempt to formulate a narrative style that reflects the psychological cffects of traumatic experiences mimetically contrasts sharply with the measured, regular rhythms of Nat's narration. Dessa makes this statement in response to Nehemiah's questioning about why she participated in a violent attack on slave traders. But he refuses to recognise the connection between the traumatic experiences which created this inner turmoil and Dessa's violence, asking bluntly: "And what has that to do with you and the other slaves rising up against the trader and trying to kill white men?" (20). Dessa responds angrily: "I kill white mens causethe same reasonMasa kill Kaine. Cause I can" (20). As Emma Waters Dawson observes:"Her responsereveals more about the power of the slaveownerin a patriarchalsociety than it doesabout her 'power'., S52 Dessa realises Nehemiahhas misunderstood her explanationof how the excessiveand tyrannicalnature of white authority provokes black violence becausehe refuses to recogniseblack humanity. She can only make him acknowledgethe appalling consequencesof this

52E. Waters-Dawson, "Psychic Rage and Response: The Enslaved and the Enslaver in Shcrley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose", Arms Akimbo: Africana Women in Contemporary Literature, ed by. J. Liddell and Y. B. Kemp (Gainesvflle: University Press of Florida, 1999), p. 19. 147

situation for the victims by inverting it, and describinga situation where blacks would treat white people with such untrammelledbrutality. She also confronts him with the dangerthat white oppressionwill dehumaniseslaves to the point where they really do become addicted to motiveless, indiscriminate vengeful violence. But like Styron, Nehemiahcan only respondto sucha possibility by retreatinginto phobic stereotypesof black violence.Upon hearingthis utterance,he declareshe can understandwhy a slave dealerdescribed Dessa as possessing"devil eyes"and a "devil's stare"(20). Dessa'sscars function as a locus for the fiercestcontestation of her statusand the meaningof her violence within the novel. The placesin which she has been whipped symbolisehow slaveryseeks to erasethe humanityof slaves:"The wench's loins looked like a mutilated cat face. Scartissue plowed through her pubic region so no hair would ever grow there again" (154). As Mae GwendolynHenderson observes, this permanent disfigurement of Dessa's genitalia illustrates how oppressiveviolence functions as a crucial element of the hegemonic discourse which defines Dessa primarily as a commodity, reducing her human femininity to a secondaryor even irrelevant status.53 White brutality textualisesDessa's body, inscribing signs which have clear significance in white discourse.Nehemiah refers to the scarscaused by brutal whippingsas "a history writ about [her] privates" which revealsthe "darky's mean streak" (21). He interprets these signs as further evidenceof the inherent savageryhe perceivesin Dessa. But Williams's representationsof thesescars transform their significanceby locating them in a different discourse.Her descriptionsof thesescars bespeak the pain Dessahas suffered. They signify the agonisingexperiences which are too trauniatic for Dessato remember consciously,yet help explain the furious violence of her attack on white slave traders. This helps Williams to circumvent the problem of the absenceof a vocabulary for articulating physical pain as an internal sensationwhich EWnc Scarry has noted.54 As Carol E. Hendersonhas observed"the flesh becomessymbolic of what makesDessa

53M. G. Henderson,"Speaking in Tongues:Dialogics, Dialectics and the Black WomanWriter's Literary Tradition", ReadingBlack, ReadingFeminist., A Critical AntholqKv,ed. by ILI. Gates(London: Meridian, 1990),pp. 126-127. 54E. Scarry,Ae Body in Pain, (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1985), pp. 15-16. 148

'human. ' It is through her body that she 'speaks' the universal languagesof pain, of fear, of love and of anger. ,55 Williams does not figure violence as incompatiblewith humanity in her black characterslike Styron; she representsDessa's violence as a thoroughlyhuman response to her suffering. But Dessa Rose does not offer an uncomplicatedendorsement of violence as a route to the full constitutionand expressionof humanselfhood. Although violence enablesthe central slave charactersin DessaRose to begin their escapefrom slavery,their final escapefrom slaveterritory relies purely on shrewdsubversion of the economicand socialconventions of the slavesystem. Furthermore, Dessa does not realise her humanity purely through committing violence; her attempts to articulate her experiencein her own words are depictedas far more important in reconstitutingher shatteredsense of self Violence is depicted as an ambiguousforce, helping African Americansto escapethe oppressionwhich deniestheir humanitybut also threateningto overwhelmthat humanity.Consider Dessa's memory of her attackon her mistress:

The four red welts in the suddenlypallid face,the white spot at the baseof the red neck filled Dessawith a terror and a glee so intensethey were almost physical. Frightenedat her own response,she was almostashamed - not of the deed.No. Never that, but surelyit was wrong to delight so deeplyin anyoneelse's pain (58).

Dessarecognises her violence as what Ann E. Trapassocalls a "deep affirmation of her self' and also a sourceof enjoyment.Her sufferingleads her to delight in taking revenge against her oppressors.At the same time, however, she perceives dangers within violence, fearing that it destroysthe humanity of the perpetratoras much as the victim, and that it can becomea kind of addiction, relentlessand indiscriminate. She later declares:"that feeling, that anger was like a bloodhoundin my throat, a monsterthat didn't seemto know enemyor friend, wouldn't know the differenceonce it got loose' (184). This ability to recognisehow violence affects their humanity makesWilliams's black characterssuperior to the white ones,who alwaysproject their sadisticenjoyment of violence onto the racial Other. They hold the slavesresponsible for this violence.At one point, whenNehemiah strikes Dessa on a whim, he perceiveshis act not as a typical

55C. E. Henderson,Scwring theBlack Body (Columbia:University of Missouri Press,2002). p. 77. 149

act of white oppressionbut a lapsein which he haslowered himself "to the samelevel of randomviolence that characterizedthe actionsof the blacksamong themselves" (30). Like TheConfessions, Dessa Rose, represents extreme violence as predicatedon a denialof the victim's humanity.White violencefunctions to erasethe humanityof slaves, leaving marks on the black body which are interpretedas evidenceof black savagery, thus creatingits ownjustification. Similarly, Dessais able to commit murderousviolence againstwhite peoplebecause her experiencesof white brutality have left her unableto recognisethem as humanbeings. She notes of her masters:"these wasn't peoplesin my book" (184). When she attemptsto recall her attack on a slave trader during her escape from the coffle, she finds that, "she could not rememberthe trader as distinct from the other white men" (62). Sheregards whites as an abstractconcept, an amorphousunitary mass,not as individual humans.In DessaRose, however, these misrecognitionsof the other's humanity can only be transcendedafter the dehumanisingideologies which underpin the master- slave relationshiphave been broken down through an extensive processof dialogueand experienceof living outsidethe slavesystem. Only near the end of the novel can Dessaand Ruth recogniseeach other's humanity-

"My Ruth," "Ruth. I [ I name shesay, ain't your mistress" ... "Well if it cometo that," I told her, "my nameDessa, Dessa Rose. Ain't no 0 to it. " [ ]I hug Ruth. I didn't hold her, "mistress," ... wantedto nothing against not not Nathan, not skin. Maybe we couldn't speak but so honest without disagreement,but that didn't changehow I feel (232-233).

Here, intersubjective recognition triumphs over the system of (mis)naming which constitutesracist ideology.In other respectsthe endingof the novel movesinto the genre of romantic adventure,but Williams insists on the limits of interracial understanding within a racist culture.Although DessaRose constitutes one of the most direct responses to The Confessions,there were many other novels from the sameera as Styron's novel which respondedat leastimplicitly to his representationsof black violence.It is to sucha novel that I turn at the beginningof the next chapter. 150

CHAPTER SIX

REPRESENTING THE ERA OF BLACK MILITANCY IN BLACK AND WlIrrE

John A. Williams madeone of the angriestcontributions to William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond,and his next novel can be read as a revision of Styron's depictionof black rebellion.Sons ofDarkness, Sons oftight (1969) cxemplif jes the new school of fiction which emergedin conjunction with militant black political movementswhich eschewedthe non-violenttactics of earlier Civil Rights organisations. Williams attemptsto representthe "horror"of our "possiblefuture" which is an unspoken anxiety in YheConfessions. In the contextof an imaginaryblack revolt in the nearfuture, he depictsa hero who embracesviolence as a meansof combatingracism without the moral qualms of Styron's Nat Tumer. But this burdenedhim with intensely difficult tasks.He had to find ways to representblack violenceas heroic andjustified, at a time when urban riots and the militancy of black activists wcrc reawakcning phobic stereotypesof blacknessin anxiouswhite minds. As JamesBaldwin observedin essays written during the sixties: "In the United States,violence and heroismhave been made synonymousexcept when it comes to blacks." "[W]hen white men rise up against oppression,they are heroes:when black men rise, they have revertedto their native savagery."' Williams also neededto find a way of showingblack violencebeing usedin politically effective forms againstracist oppression. Like YheConfessions, however, Sons ofDarkness does not makeblack characters who actually commit violence the central, focal figures in the novel. The black protagonist,Eugene Browning, is a previouslypeaceful Civil Rightsactivist and member of the black middle-classwho has never usedviolence. Ile is driven to dcspair by the failure of non-violentactivism to alter America's racial powerstructure fundamentally or to stop white racist violence againstAfrican Americans.fie thereforehires an Israeli assassin,through a friend in the mafia, to assassinatea white policemanwho killed a black boy, deciding that only a symbolic act of violence which will force whites to recognisethey can no longer abuse blacks with impunity can bring about political change:"you had to obtain your goals by almost the samemeans Chuck obtainedhis, 151

[ ] Chuckdid his FreedomNow Love Your Brother "2 ... and not get with or marches. This disillusionmentwith peaceful,intraracial activism pervadesthe novel. Large portions of the text usethe Israeliassassin, Itzhak Hod, anda Maria Don as centrcsof consciousness. The focus on theseethnic groupsconstitutes a rhetoricalstrategy designed to cmphasise that the militant violence of this em was not evidenceof natural black savagery,or of inherent black difference to other racial groups. Instead,it actually demonstratedthe sharedhumanity of blacksand other ethnic groups,all of whom useviolence to establish positionsof freedomand power.In particular,the Israelisprovide a textbookexample of an ethnic groupachieving political power throughviolence. However, this reducesthe space Williams has to delineate his violent black charactersas human, and explain what drives them to violence. Williams fulfils the prescriptionsof Styron's black militant critics, creatingblack rebelswho are uniformly, undeniably heroic, but he loses any sense of the complex humanity Styron problematically attempted to portray in Nat Turner. In particular, the two black revolutionarycharacters in the novel, LeonardTrotman and Morris Greene,who develop their own plans for more widespreadviolence againstwhite authority, remain flat and distant from the reader.Their nobility and heroismmakes them diametricaflyopposed to Styron's representationof Will, but we gain no greater senseof them as subjective humans.These black men becomea new kind of flat inhuman stereotype,not fully realiscdcharacters possessed of an equal humanityto whites. Williams fails to delineate how racism has affectedthem psychologically.Although Trotman is driven to militancy by the murderof his sister,we obtain no subjective,internal perspective on the impactof this racist trauma. This typifies how writers influenced by the Black Arts movement rejected the complex dilemmasof double-consciousness,refusing to acknowledgethe intrusions of white racism into the black psyche.Doing this risked acknowledgingthe deformingimpact of racismupon the black psychein wayswhich would compromisethe heroismof thesecharacters.

I Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time, p. 357 and"Negroes are Anti-SemiticBecause They're Anti-White7, F. 428, ThePrice of the Ticket. J. A. Williams, SonsofDarkness,Sons oftight (Boston:Northeastern University Press, 1999), pp. 11-12. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the texiL 152

Gilbert IL Muller also criticises Williams for failing to provide a "serious motivational background" for Browning's decision to have a white policeman assassinated.However, I believe Williams intentionallyomitted any personalmotives of vengeanceor hatred in his characterisationof Browning.3 He wanted Browning's decision to use violence to be understoodas philosophical,predicated on a rational calculationabout the only way to end racist oppression.17his also explainswhy he makes Browning an educated,middle class man, who has previously worked as a lecturer in political scienceand has long experienceof peacefulcivil rights activism. Everything aboutthe characteremphasises that his turn to violenceis rational.As he declaresat one point, intelligencedoes not necessarilymake a personchoose peaceful activism: "It can help him to rationalizeaway the use of violence, thinking about his own skin, but that sameintelligence will tell him, finally, that he's got no choice to be as tough as the next guy or tougher" (192). Despite the novel's insistencethat black violence revealsthe similarity between African Americansand other ethnic groups,it also positsa qualitativcdifference between white and black violence which may appear essentialist.Initially Williams posits a surprisingly conventionalnotion of this difference,through his protagonist.Browning rejectsthe ideaAfrican Americansshould rise up personallyagainst oppression because:

[T]hey be it. [ ] it be Icft to the kids, the wouldn't cool about ... would up wild oneswho tipped their hand by walking into state legislatureswith loadedguns; in [ ] the onesrunning the streetswith Molotov cocktailsslopping their pockets. ... They wouldn't be professional,and it would be too goddamnedbad for everyone with a black skin (22).

The action of the narrativesupports this perceptionof wildnesswithin black violence, through the contrastbetween the assassinationBrowning arranges,and one of the few scenes which directly portrays a black charactercommitting violence. Itzhak Hod assassinatesthe white policeman in a calm, professionalmanner. But when Leonard Trotman.kills the white racist Southernerwho murderedhis sister he shootsthe man repeatedly,saying: "That's for my sisteryou white motherfucker.Trash. Garbage" (228). Aner committing this violence Trotman is describedas glassy eyed and "rigid". so

3 G. R Muller, John A. Williams(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984), p. $7. 153 stunnedby anger and the violence he has committedthat he seemsdisconnected from reality. This leadsHod, who witnessesthe killing, to reflect that he is: "Not a killer, but everyonehas to get a start somewhere"(228-229). Williams seeksto transformthe racist trope of the savageryof black violence into a sign of black humanit3q,cvidence African Americansare more humanthan whites who use murderousviolence in a calm rational way. This ability doesnot makewhite peoplemore civilised, it simply showscenturies of committing oppressiveviolence to maintainhegemony have left them inuredto the horror of their own actions. Although Williams refuses to show his black characters experiencing any degree of the guilt, or the loss of humanityStyron gaveNat Turner for committingviolence, the novel is pervadedby an anxietythat deployingviolence will reduceAfrican Americansto a mirror imageof their degradedwhite enemies.Yet this argumentis contradictedby the uniformly more positiverepresentation of menof violenceto peacefulactivists. We seea selfish, materialisticbusinessman, concerned primarily with maintaininggood relations with the white community,and the headof the organisationfor which Browning works is preparedto inforin on the assassinto preservehis own institution. By contrast, the militant black charactersare morally consistent,and spum such compromiseswith the white power structure.Furthermore, Itzhak Hod is renderedas a noble, heroic, momily reliable figure throughoutthe novel,yet he hasused violence all his life, first passionately as a committedfighter in the struggleto createand securean Israeli state,and thencoldly as a paid assassin. Ultimately, the centralproblem with the novel is Williams's inability to represent black uprising realistically.Although he usedthe subtitle:A Novel ofSome Probability, the scenesof outright racial warfare are the least convincing, realistic element of the narrative. Browning's plan breaks down as other African Americans start shooting policemen, leading off duty officers to begin attacking ghcttos. Williams depicts the entire black communityresponding with whateverweapons arc available:

Old men and old women,children, youths, adults of middle age.Zip guns,rifles, shotguns,automatics, revolvers. Lye raineddown along with pots,pans, pieces of furniture, dishesglasses, lengths of iron, lead and zinc pipe; bricks from tottering chimneys,pots of boiling hot water, pansof cold water,knives, ice picks, broken 154

lamps; more than one number-10cast iron skillet sungdown from the darkened windows and into the milling cops. The Negroesfought in silencetoo this time, and they shot out as many streetlightsas the cops who were trying to return fire. The police shotblindly upwardsat the shapesof buildings(234).

So unlikely is the absoluteracial unity in violence and the effectivenessof improvised weaponryin resistingstate violence in thesescenes, Gilbert IL Muller interpretsthem as CoMiC.4 They exposethe fantasticalelement which often lies at the heartof black militant fiction. Although these novels claimed to be grounded absolutely in hard political realities, they tend to becomefantastical in their enthusiasmto enact scenesof violent vengeance upon white racists. They cannot realistically depict black uprisings succeeding.Sons of Darknesstypifies the narrative strategyof black militant novels, which resemblesthat of ThomasDixon's novels.Although they representblack violence in diametrically opposedways, both types of novel project a fantasyof black violence onto a representationof historicalreality in a way designedto makereaders interpret this violenceas a realisticpossibility. Williams avoidsstraying too far into fantasyby leavingthe outcomeof the black uprising undecided when the novel ends, rather than attempting to depict violent insurgencyactually leadingto racial equality. Throughoutthe novel, Browning hasbeen adamantthat generalviolent black uprisingscould never achieveanything in America (166). By the end he is also forced to recognisethat his own plan of strictly limited, symbolically potent violencecannot realise his aims. Thus althoughthe novel is bitterly pessimistic,if not despairing,about the potential of peacefulactivism to bring about genuine changeto America's racist power structures,it ultimately implies that violent activism offers little more hope. Instead, Williams seeksprimarily to demonstrateto whites the potential terrible consequencesof their continuedracism for all Americans. Although the black uprising he depicts has not succeededin achievinggenuine change when the novel ends, it is causingsignificant white casualties.Furthermore, Williams depictsthe liberal white boyfriendof Browning's daughterchoosing to join the Browning family in fighting the white racists who may attack them. Outright racial warfare, he suggests,has the potentialto split anddestroy American society. He intendedhis novel to

4 See:G. H. Muller, John, p. 95. 155

function as a warning to white society, not a realistic, achievableprogramme of black revolt. As with Native Son,however, it is debatablewhether this useof black violenceas a warning was cffcctivc, or whetherit simply exacerbatedwhite racist anxieties.White fictional responsesto the emergenceof black militant literaturesuggest the lattcr. Novels suchas Mr Sammler'sPlanet (1970) by Saul Bellow and The Tenants(1971) by Bernard Malamud lack the ostensibleoptimism of The Confessionsof Nat Turner. The phobic, guilty figurations of blacknessStyron repressedto the marginsof Yhe Confessionsare considerablymore prominent. The hope that black violence can be avoided through interracial reconciliationrecedes, emphasising how racial tensionshad increasedin the few years since The Confessions.Many critics senseda fearful and hostile element in their representationof black character.Typically, Robert Altcr suggeststhese novels reveal the "racial paranoia," of white writers, their fear and "guilt" that black suffering "must issuein a destructiverage of unimaginableproportion and effect."5 This suggests these novels representa recuperationof the racist images of blacknessin Thomas Dixon's novels. However,I believe the relation of thesenovels to their historical context is more complex than this. Modem critics often regard the radicalisationof the Civil Rights movementas precipitatinga changein cultural attitudesto blackness.Andrea Levine has written that as Black Nationalismbegan to foreclosethe possibility of biracial activism, "media interracial [ I increasingly idealiscd representationsof relations ... replaced portrayals of Affican American male bodies with ambivalent and potentially hostile depictions."6 I suggestthese novels deliberately articulate the samecultural shift in their representationsof blacknessin order to explorethe fantasiesand anxietieswhich caused it. These novels feature white protagonistscompelled to considerthemselves from the perspectiveof the racial Other for the first time. Changingracial politics compelthem to recognisetheir own specific, racialiscd, gendcredidentity as white men, rather than

5 R. Alter, "Updike, Malamud and the Fire This Time", John Ujxhke: A Cobectim ofCrificalEmao, ed. by D. Thorbum and IL Eiland (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-I fall, 1979), p. 39 and p. 4 1. 6 A. Levine, "Sidney Poitier's Civil Rights", American Literature, 73:2 (June, 200 1), p. 366 156

viewing themselvesas a universalnorm of humanity.I Thesechanges give them a new sense of corporeal vulnerability to black violence, which brings their unconscious fantasiesand anxieties about race to the fore. These novels attempt to analysc these fantasiesand anxieties,although, as we shall see,they sometimesonly reproducethem. Mr Saminler'sPlanet intersectswhat Levine calls the new "potentially hostile depictions" of "African American male bodies!" in the scene where Mr Sammicr is comeredby a black pickpocket:

He was never to hear the black man's voice. Ile no more spoke than a [ ] The himself [ ]. Ile directed, puma would. ... pickpocket unbuttoned ... was look downward.The black had [ ] his It silently, to man ... taken out penis. was displayed to Sammler with great oval testicles, a large tan-and-purple [ ] the fleshly uncircumcisedthing -a tube, a snake; ... suggesting mobility of an trunk, [ 1. Over forearm fist that held him Sammler elephant's ... the and was required to gaze at this organ. No compulsionwould have been necessary.He would in any casehave looked!

This descriptionuses terms ThomasDixon might haveemployed had sucha scenebeen publishablein his time. Figuring the pickpocket'simmense genitals in animal metaphors recalls Dixon's description of Gus's face we considered in Chapter One. Both descriptions force the reader into uncomfortableproximity with elements of black physicality whosedistorted, excessive size suggestsprimitive, animalisticsensuality and violence. Like Gus's face in his soldier's uniform, the pickpocket's penis protrudes incongruously from his designer clothes, implying his inappropriateness in a civilised, Western context. These resemblancessuggest a racial explanation for the pickpocket's criminality. Furthermore, like Dixon, Bcllow conflates black sexuality with violence by depicting the black penis as a weapon, a symbol of black strength and menace. The repeated use of passive verb forms to describe the pickpocket's actions increases his shadowiness, his lack of clearly defined humanity, there is no clear sense of a human agent behind these actions, and no hint of what motivates them.

7 In both thesenovels, the protagonistsare Jewish, which, aswe shall we, affectshow they becomeaware of their racial identity. However,other novels, featuring non-Jewish white protagonists,also displayed this new awarenessof specificracial identity andvulnerability, suchas JohnUpdike's Rabbit Re&r (1971). a S. Bellow, Mr Sammler'sPlanet (London:Penguin, 1996), p. 49. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 157

Some critics, such as Adam Zachary Newton, condemnthe "uncritical ethnic chauvinism" of this scene.9 Others, such as Emily Miller Budick, emphasiseit is focalised through Sammler,and hold him solely responsiblefor the racism.10 Saminfer admits, after first seeingthe pickpocket at work that: "It was a powerful event andý illicitly, that -is, against his own stable principles, he craved a repetition" (11). This suggestsSammler's description of the pickpocket's genitals is a consequenceof the fantasieshe projectsonto blackness,not Bellow's own racist view of black physicality. David Marriott haswritten that the fantasmaticwhite gazeon the black body exemplifies bow, in fantasy,the processof looking involves the desire to devour." He claims the racist white gazemutilates and deformsthe black self-image.This enablesus to perceive aggressionflowing in two directions in this scene. Sammlcr's gaze is scopophilic, deformingand castratingthe pickpocketin the act of looking. I lis bestialfiguration of the picpocket'sgenitals betrays his projectionof sexualand aggressive desires onto the black man. I-Iis compulsivelooking betrayshis unconsciousdesire to appropriatethe virile, sexual power his consciousself professesto abhor. Other momentsin the text reveal Sammler'srepressed desire for violence, such as when he remembersbeing a partisan during World War 11:

To kill the man he ambushedin the snow had given him pleasure.Was it only It It joy. [ ] His heartfclt lined brillian4 pleasure? was more. was ... with rapturous [ ] When he it less the than to try satin. ... shot again was to make sure of man againfor that bliss (140-141).

Sammlercannot reconcile the capacityto enjoy violenceintensely he experienced,when reducedto a primordial struggle for survival in Nazi-occupiedPoland, with the highly civilised, fastidious, intellectual self he has become. Ile resolves this tension by projectingsuch desires onto the African Americaninhabitants of New York he perceives as primitive, uncivilisedand Other. Of course, the pickpocket is complicit in, indeed initiates, his reduction to a fetishisedobject, which suggestsliving underthe aggressivegaze of suchwhite fantasies

9 Aý Z. Newton,Facing Black aisdJew(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 112. 10E M. Budick,Blacks widJew in Literary Conversation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr=ý 1998), pp. 152-153. 158

has deformedhis self-image.Knowing white men fear and fetishiseblack genitals,yet socially disempoweredin other respects,he baseshis senseof self, of his manhood, purely upon his physical virility. ConsiderSammler's description of his attitude during this scene: "The man's expressionwas not directly menacing but oddly, serenely masterful. The thing was shown with mystifying certitude. Lordliness" (50). This behaviour,combined with his flamboyantattire, suggestshe perceiveshimself as the hypervirile, exotic primitive of white ideology; he is as much in thrall to a white fantasmaticimage of blacknessas Sammler.However, Bellow does not elucidate this relationshipbetween white fantasyand the pickpocket'sbehaviour. Instead4 be usesthis scenesolely to critique what he views as the misguidedconcept of manhoodendorsed by black militant ýmovements.As StanleyCrouch has argued,the pickpocket's behaviour alludessatirically "to the priapic version of black 'manhood' that slitheredfrom behind the black power movement'sfly and throughoutthe 'revolutionary black art.'"12 Many black militant groupsbased their conceptof empoweredblack manhoodon an idea of black male sexual superiority which originated in racist ideology. However, with no attemptmade to representthe historicalcircumstances which led black men towardssuch a reductive conceptof their own masculinity, Bellow can only satirise a caricatureof black militant philosophy. Although Sammlerneeds the black man as Other,he doesnot blame the violence of his societyexclusively on African Americans.In certain often-criticiscdpassages, he doeshold blacks responsiblefor what he perceivesas the sexualproblems of his society, lamentingthe, "peculiar aim of sexualniggerhood for everyone"(32 and 162).But, when he thinks aboutviolence, Sammler, frequently holds other groupsresponsible. He attacks the emergenceof "the idea that one could recover,or establish,one's identity by killing, becomingequal thus to any, equal to the greatest"(145). 71is alludescritically to the interpretationof Fanon's Yhe Wretchedof the Earth favouredby Black Nationalists.13

11See: D. Marriott, On Black Men, pp. 23-34. 12S.Crouch, "Barbarous on Either Side:The New York BluesofUr Smmler's PAx;er, Mr &wmler's Planet (Introduction),pp. xxiv-xxv. " See:F. Fanon,Ae Wretchedofthe Farlh, particularlyJean-Paul Sartre's introduction, pp. 19-19."When his [the colonisedsubject's] rage boils over, he rediscovershis lost innocenceand he comesto know himself in he himself his [ ] down Europeanis kill two birds that creates self. ... to shoot a to with one stone, to destroyan oppressorand the manhe oppressesat the sametime. " IMis arguablyover-simplistic 159

But Sammler traces this idea to the European middle classes, claiming they have preserved the pre-modem, aristocratic idea of violence as proof of worth and power because they lack a "spiritual 166" and independent values of their own (145). The pessimism about the Enlightenment tradition of rationality and humanism, and the conservative faith in traditional social restraints on human behaviour Saminler expresses throughout the novel are motivated by a fear of the potential for barbarism latent in all human beings. Furthermore, as Ethan Goffman observes:"Since the Nazis represent both White purity and a 'barbaric force that eclipsed European civilization, the sign of blackness as applied in the novel virtually deconstructs itsel f"14 IIOWever, it is not Clear that Bellow, much less Sammler, appreciatesthis irony, and whenever he confronts black physicality, Sammler's view of violence changes radically. A sexual fascination with black corporeality, evident when he saw the pickpocket's penis, combined with his need to project aggressive desires, leads him to forget his theories. Displaying what Fanon calls "the prelogical. " or "paralogical. " "thought of the phobic," he perceives the black body as the locus of a massive, animalistic strength, which makes violence seem like natural behaviour for African Americans. " When Sammicr seesthe pickpocket robbing a man on the bus, he perceives his "huge body" and that: "Powerfully bent, the wide back concealed the victim from the other passengers"(46). Sammicr's account of this robbery gives a great impression of the pickpocket's massive strength advantage over his victim, showing him toying contemptuously with the old man with the merest exertions of his hands and fingers (4647). The fact that his victim is merely a weak old man implies Sammler has an exaggeratedview of the pickpocket's strength. The final scene of violence involving the pickpocket suggestsSammler can transcendhis phobic perceptionof blacks. Sammlerwitnesses him fighting, and is again fascinatedby his strength:"his crouching,squeezing, intense, animal prcssing-power,the terrific swelling of the -neck and the tightnessof the buttocks as he rose on his toes" (288). The pickpocket has the upper band in this struggle,although not to the extent which Sammlcr'sperception of him as superhumanprimitive would suggesýnor doeshe

summaryof Fanon'sview of violencewas favouredby manyBlack Nationalistthinkers and is clearly similar to Mr Sammler'sstatement. 14IS. Goffman, ImaginbW Each 01her(New'York: StateUniversity of New York Press,2000), p. 126. 15F. Fanon,Black Skin, "ite Masks,p. 159. 160

display the level of brutality we might expect (286-290). Sammler is provoked to sympathywhen his Israeli son in law, Eisen, stepsin and fells the pickpocketwith two brutal blows. Eisen exemplifieswhat SanderGilman has called the "muscularJew, " the Jew who fashionshis self throughidentification with the military strengthand successof Israel.16 His responsibilityfor the most brutal act of violence representedin the novel emphasisesBellow's anxieties about this figure. It also suggestsBellow may be respondingto a criticism of Jewish hypocrisy levelled by JamesBaldwin. In a 1967 essay,'be attackedthe way Israeli violence is "salutedas the most tremendousheroism" in America, while black violence is always condemnedas a reversion to "native savagery.%A7 Through this scene,Bellow implies that he regardsall forms of violenceas problematic,and that he doesnot endorseracist stereotypes through his representationsof violence,even if his protagonistdoes. This hostility to all violence is emphasisedby the horrific, grotesquedepiction of the pickpocket'scrushed, 'bloody face, which also serves to reveal the pickpocket's humanity to Sammler,apparently shattering his fantasmatic imageof him as a superhumanprimitive (290-291).Even now, however,Sammler does not sympathisewith him as an equal humanbeing, but as an exotic primitive who was "barbarous-majestical"(294). 1 To understandfully the limits of this momentof interracialsympathy, we needto return to an earlier.incident of black violencedescribed by Sammlcr'sncphcw Wallace:

A kid [ ] by black fourteen-year lie beggedthem ... was surrounded a gangof olds. not to shoot,but they simply didn't understandhis words.Literally not the same language.Not the samefeelings. 'No comprehcnsiomNocommon concepts. Out of reach(188).

This provokesa suggestionof momentaryidentification with the black gangin Sammler, as he silently remembershe too "was begged"not to shootby the man he killed in Poland (188). But Sammleronly speaksof a scenein War and Peace, where a cruel French generalspared the life of a Russianwho is aboutto be executedafler they "looked into "human look [ ]. Tolstoy don't kill each other's eyes" and exchangeda ... says you

16See: S. Gilman,Jewish SeffHatred, And-Semidsm and the SecretLanguage of theJews (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins UniversityPress, 1986), p. 373. EthanGoffman makes the sameassociation in Imagining, p. 135. 161

anotherhuman being with whom you have exchangedsuch a look"' (188-189).Sammler refusesto believe in this form of "psychic unity" which servesas an ultimate interdict againstmurderous violence, and he neverachieves a comparablerecognition of common in his It is that the is -humanity encounterswith the pickpocket. significant pickpocket never shown without his sunglasses.They conceal the eyes which could exchangea "human look," and during his fight with Feffer they are describedas reflectingNew York (288). Sammlercannot transcend his perceptionof the pickpocketas an embodimentof the energieshe believesare destroyingcivilised valuesin this city. This inability to conceptualisethe possibility of healing racial divisions, particularly the Black-Jewishdivide, may reflect the violent times in which this novel was written. However, I believe it also shows the difficulty Bellow experienced attemptingto transcendracial stereotypesin his representationsof blacks. In seekingto critique the aspectsof black militancy and the socio-political changesof the sixties he dislikes,Bellow resortsto conventionaldemonised stereotypes of blackness;be is unable to find a way of writing about blacks that revealstheir humanity.As Ethan Goffman observes:"A flattened version of Black nationalist assertivenessmay serve as a new containerfor old stereotypes."18 At one point in the novel, Sammlcr'sson in law Eisen asks him, "How can art hurt?" (171). Bcllow providesan obvious answerwhen Eisen usesthe medallionsthis questionrefers to in attackingthe pickpocket. However,the text also inadvertentlyprovides another answer. The phobic view of blacknessit presentsis never mediatedby any obvious senseof irony or contrastedwith efforts to realisc the historical, subjectivereality of the pickpocket.Thus the novel largely participatesin the distortionsand lacerationsSammler's gaze inflicts on black violenceand the black body. The pickpocket'ssilence throughout the text keepshim totally Other, as Ethan Goffman observes,he is "an empty sign of blackness,a symbolthat can only preserveconventional stereotypes. an emblemof exotic excitement,of primevalfear and, finally, of Jewish guilt.1,19 Bernard Malamud's 7he Tenantsdisplays white reactionsto the rise of black militancy and the literary modes of representingblack violence it produccd in more

17J. Baldwin,'Negroes7, p. 431 and p. 428. 11E. Gofrmar4Imagining, p. 141. 162

detail. The Tenantsstages an ultimately murderousconfrontation between a black writer and a Jewish writer in an otherwise desertedtenement building in New York. It too begins with a white protagonistfascinated and frightenedby the possibilities of black violence he perceivesentering his existence.At the start of the novel, the Jewish author, Lesser, makes an immediate, fantasisedassociation between blackness and violence, rememberinga dreamabout an encounterin his apartmentblock:

Lesserreveries one [dream]touched with fear. Here's this strangerI meet on the stairs. " who you looking for, brother?" "Who you callin brother,mother? " Exit intruder. Yesterday'sprowler or alreaýi today's?Levenspiel in disguise?A thug he's hired to bum or blow up thejoint? 0

Although the race of this "strangee,is not stated,his idiomatic similarity to the black writer who will later appear,and his hostility to being called "brother" by Lessersuggest Lesserimagines him as black. Like Mr Sammler'sPlanet, this novel's often hostile and anxious representationsof black masculinity and violence are heavily influenced by contemporaryevents, but there is a more specific focus on the increasinghostility of black-Jewishrelations. At one point the Jewish protagonistLesser imagineswalking through Harlem. He recalls that "in the not-so-long-ago-past," black passers-bywould say: 'Teace, brother, peace to you." But now, he is either ignored, or subjectedto "scornful jibes: / Show-off cracker. / My spy. / Goldberg hisscif " This fantasy culminatesin an imageof a black manthreatening Lesser with a switchbladc(72). Malarnud's characterisationof the black author who entersthe life of this white man, Willie, has been criticised as thin and stereotypical.Addison Gayle condemns Willie as nothingmore than"a black manas seenthrough the eyesof a white man: crude, coarse,insulting. "21 Adam Lively countersthat Willie is deliberatelyrepresented "as a conscious,ironic compositeof stereotypes- someof them very old but given new and

19E. Goffman, Imagining, P. 140. 20B. Malamud, The Tenants (London: Vintage, 1999), p. 9. Subsequentreferences to this novel appear in arenthesesin the text. Quoted in L. Harap, Drmnatic Encounters.- Me Jewish Presence in Twenfieth-Century Americart Dama Poeny widHmmor wulthe Black-Jewish Literary Relationship (Westport: Greenwood, 1987), p. 27. 163

vivid forms by the end of the sixties."22 Lively suggests Malamud deliberately makes Willie an almost typological combination of clichdd tropes of blackness in order to expose these stereotypes as "farce and absurdity. ,23 This may account for the parodic tone occasionally detectable in the representation of Willie. However, as the narrative develops and the level of violence increases, The Tenants appears to reproduce many of the anxieties usually invested in the demoniscd images of blackness it is supposedly undermining. In one of the most compelling essays on this novel, Cynthia Ozick argues Malamud represents Willie as a racist stcreotype to critique the bigotry of Black Nationalism: "Malamud did not make Willie. He borrowed him - he mimicked him - from the literature and the politics of the black movement. Willie is the black dream that is current in our world. P-44He has to be "a stereotype devoid of any easy humanity, " because Malamud is seeking to show anti-Semitism as incompatible with genuine 25 humanity. However, I believe Willie is represented as a creation of white fantasy, as well as a critique of the Black Nationalist ideal. Consider the moment when Lesser sees Willie sitting naked at his writing desk, after criticising his work:

black his his headbent his [ ] The was sitting nakedat table, over manuscript. ... His bulky body, reflecting the ceiling light, looked like a monumentcut out of Lesserin himself: [ ] Maybe he his flesh to roclc astonishmentasked ... compares his black creation on paper?Or is he mysteriouslyasserting the power of his blackness?(127).

If we trust Lesser'swords, this scenecoffoboratcs Ozick's interpretationof Willic as a man who:

[F]reezes himself into image 'black ' [ ] For totem is the of a totem, a man. ... a an absolute politics: an object, an artifact, a form representing an cntire people, together with its interests, its cult, its power, its history and fate. f... ] Willie has black "Z6 turned the politics of a group into an object - himself, man.

22A. Lively, Masks.Blackiess, Race and the Imaginatim (London:Vintage, 1999),p. 273. 23A. Lively, Masks,p. 280. 24C. Ozick, "Literary Blacks andJews", BerywdMalamud, ed. by L A. Field and1. W. Field (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,1975), p. 95. 25C. Ozick, "Literary". p. 97. 26C. Ozick, "Literary", p. 93. 164

Admittedly, this interpretationof Willie is basedpartly on his own words, his statements suchas: "I am art. Willie Spearmint,black man. My form is myser (61). However,as the scenequoted above shows, this reiricationand fetishisationof blacknessis perforined as much by Lesseras Willie. Lesseris responsiblefor perceivingWillie's body as "a monumentcut out of rock" and he speculatesthat Willie is "Mysteriouslyasserting the power of his blackness"at this moment. Lesser'searlier fearful fantasiesabout black violence have preparedus to expectfantasmatic distortions in his perceptionsof black character.In a more deliberateand detailedmanner than Ur Saminler'sPlanet, this novel probesthe increasingsimilarity betweenwhite fantasyand black self-imagein sixties America. Malamud first implies this similarity through his representationof a party in Lesser'sapartment. Willie and Lessersmoke cannabis and engagein a mutual fantasy aboutdrifting down a river on a "floating island" (4 1). However,this sceneprob1cmatises its own pronouncementsof interracial love and harmony.Even at this stage,there is evidence Willie and Lesser's friendship is predicatedon a dangerousbase of racial fantasy,rather than intersubjectiveunderstanding. Together they recite a revisedversion of William Blake's "The Tygee':

WILLIE

Nigger, Nigger, neverdie, Shinin faceand bulgin eye.

LESSER

Nigger, nigger, shining bright In the forest of the night (43).

The very similarity of their attitude to blacknessbodes trouble. Willie baseshis sclf- image on blacknessitself as a fetishiscdsubstance. Initially, Lesseris happy to concur, becausehis own fantasyof blacknessis so similar. As Kathleen G. Ochshornputs it: "Willie is absorbedby the fact of his blacknessin a racist world, while Lesseris drawn to 165

Willie's blackness.Lesser sees Willie as powerful and mysterious."27 It is also clear, even at this stage,from his paranoidanti-Semitic statements,that Willie perceivesJews in termsgoverned by racist fantasy.Initially, eachman ignoresthe other's distortedimage of him. But as the aestheticand political implications of Willie's self-image become clearer, particularly his anti-Semitism, Lesser's attitude changes. It swings from fetishisation into phobia and hostility, always a latent presencein such fantasmatic perceptionsof blackness.Meanwhile Willie's anti-Semitismleads him to blame Lesser's increasinghostility on his Jcwishness.Malamud showsthese fantasmatic distortions of eachother lie at the root of the mutualmisunderstandings which developinto violence. However, even reading Willie as a critique of dcmonisedwhite fantasiesof blackness,as well as a critique of Black Nationalism,may be inadequate.Black writer JamesA. McPherson'sclaim that Malamud consulted him about the realism of the representationof this charactersuggests Malamud was also trying to make Willie a realistic and even sympatheticblack character.28 But he strugglesto reveal any gap betweenLesser's fantasmatic perceptions and the reality of Willie's character,despite the many different forms and modes he experimentswith. At one point, while trying to explain his difficulty in finishing his novel to Levenspiel,Lesser claims: "I'm proceeding within a mystery to its revelation.By that I mean whateveris botheringme is on the verge of consciousness.Mine and the book's" (22). This also describesWillie's position in the structureof The Tenants.But revelationnever occurs, he remainson the verge,on the margin of the consciousnessof authorand text. The Tenantsenacts the samestruggle to find a form adequateto representblack rage and violence, which it representsin Willie's writings. Willie's writing, which is frequentlyrepresented in the text, may seem to offer a way for Malamud to reveal Willie as a human subject who does not match Lesser'sfantasmatic perceptions. But this is not easilycompatible with Malamud'suse of this writing to criticise the directions contemporaryAfrican American literature was taking, which as we shall see,he felt wereexacerbating racial tensions. Like Bellow's pickpocket,Willie baseshis conceptof black identity largelyon sexualvirility and a mysteriouspower inherentto black physicality.His descriptionsof

27K G. Ochshom,Hearl's, p. 211. 166

his girlfriend Irene suggesthe believesshe values him only as a sexualobject. He claims Irenewas a "nigger-struckchick" whenhe met her, but now shehas more self-bel ief becauseshe has seen how "I believedin my blackness"(79). He seemsunconcerned that Irene fetishiseshim asthe hypervirileblack malerather than knowing him subjectively, perhapsbecause this correlatesso closelyto his own self-image.Basing his masculinity on physicalvirility createsa morbid and obsessivecastration anxiety, noticeable from his first outburstof anti-Semitism.When Lesser first mentionsthe importanceof art in his writing, saying:"Art is the glory andonly a shmuckthinks otherwise," Willie responds:

Lesser, don't bug Jewword. [ ]I know to me with that ... you trying steal my manhood.I don't go for that circumciseshmuck stuff. Tle Jews got to keep us bloods stayingweak so you can take everythingfor yourself.Jewgirls are the best whoresand are trying to cut the bloodsdown by makingus go get circumcise,and the Jewdoctorsdo thejob becausethey are fraid if they don't we gon take over the whole goddamncountry and wipe you out (43).

This unprovokedtirade exposeshow Willie's paranoidcastration anxiety is linked to his violent anti-Semitism.Later, Willie declaresthat when he hasproblems with his writing: "Not only doesthat raiseup doubtsif you really havea true book there; but eventhough know hung [ I have face doubts you you are well ... you theserat are you still a man" (121). He experiencesany type of self-doubtas castrationanxiety, and any criticism as an attemptto castratehim, to which violenceis justified as a response.Malamud blames this self-image for exacerbatinginterracial hostility and producing black violence. After Lesser criticises his novel and revealshis affair with his Irene, Willie's black friends encouragehim to bum Lesser'smanuscript, because he: "Deprived you of your normal life lifelong [ ]. Must feel like been don't it? You sex and occupation ... you castrated, got to take an eyefor a ball it saysin the GoodBook" (135). Malamud only once usesWillie's writings to probe the origins of his self-image in the effects of racism, and suggesta cultural history underlies Willie's castration anxiety. Lesserdescribes a passagein Willie's early,probably autobiographical writing it after readingit:

23See: J. A. McPherson,"To Blacksand Jews: Hab Rachmones!', Tikkun, 4: 5 (Sept/Oct.1989ý 15-19,p. 15. 167

He finally hasto face up to the self-hatredliving in him like a sick dog in a cellar. This comeslike a kick to his headafter he beatshalf to her deathhis black bitch for he is [ ] What he has done his broken faced no reason sure of ... to girl becomesterrifying awarenessof something frightening in his naturc. thoughtif I lookedin a miffor it would showI hadturned white" (50-51).

This passageposits a direct relation betweenWillie's aggressionand the traumatising effect of racism upon his psyche.It suggestsWillie's self-image,his insistentbut fragile pride in his blackness,is a reaction-formationagainst this traumatic self-hatrcd, this feeling of being invadedby whiteness.Thus, unlike Bellow's pickpocket,he is delineated as somethingmore thana dehumanisedcaricature of black militancy. However, apart from this, Willie's writing never representsblack violence in ways which reveal his subjective experience of racism. Instead, Willie becomes increasinglyobsessed with staging the vulnerability of white bodies to black violence. Malamud useshis writing to critique the centrality of this aim in contemporaryblack literature, which we saw in Sonsof Light, Sonsof Darkness,and which becomeseven more prominent in ChesterHimes's later novels.At one point Willie tells Lesserthat blacksought "to kill whitestill thosewho are alive vomit with pain at the thoughtof what wrongs they have done us, and better not try to do any more" (67). Willie seeksto perform this admonitorytask through literature. In an early story, he portraysa black man killing a white man in order to tastehis heart, but he is unableto find it, and the story endswith him butcheringevery part of the body in a vain effort to find this organ (53). Ethan Goffman readsthis story as a symbolic failed attemptto incorporatethe powcr or white societyinto blackness.The absentheart suggestswhiteness has lost its vitality and power, and containsnothing worth taking for blacks (118). But I believe this story also has a more straightforwardperformative function, demonstratingto Lesser his own vulnerability. Another early story showsa black man, suggestivelynamed "Harry, " who is paintedwhite for betrayinga black man to the police (53-54).This suggestsa criticism by Willie of how Jewslike Harry Lesserhave become part of mainstreamwhite society in America and forgotten their links with African Americansas oppressedminorities. Such stories certainly producea greaterawareness in Lesserof his own vulncrability. When he first heard Willie typing in his building, Lesser reassuredhimself-. "a 168

typewritee' is "no lethal weapore'(26). But during the novel he becomesincreasingly scared by the implications of Willie's writing. After he first sleeps with Willie's girlfriend, Irene, he dreams about Willie eating a white man's leg, which seems to rcflect the images of white bodily dismemberment and cannibalism in Willie's stories (112). But this also shows the dangers inherent in this mode of writin& It provides disturbing images of black violence which merge too easily with white racist fantasies of blackness. Malamud seemsconcerned that literature so focussedon enactingblack revenge on whites will not scarethem into treatingAffican Americansbetter as Willie hopes,but simply encourageracism. This type of black literaturecannot achieve the universalityhe seesas crucial to genuineart; it cannotexpress black rage in ways which enableethnic groupsto comprehendeach other's experienceand perceiveeach other's humanity.In a later story, which Lesserdiscovers in the bin, a group of blacks, comprisingthrcc old men and a Jamaicanwoman, murder a Jew slumlord: - 'Lets cut a piece off of him and taste what it tastes like, ' says the old man. / 'He tastes Jewtaste, that don't taste like nothing good,' says the Jamaican woman" (153-154). As Ethan Goffman notes, this story shows that: "More so than the White body, the Jewish body is depicted as always already [ ] the Jewish body is [ ] traditional repulsive, ... saturated ... with anti-Semitic characteristics, is untouchable."29 This figuration of the Jewish body as repulsive and poisonous inverts conventional tropes of Negrophobia, casting them back onto a white body. Willie wants to stage his own ficrcely desired revenge on white society and frighten Lesser, who he probably knows is reading the fragments he throws away. Lesser is forced to recognise how it feels to suffer racism, such as blacks have suffered. As Sally Robinson has observed,the political changesof this era reduced white masculinity from a universal norm to a specific "embodied" identity. This gave white men a new sense of corporeal vulnerability to the forms of persecution from which their hegemonic statue in America had previously preservedthem. 30 Willie tries to force this recognition upon Lesser through anti-Semitism,making him accepthe is a racialiscd,gendercd subject, part of an individual ethnic group. Early in the novel, in responseto an anti-Semitic remark Lessertells Willie: "If its newsto you, I'm Jewishmyself" (36). As Emily Miller

29E. Goffman, Imagining, p. 118. 169

Budick observes,"while this is likely not news to Willie, it is news to Harry [Lesser], who just a short time earlier did not respondto a similarly anti-Semiticstatement. -, ' But becomingaware of his own ethnic statusdoes not augmentLesser's understanding of African Americans.Instead he becomesincreasingly racist and incapableof rccognising black humanity. Towards the end of the novel, as he returns to his isolated top floor apartment,Lesser has "visions of a pack of rats, or wild dogs, or a horde of blacks descendingas he tries to go up" (133). In his fearful fantasies,he no longerdifferentiates blacks from animals.Rather than helping them to comprehendeach other's experience, Willie's representationsof black violencedrive a deeperwedge between blacks and Jews. The ending of Willie's story is also telling. In 1958,Malamud had imagineda sceneof peaceful,mutually beneficialcultural syncretismand multiculturalism,depicting a group of black Jews studyingthe Talmud in "Angel Levine."32 But in Willie's story, this is displacedby a grotesqueblack appropriationof Jewish cultural materials.After killing the Jew, his black charactersgo to a synagogue.In one ending, they "put on yarmulkes and make Yid noises,praying" (154). In an alternateending, they turn the synagogueinto a mosque,and "dance hasidically" (154). This cmphasiscsMalamud's anxietiesabout what he perceivesas the increasinglyviolent black desireto take the place of Jews in American culture. The epigraphsto The Tenantsexpress tentatively the possibility of a continued peaceful cultural syncretism which would foster greater interracial understanding.The first epigraph, from the Attic orator Antiphon's Tetralogies,represents the classical tradition of white Europeanculture which Lesser champions.But its contentalludes to Willie's rage abut the effects of white racism on black subjectivity: "Alive and with his eyes open he calls us his murderers"(7). This implies a hope that even the increasingrage againstracism amongstAfrican Americans at this time could be expressedthrough traditional white aestheticforms, in ways white peoplecould understand,but the rest of the novel graduallyshatters this hope. The overall novel compelsthe readerto wonder,however, if thereis any modeof representingblack rage and violence Malamud would acceptas genuineart. Lesser's

30S. Robinson,MarkedMen: Rhife Masculinity in Crisis (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press,2000), 34. 31E.Nt Budick, Blacks,p. 15. 32See: D. Malamud,"Angel Levine", 7heMagic Barrel (New York: Vintage, 1958),pp. 52-54 170

problemswith Willie's writing always focus on his transitionsfrom reprmnting black sufferingto representingthe violencethis sufferingproduces in the black subject.Twice Lesserpraises drafts on the appalling childhood of the autobiographicalprotagonist of Willie's novel: "It's well written and touchesthe heart" (83). But he criticiscs the draft which goeson to describethe long-termeffects of this childhood:

[11he chapteropened strongly with four pagesof horrifying human miscry, but the remainingthirty-six, to put straightthe effect of her life and death in her son's badly [ ] His dealing boy's mind, went off. ... rhetoric, though with a sclf-hatred and his blazing fantasiesof sex and violence, becameflorid, false, [... ] Part of Bill's trouble was that he wastrying to foreshadowa revolutionarymentality, and it didn't fit. [ ] At best boy incapable, fitfully, always ... the was a zombie, except of recognizablehuman emotion (124-125).

Lessercannot acceptthe progressionin Willie's writing from representationsof black suffering, which evokea pathoshe feels is universaland thereforeconstitutes legitimate art, to representationsof the disturbing anger this suffering produces.Ile boy is no longer recognisablyhuman in Lesser'seyes as he takeson a rcvolutionaty black anger. This might simply reflect Lesser'sanxious refusal to rccogniscthe humanpossibility of suchextreme rage because of his fear of black violence,rather than Malamud'sproblems with the representationof black rage. However,Malamud neverdiscovers a way to representblack angerand violence which doesmore than revealLesser's increasingly pathological fears. His makesmyriad efforts to articulateWillie's rageduring the novel; throughLesser's dreams, reveries and real perceptions,and in the many different forms of representinghimself Willie experimentswith. Adam Lively interpretsthis as a -postmodcmquestioning of all forms of representation," which enablesa "complete exorcism" of "racial stcrcotypc."33 But I think it also betraysMalamud's anxietiesabout representingblack anger and violence adequately.The final pagesof the novel containambiguous phrases like: 'rhc writer was nauseatedby not writing. He was nauseatedwhen he wrote, by the words,by the thought of them" (172). Ostensibly,this refers to Lesser's intensedifficulties in finishing his novel. However, the use of the ambiguousphrase, "[t]he writce' and the switch from

33A. Lively, Masks,p. 280. 171

third to first personnarrative suggests this may also describeMalamud's difficulties. This passageprecedes the violent climax of the novel, suggestingMalamud himself is disturbedand nauseatedby trying to articulateblack-Jewish conflict. As his fear of black violenceincreases, and actual black violence entershis life, Lesser experiences difficulties distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Brita Lindberg-Seyerstedclaims that as Lesseris overwhelmedby "anger and paranoia,his fantasiesbecome hall ucinations. "34 The form of the latter stagesof the novel reflects this difficulty: 'Direct dialogue is growing increasingly scarce; much of the action is internalizedin Lesser'smind. 9v35 She arguesthat Malamud skilfully representsLesser's paranoiathrough the increasingfrequency of shifts in tenscand persontowards the endof the novel. Previously, such shifts had clearly demarcatedthe different modes of representation,the shifts from descriptionof reality to fantasy,reverie or dream.Now, as these shifts become more "frequent and 'disorderly,'" such distinctions bccomc impossible36 Thus Lesser'sdiff The form . the experienceof the readerreplicates icultics. of the novel enactsthe psychologicalproblems white fear of black violencecreates. The scenein which Lesserreveals his affair with Ircne constitutesan intcrcsting variation on an archetypalAmerican trope identified by Leslie Fiedler. lie claimed in a nineteen-fiftiesessay that white American literature reveals its guilt about racism by dramatising"as if compulsivelythe role of the coloredman as victim." Willie is reduced to a total victim during The Tenants,losing his home,his girlfriend and his belief in his literary ability becauseof Lesser.His sufferingmay showthat Malamudfeels guilty thatý like many Jews who have enteredmainstream American culture, he has identified with the white racist political structure.When he wrote this essay,Fiedler claimed such literaturealways reassured that African Americanswould forgive this mistreatment:"Ile fold in his [ I he if him long will us arms, ... will comfort us, as our offenseagainst were ago remitted, were never truly real. ,37 The Tenants,however, radically revises this paradigm,emphasising the influenceof changedhistorical circumstances. Willie doesnot forgive these offences, he responds with violence. Initially, this violence is self-

34B. Lindberg-Seyersted,"A Readingof BernardMalamud's Me Tenand",JoumalofAmericanSýwlie3.9 11975),85-102, p, 93. 5 B. Lindberg-Seyersted,"Reading7, p. 97. m B. Lindberg-Seyersted,"Readin87, pp. 97-98. 172

destructive,as Willie bangs his head against the wall, and Malamud repeatsFiedler's patternof stagingblack victimisation.In a shockingmoment, however, as Lesserguiltily tries to stop this physical demonstrationof the pain he has causedWillie, the violence switchesround to be targeteddirectly against the white man. Willie grabs Lesserand smasheshis head againstthe wall, before attemptingto push him out of the window. Malamud shattersnot only Fiedler's paradigm but also the tradition of reluctanceto representblack violence being targeted directly against white men we have traced throughtwentieth century white Americanliterature in this thesis.We haveprogressed to the diametric oppositeof ThomasDixon's absolutedenial that African Americanscould face white men in direct conflict, via Faulknerand Styron's anxiousadumbrations of a possibility they struggledto acknowledge. The fight is largely representedin realistic, mimetic terms, but there are some importantsymbolic elements:"The lamp fell, light rising eerily from below. They circled like lit [ I They fought, [ I eachother shadows. ... gruntedas they uttcring animal noises, ... They broke, grabbed,and were oncemore lockedtogether, head to bloodiedhead" (129). The image of the two men as "lit shadows" suggeststhis violence destroys their individuating, human characteristics.Both utter "animal noises," and as the right progressesthey are increasingly figured as mirror images; their actions become symmetricaland they both have bloodied heads.This doubling rcflccts Rcnc Girard's theoriesabout how violencereduces antagonists to mirror images.This narrativestrategy may appearto preventany interpretationof violenceas naturally,primarily black. Willie instigatesthis violenceand is the more aggressivefightcr, trying to push Lesserthrough the window while Lesser's violence is focussedon resistance.But this difference is accountedfor by the racismWillie hassuffered, not his blackness.However, because the fight is representedeither from a third personperspective or focaliscdthrough Lesser,it is only his physical,visceral experience of violencewhich is communicatedto the reader. Willie remainsopaque. He communicatesthe angerwhich motivateshis violencethrough direct speech,but we never see into his mind and understandhow he experiences violence.This inevitablyensures that Lesserappears as a more human,subjective figure. As Cynthia Ozick observes:

37 L Fiedler, 'Come, p. 150. 173

Now that Willie has stoppedseeing Lesser as a more experiencedwriter and can think of him only as a Jew, Lessertoo alters.He is rewriting his lost manuscriptin fear and anguish,but the from him, he is in terror Willie. [ ) vision slips of ... and Lesser,afraid for his life, turns as savageas Willie, with this difference,"... it sickenedhim deeply," he remainsself-conscioUS. 38

Ozick's insistenceon a qualitative difference betweenLesser and Willie's attitude to violencestems largely from the fact that the narrativeis focaliscdthrough Lesser. In fact, we neverreally discoverWillie's attitudeto violence,and assuminghe commitsviolence unthinkingly, naturally,risks reproducingracist stereotypes of black violence. The processof doubling in the characterisationof Lesserand Willie continues throughout the rest of the novel. Previously, they have appearcdas miffor images, diametric oppositesof each other, particularly in their attitude to writing. Towards the end, these oppositionsbegin to be mergedor exchanged.As Brita Lindbcrg-Scycrsted "Lesser the has [ ] Willie's lie has notes: at end ... adoptedsome of traits. grown a goatec his languagehas jivc [ I And Willie has and strongerechoes of talk than earlier ... too changed: he looks thinner and taller than bcfore."39 Also, as Evelyn Gross Avery observes:"Willie changesfrom a passionatesensual being into a nervous frustrated writer who beginsto look and soundlike the Jew."40 Sheldon Hershinow notes that it is in their increasinglyviolent hatred of each other that the two men are most obviously doubled: "Hatred breedsviolence until the differencesbetween victim and victimizer becomeblurred: they victimize each other."41 This doubling implies symbolically that eachman is seekingto becomethe other, or rather to becomewhat they have fantasiscd the other is throughoutthe novel. Lesserhas alwaysbeen fascinatedby black sexuality and what he perceivesas their intimate, passionateconnection to the physical and emotionallifeworld from which he is so detached.Willie wantsto usurpwhat he regards as Lesser'sspecifically Jewish literary talents.He envieswhat he scesas the powerful, even secretly dominant position of Jews in mainstreamAmerican culture, which they combinewith the maintenanceof a distinct cultural identity. As he tells Lesserin almost

39C. Ozick, "Literary, p. 96. 39 B. Lindberg-Seyersted, "ReadinS7, p. 89. 40E G. Avery, Rebels, p. 104. 41 S. J. Hershinow, BemordMalamud (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980), p. 93. 174

his last words before the novel's violent finale: "You think you are the ChosenPeople. Well you are wrong on that. Weare the ChosenPeople from as of now on" (169). For eitherto achievetheir aim, they haveto eliminatethe other. Theseaggressive desircs arc played out in the novel's violent denouement.Through this, Malamud posits an explanationfor black-Jewish.hostility of this period: Black Nationalistswant a role in Americansociety so similar to what they perceiveas the Jewishrole, they arc developing a desire simply to be, to replace violently, Jews in American culture. This aspect of the novel supports Rene Girard's theory that violent conflict originates in the mimetic nature of human desire. Although a common object of desire usually appears to stimulate the conflict, in fact the real motives lie in the ultimate desire to be the rival, who is perceived to be more authentic, to possess some mysterious ontological superiority. As the conflict escalatesand intensifies, the antagonists forget the object which supposedly provoked their conflict and imitate each other in ever more 42 savage acts of retaliation, until ultimately they become indistinguishable doubles. Irene initially appears to be the desired object that motivates Lesser and Willie's conflict. Yet she becomes increasingly irrelevant after their relationship brcaks down into violcncc. Lesser treats her exactly as Willie had done, devoting most of his time to writing and only seeing her at weekends, in a further example of the increasing similarity between these two men. Finally, Irene leaves for San Francisco. In the final, murderous confrontation between Lesser and Willie, the grievous wounds they simultaneously inflict on each other arc not rcalistic, but have enormous symbolic importance. As Ethan Goffman observes, each reduces the other to the "essentialist stereotype" their ethnic group harbours about the racial other. Lesser destroys Willie's brain, reducing him to the pure physicality white racists pcrccivC in blackness. Willie castratesLesser, slicing away "the site of physical p1casurcsabsent in the mythic Jew" who is hated for his cunning mind (124). They literally commit the procrustean violence their racist fantasies have metaphorically inflicted on each other throughout the novel. These fantasies have gradually ascendedfrom an unconscious level

42See: P. Dumochel,Violence and Thilh: at the WorkqfRene Girard (London:Athlone Press, 1988), p. 11 and:R. Girard, Holenceand the Sacred,trans. by P. Gregory(Baltimore: Johns Illopkinsvinversity Press,1979), p. 47 andp. 79. 175

to dominateeach man's perceptionof the other, as the insults they exchangeemphasise: "BloodsuckinJew niggerhater"/ "Anti-Semitic Ape" (173). Furthermore,these acts of violenceconstitute a perfectlysymmetrical revenge for what eachman feelsthe other hasdone to him. As JohnAlexander Allen puts it:

Willie's conception of his manhood is inseparable from writing as a means to from power and his 'normal sex life' - courtesy of his 'sweet bitch. " Hence his mounting rage at Lesser who has cut him off from both, castrated him, as Willie seesit 43

By castrating Lesser, Willie physically replicates what he feels Lesser has done to him psychologically and metaphorically. Meanwhile Lesser's identity is inseparable from his book; by burning his manuscript, Willie has almost destroyed his self tic too takes revenge with a physical version of what he feels Willie has done to him by cleaving through Willie's brain with an axe. This moment fails to produce the kind of recognition of the Other's humanity we witnessed in The Confessions ofNat Turner. Adam Zachary Newton observes that, becauseLevinas says the face expressesethical answcrability, "it that [ ] Lesser to the black head: better makes perverse sense ... takes an ax writer's what site to commit murder than the very part of the person that expressesthe interdict against murder. A4 The endingis both politically problematicand besetby internalcontradictions and tensions.These problems begin with the setting.Like Mr Sammler'sPlanet, The Tenants has shown a tendencyto associateblack violence with the generalsocial and physical decayaffecting the novel's environment,which is frequentlyfigured as a jungle. In this final confrontation the jungle where many of Lesser's fantasiesarc set, a primitive, African scene,seems to mergewith the jungle of urbandecay in his building. This may just show the extent of Lesser'sracism, but it also suggestsMalamud is unconsciously figuring black violenceas primitive, naturaland bestial in a traditionally racist way. This suggestionof authorial racism is eliminated if we read this sceneas purely Lesser's fantasy,like critics such as Ben Siegel,who describesit as a "product only of Lesser's

43J. A. Allen, "The Pron-ýisedEnd: BernardMalamud's The Tenwas",BerrwdMalanmd, ed. by L A. Field andJ. W. FieK p. 105. 44A. Z. Newton,Racing, p. 139. 176

overwroughtmind and imagination."45 This enablesa moreoptimistic view of the novel's conclusion.Brita Lindberg-Seyerstedclaims: "The novel endsnot in real killing but in an imaginedact of violence, which is perhapsmeant to have a cathartic result, but, more importantly, which is intendedas a reminder and a warning."46 Malamud himself has supportedthis view of the ending as a "'warning" and complainedof critics that "Some even read the ending as bleak, while I offer reconciliation before it is too late.rA7 However, his statementsabout this novel's meaning are somewhat conrused and contradictory,and his use of three different endingssuggests he himself was dissatisficd with the degreeof closurehe achieves."s Furthermore,there is little textual evidenceof the potentialreconciliation he claimsto offer. This sceneends with the sentence:"Each, thoughtthe miter, feels the anguishof the other" (173). This suggestsa degree of sympathy and empathy between the antagonistseven at this extremity,but only if this sceneis real, and not purely Lcsscr's fantasy.Paradoxically, there is only any real, potentiallyredemptive interracial sympathy here if there is also real murderousviolence. Thus Brita Lindbcrg-Seycrstedargues that although a "kind of identification vAth the black is hinted at" in this smnc, the phrase "the writer" can only really refer to Lesseror Malamud,because she readsthis sceneas imaginary: "It all takes place in the writer's mind."49 Adam Zachary Newton suggests this sentencefunctions to assignan exact "mutual culpability" to the antagonists.lie interprets it as a slight shift in focalisation, a movement from using only Lesser's perspectiveto also articulatingWillie's thoughts.Therefore, it "allows the two characters (writer's both) to inflict correspondinganguish with reciprocalbarbarity -[... ] for each is "the writer."'50 Clearly, the phrase"the writer is deliberatelyambiguous; it could rercr to Malamud or either of the protagonists.However, as we haveseen, the rest of the novel

4513.Siegel, "Through a GlassDarkly: BernardMalamud's Painful Views of the Selr, 7heriction of BenumdMalamud,ed. by K Astro andJ. J. Benson(Corvallis: OregonState University Prm 1977),p. 139. 46B. Vindberg-Seyersted,"Reading", p. 100. 47Quoted in: L. Lasher,Conversafions wilh BenjardMalamud (Jackson:University of MississippiPress, 1991)p. 33 andp. 147. 43In other interviewsMalamud argues for a morepessimistic reading of this novel, acknowledgingit representshis lossof faith in humannature, and suggestingthe earlier-wedding7 ending provides the only OT.limistic note. See:L. Lasher,Conversations, pp. 71-72. B. Lindberg-Seyersted,"Reading", p. 101. " A. Z. Newton,Facing, p. 124. 177

underminesthis senseof mutual culpability, and this single sentencecannot completely alter that impression. This sentencealso feels incongruousand forced becauseit completelycontradicts the strongsense that both were reducingthe other to a subhumanracist stereotypewhich dominatesthe rest of the scene.The novel ultimately ends with Levenspiel'splea for "Mercy" repeated115 times (173-174).But this plea also feels falseand strained,and not only becauseit comesfrom the mouth of a characterwho has been revealedas a racist and a Harlem slumlord during the courseof the novel. As Adam Lively observes,this plea "is purely religious,an invocationof somehigher being's redeemingpower over us humans.Willie and Lesser,the two humans,destroy each other. They do not change,they do not learn,they do not grow. ,51 Just as Faulknerlapsed into a poetic,aesthetic mode of discourseat the momentof Joe Christmas'smurder in Light in AuguV, Malamud seems tempted towards the supernatural,the religious in his representationof racial conflict. Neither author can proposegenuinely human, political solutions.Mark Shechncrmakes the telling objectionthat "the endingsimply contradictseverything that has come before and tries to rescuethe book by magic from its own implacableconclusion. "52 African American authors also responded critically to the problems of black militant fiction, but in very different ways to white writers. John Edgar Wideman's 1973 novel The Lynchers constitutes a more accurate satire of black militant philosophy and writing than Yhe Tenants. The narrative revolves around the plan formulated by four black men to lynch a white policeman in a symbolic act of revenge. The similarity of this plot to Sons ofDarkness, Sons ofLight suggestsWideman may be signifying directly on that novel. Even more than Eugene Browning, Littlcman is convinced that a single, symbolic act of violence can completely change American society, can destroy a "total vision of reality. "53 Littleman thinks in simplistic Black Nationalist terms: "If we lynch the cop we will be declaring ourselves a nation. Only two reactions to our action are possible. They must attack us or back off and either way they must rccognisc our sovereignty" (495). Littleman speaks with open admiration about how Southern

51A- lively, Masks,p. 279. 52M. Shechner,AeConversionofthe JewswidOilierEkWs (New York. SL Martin's Press,1990), p. 89. 531. E Wideman,Zhe Lywhers, Identifies.,77wee Arovels (New York: I lenry I folt, 1994).p. 494. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 178

lynchingsfunctioned as a displayof white power and a channellingof the "raw fantasies" of a community into a symbolic, aestheticform (439). Ile believes his own plan will operatein the same way, channellingblack anger to force white society to accept a profoundalteration in power relations. However,.in contrastto black militant authors,Wideman deliberately exposes the elementof fantasyand wish-fulfilmcnt in this belief in what violence alone can achieve for Affican Americans.Wideman's plotters are not the heroesof black militant fiction, but complex humancharacters, whose subjectivity is revealedin far grcatcr detail than JohnA. Williams attempted.Their desirefor violent revengeis intimately boundup with self-hatred,double consciousnessand traumatic racist experiences.Their leader is the stunted, crippled and revealingly named Littleman. Wideman createsrepeated ironic contrastsbetween his plansand fantasiesof extremeviolence and his physicalweakness, satirising the idea of superhuman,primitive black strength which John A. Williams endorsed. By depicting Littleman's plan as a symmetricalinversion of white racist violence, Wideman emphasiseshow black militants were held in thrall by the ideology of the system they sought to rebel against.One plotter, Saunders,fecls justified in killing a black prostitute and blaming it on the policeman they will lynch becauseLittleman showedhim: "she could not forfeit what sheno longer owned.Since she functionedas a puppetin the oppressorssystem, taking her life would be a minor act of sabotage"(532). He repeatsthe devaluationof black life, the refusalto recognisethe humanityof black victims we have witnessed in white racist violence. Wideman emphasisesthat the plotters' devaluationof Sissie replicates her status in whitc ideology. As Saunders observes:"[t]cn Sissieswould have to die, cut down in some mad ripper's crusade," before the newspaperswould report the crimes or the police would conducta -rigorous investigation" In contrastto Sonsof Darkness,the plannedrevolt cannot be implementedand there is no black uprising.The plot collapsesafter Littleman is hospitalisedby a police beating,-which emphasises the enormouspower imbalancebctwccn white authority and black revolutionaries,and one of the plottersshoots one of the others(499-500 and 619). Fear, paranoiaand self-hatred,Wideman argues, cannot be channelledso simplistically 179

and easily into rebellion, attemptsto do so only foment more intraracialviolence. As the lynchers' plot drifts further from realisationtowards the end of the novel, an incident Widemanseems to posit as the reality of black violenceoccurs. As Trudier Harris notes, the killing of a colleaguein a drunkenfight by Orin Wilkerson, the father of one of the plotters, demonstrates"the pathetic drama of reality, not the pageantryof a planned symbolic execution."54 This chaotic, meaningless,intraracial violence confirms the failure of the plotters to channel-black rage into new forms. In a mcdia-saturatcd environment,the representationsof white culture shapeperceptions of black violence even more thoroughly than the newspaperreports we consideredin Me Marrow of Tradition andNative Son.Wideman emphasises this by introducingthis incident through the mediation of a radio news bulletin, heard by Rice, rather than a descriptionof the actual event. Rice respondsby thinking angrily that Orin has "actfed] a nigger," cmphasisingthe impact of begemonicideology upon him (570). lie perceivescertain, negativeforms of violenceas inherently,naturally black. When Orin eventuallyattempts to explain the fight his son, he cannotfind words "I it but it don't [ jI to articulatethe violence: try to put together, make sense. ... try to figure out what happenedand nothing comee' (582). Ile cannot explain the motives of his work-mate,Childress, for attackinghim. Even his attemptto describehow he actually killed Childressin a desperatemove of self-defencelapses into garbledincoherence: "I was down when I got it out rememberopening it with my teeth and pushingmyself up and him on top of me I shovedwith it in my hand and fell on him" (583). The cvcnts reportedin this ungrammaticalutterance can barelybe comprehended.Orin's inability to explain the motivesand actionsin this fight createsa senseblack violenceis scriptedby larger cultural forces, as in Light in August and Native Son, but Orin has no c1car comprehensionofthis. He lacks the linguistic resourcesto contest the hospital stafrs perceptionof him as "an ignorant,razor fighting nigger, stinking of sour winef" of which he is acutelyaware (584). Ultimately, the most disturbingand pessimisticclement of The Lynchersis not the failure of the lynching plan to reachfruition, but Wideman'sinability to figure the realities of black violence outside hcgcmonicparadigms of natural black

34T. Hanis, ExorcWngBlackness, p. 146 ISO criminality. He satirisesblack militant ways of representingblack violence,but cannot find effectivealternatives. 181

CHAPTERSEVEN

INVESTIGATING BLACK VIOLENCE: THE PROBLEM OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN DETECTIVE IN THE NOVELS OF CHESTER HIMES AND WALTERMOSLEY

Walter Mosley's "Easy Rawlins" series of detective novels constitute investigations of black violence on both narrative and meta-narrative levels. While his detective protagonist, Easy Rawlins, conducts investigations into (what at least initially appear to be) crimes of black violence, Mosley uses the novels to investigate social and cultural aspects of black violence. In particular, he explores the ethical and aesthetic problems which arise when representing various forms of black violence within a conventional hardboiled narrative structure, and he attempts to uncover the social origins of these forms of black violence. However, before I analyse these investigations, I want to consider the detective novels of Chester Himes. His Harlem thrillers are among the most violent African American novels ever written, and they exemplify the problems which confront a black author attempting to representAfrican American detective heroes within a hardboiled format. I show how these problems contributed to the collapse of the detective plot structure in The Hadem Cycle, and then compare the different strategies Mosley deploys to adapt the hardboiled format to his political and aestheticaims. In this have chapter, rather than performing the kind of close readings of particular texts which detective characterisedthis thesis, I will focus more broadly on a range of these authors' fiction- Although I believe both authors do attempt to comment seriously on the acts of black violence which drive their narratives, their conventionally hardboiled focus on complex, suspensefulplotting and dramatic action limits their ability to do this in any single text. Instead,their analysis of the social and psychological causesof black violence is submergedwithin the detective plots acrossthe whole range of thesenovels. The hardbofled format may appear eminently adaptable for African American writers seeking to expose the malign effects of racism upon American society. As Andrew Pepperhas observed:

UnUe detective fiction [ ] the interventions of classical ... where moral respectablemiddle-class investigators ensured a seamlessrestoration not just of law and order but the entire social structure, American novelists like Hammett 182

presented a world so corrupted, so endemically violent, that his detectives could hope to [ ]a flawed justice. "' ever achieve ... provisional

However,the idea that the captureand punishmentof a singlecriminal can achieveeven "a flawed provisionaljustice" while the racial structureof American society remains unchangedis deeplyproblematic, and it clearly troubledChester Himes. He observesin his autobiography,that when writing detectivenovels was first suggestedto him, he recalled: "I had started out to write a detective story" in IfHe Hollers, Let Him Go, "but I couldn't name the white man who was guilty because all white men were guilty. "2 The need to apportion guilt for the violence of the ghetto strains the conventional detective form he attempts to deploy throughout 7he Harlem Cycle (originally published 1957- 3 1969). There is a disturbing similarity between the conventional morphology of the detective story and the lynching narrative which structured Thomas Dixon's novels. and was revised by Faulkner and Wright Both narrative paradigms depict the discovery and elimination of a single figure, who is responsible for the violence and disorder threatening societyý as restoring justice and harmony. Detective novels which urimask black criminals as the originator of the disorder which drives the plot risk endorsing racist ideologies, absolving white society of responsibility for the problems of the ghetto and reproducing racist notions of African Americans as a naturally criminal type. Himes struggles to resolve this problem in ways that change during The Harlem Cycle. Another problem inherent to the hardboiled format for African American authors concerns the established methods of representing blackness within this genre. When it features in mainstream hardboiled fiction, the black ghetto is usually figured from a fearful, white perspective, as an alien, exotic, incomprehensible environmentý pervaded by violence and criminality. Consider this passage from Ellroy's Yhe Black Dahlia:

[Sjoutheast of downtown LA, 95 per cent slums, 95 per cent Negroes.all trouble. liquor [ I There were bottle gangs and crap games on every comer, stores ... and

1A. Pepper, Vie ContemporwyAmericazi Crime Novel (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversitY Press.2000). P. 113. 2 C. Kmes, My Life ofAbsurdity (New York. Thunder's Mouth Press, 1976). p. 102. 3 C. Ilitnes, YheHarlem Cycle, 3 Vols. (Edinburgh: PaybackPress. 1996). 183

poolrooms on every block, code three calls to the station twenty-four hours a day. [ ] Newton Street Division 4 ... was a war zone.

Clearly, this constitutes an apt setting ripe in a genre reliant on tension and excitement generated by scenes of extreme violence and criminal activity to attract readers. But figuring the ghetto as a war zone, without any explanation of the social and political origins of this criminality, threatensto reproduce demonised images of black violence as innate and uniquely savage.Chester Himes; believed he could use depictions of the ghetto in this commercially successful way in a way which would defy these demonising stereotypes.He always adamantly rejected the strategy of denial in his representationsof black violence, insisting that African American writers had a responsibility to represent the full, terrible effects of racism upon black people, without compromising with white 5 desire to avoid facing their guilt about this situation. Thus, in his depiction of Harlem, he does not reduce the level of violence and criminality inscribed in conventional hardboiled tropes of the black ghetto. Insteadýhe signifies upon these demonised images of black violence, attempting to use them to reveal not the natural criminality of African Americans but the appalling ramifications of racism. Himes was fiercely critical of conventional cultural images of violence, which he claimed understatedits real consequencesthrough a reliance on inadequateclich6s:

Even when they just say "blown to pieces" that doesn't describe what they look like blown to pieces.When a shell hits a man in a war, bits of him Plyaround, half of his liver is flying through the air, and his brains are dribbling off.

He attempts to maintain a vivid, visceral focus on violence which eschews clichd throughout The Harlem Cycle. But this very determination to expose the full horror of black violence risks reproducing strategiesI have grouped in the category of denial. Gary R Storhoff has interpreted his repeateduse of shocking imagesof violence as a sustained

41 Ellroy, The Black LWia (London: Arrow, 19931 pp. 299-300. 5 See: C. Ilimes, "The Dilemma of the Black Writer in America7,77yeHarkm CYCle.VOL 7, P- xiv- 61 A- Williams, "My Man Ifinies: An Imerview With Chester Himee. Amislad. edLby L AL Williams and C. F. Harris (New Yoric Vmtage, 1970), p. 47. 184

assaulton the detectiveform andthe sensibilitiesof a middle classwhite readership.7 He claims Himes repeatedlyinterrupts the progressof his narrativestowards conventional resolution with descriptions of outrageous violence to shock the reader into "involuntarily" recognising"the actualconsequences of racismin America."8 However, this interpretationcannot fully explainthe comictonalities Himes also repeatedly deploys in his descriptionsof violence.Furthermore, as Andrew Peppersuggests. Storhoff may 9 underestimatethe extentto which readerscan actually enjoy suchscenes of violence. TheReal Cool Killers beginswith a scenein which a Harlem barmanintervenes to stopa black customerattacking a white man with a knife. Whenthe knifemanslashes his arm, the barmanresponds with an extraordinaryescalation, attacking his opponent with an axe:

The blade met the knifeman's arm in the middle of its stroke and cut it off just below the [ 1. elbow ... The severedarm in its coat sleeve, still clutching the knife sailed through drops blood [.. I. the air, sprinkling the nearby spectatorswith of - The little knifeman landed on his feet still making cutting motions with his half-arm. He drunk full impact. [ ] was too to realize the ... "Wait a minute, you big mother-raper, till Ah finds my arm! " he yelledý "It got my knife in his hand." [ 1 ... 10 Blood spurted from his jerking stub as though from the nozzle of a hose.

The violence in this scene is shocking and described in gruesomedetail, but we get no insight into the subjectivity and motivation, or the suffering, of the combatants. Black bodies are objectified literally and figuratively by this scene; not only is the knifeman's severed arm reduced to an object, Himcs focuses purely on the gruesome physical from consequencesof this mutilation - the blood spurting from the stub as the nozzle of a hose - with no reference to the pain involved. As often in Yhe Harlem C.Wle, the extremity of the violence approaches slapstick dimensions, and the tonc is one of macabre comedy. These factors may lead readers to interpret black violence as not

7 G. p. Storhofg . Aggravating the Reader-: The fjarlern Detective Novels of Chester Ifimes7,77w Detective in American Fiction, Fibn wid Television, ed. by J. Delarnater (Westport: Greenwood Press. 1998), pp. 45-46. 8 G. P. StorhofX "Aggravating7, p. 50. 9 A. Pepper,Contemporary, pp. 116-117. 185

involving fully human victims, and therefore suitable to be enjoyed as pure entertainment.Despite his focus on the physical realities of black violence.Himcs risks reproducinga similar form of denial,of the motivesand origins of this violence,to many of the Harlem Renaissancenovels I considered. The tension betweenshocking and entertainingreaders visible within Himes's depictions of black violence may reflect the mixed motives which led him into the hardboiledgenre. Himes admittedin his autobiographythat he beganwriting detective novels to make money." In a letter to Carl Van Vcchten he said his publisherswanted "an action packed funny story about Harlem," with "plenty of comedy in iL"12 ThroughoutYhe Harlem Cycle, violenceconstitutes the main sourceof this comedyand action, but the apparently comic focus on extreme, unmotivated acts of violence may also reflect other motives. Himes was attempting to dramatisc the new perspective on American racial politics he had developed during his European expatriation, which he described in his autobiography: "Racism introduces absurdity into the human condition. Not only does racism express the absurdity of the racists, but it generatesabsurdity in the VietirnS.vsB I believe that for Himes, racism produces absurd behaviour in its victims by splitting mind from body. it compels African Americans to repressthe traumatic pain and rage created by racism, which they cannot express in any form of direct retaliation, into acts of physical violence which appear motiveless and insane, and are frequently self- harming. Hence, Himes describesHarlem as "a city of black people who are convulsed in desperate living, like the voracious churning of millions of hungry cannibal rish. Blind 14 mouths eating their own gUtS.v! This concept resembles the theory of Ralph Ellison about the impact of racism upon black consciousnessI used to explain the representation 's of black violence in Native Son. It produces a range of black characters as incapable of personally articulating their motives for violence as Bigger 71omas. However, rather than using a narrator who penetrates beneath the consciousnessof his characters, like

10C. fErnes,Yhe Real Cool "Iers, 7heHarlem Cjvle, Vol. 1, p. 184.Subsequent references to this novel appear in parenthesesin the text. , C. I-limes,Lffie, pp. 101-105. 12Quoted in: G. It Muller,Chesler Himes (Boston: G. KI WI, 1989),p. 105. 13C. I-limes,Life, p. 1. 14C. I-Emes,A Ragein Harlem,Yhe Harlem C)r1e, Vol. 1,p. 102.Subsequent references to thisnovel appear in parenthesesin the texL R. Ellison, "Richard Wright's Bluesr, Collecled&Ws, p. 139. 186

Faulkner or Wright, 11imesrelies purely on the depictions of violence themselvesto expresshis theory. Certain scenesof violencein YheHarlem Cycle commentimplicitly on how the psychologicaleffects of racism produceabsurd behaviour.Raymond Nelson cites two scenesin 411Shot Up (1960) which depict "the continuedfunction of bodies that have lost their essentialhumanity, their essentialconsciousness. Tley am grim parodiesof the 'mindless' life. "16In the first scene,a motorcyclistis decapitatedby a speedingtruck, but continuesriding until the motorcyclecrashes, spewing blood from his headlesstorso. 17 In the second,a gangsteris stabbedthrough the headwith a large hunting knife, rendering him deaf and blind but not unconscious.He stumbleson down the street,mistaken for a drunkardby passersby (286-287).Both scenesgraphically demonstrate the separationof consciousnessand body racism inflicts. However,most of the violencedoes not possess this allegoricalquality. Someis motivatedby the pursuit of financial gain, stressinghow the influence of white ideologiesof competitive capitalism produce violence among peoplewith no legal way to realisethis materialisticversion of the AmericanDream. But the possessionof moneyand goodsworth relatively little leadsto extraordinaryacts of brutality. Himes's Harlemitesrepeatedly unleash fearsome violence uponeach other. out of all proportion with the provocation or apparentmotive. Himes relics on this gap betweenthe apparentmotive and the level of violence to exposethe impact of racist oppressionon black minds, suggestingthe extent of the anger which can rind no other form of expression.But adoptinga strategyof implication ratherthan clearly explaining this shocking brutality also opens a space for interpretationsbased on dcmonising stereotypesof black violence.Thus Michael Denningargues that the early I larlcm novels approach"a sort of violent minstrel show", indicatingthat African Americansare violent "beyond 'normal,' that is, white, motivation."18 I-limes'sanxiety about the problemsinherent within his representationsof black violence is visible as early as the secondnovel in the series, Me Real Cool Killers

'6 R. Nelson, "Domestic Harlem: The Detective Fiction of Chester I fimes7, *Xiida Quxierly Review, 48: 2 (1972), 260-276, p. 272. 17 C. Himes, AIIShol Up, Me Harlem CXIe, Vol. 2, pp. 242-244. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. I Nt Denning,"Topographies of Violence:Chester Ifinies's HarlemDomestic Novel37,7he Oftical Responseto ChesterHimes, C. L. P. Silet (Westport:Greenwood Press, 1999X p. 164. 187

(1959).Himes describesthe newspapersgoing "hog wild" for the story of a white man gunned down by Harlem gangsters:"The copywriters used a book of adjectives to describethe bizarre aspectof the three-ringHarlem murder" (317-318).Ibis adjectival excessis visible in the sensationalheadlines Himes quotes:

POLICE PUT BEAT ON REAL COOL MOSLEMS DEATH IS THE KISS OFF FOR THRILL KILL HARLEM MANIAC RUNS AMUCK

But alreadythe story was a thing of the past,as deadas the four main characters. "Kill it orderedthe city editor of an afternoonpaper. "Someone else has alreadybeen murdered somewhere else" (318).

This scenefunctions primarily to critique white America's consumptionof media images of ghettoviolence as thrilling entertainmentwithout consideringtheir responsibilityfor it. But it also suggestsIlimes's anxietiesabout his own sensationalisticrepresentations of black violence.He fears readerswill merely obtain a transitorythrill from thesenovels, without consideringthe origins of the continualviolence Later novelsreveal this anxietymore clearly. In Cotton Comesto Harlem (1965), a fight occursbetween two attractiveyoung black women,in a sceneinitially rcndcrcdin a tone of comedyand pnirience.As the womenfijghtý scratching and biting, the man they are fighting over strugglesineffectually to separatethcM succeedingonly in removing their scantyattire. Then, suddenly,one woman grabsa gun from the man's hand, and shootsher antagonistdead. 19 The abruptchange in the seriousnessof the violencemay be interpretedas part of the shocktactics Gary Storhoff claims structuresall I limcs's scenes of violence.But it also implies Himcs;felt increasinglyambivalent about his useof black violence, an impressionunderscored by the tendencyof the later novels to explain directly how white racist oppressionproduces the extraordinaryviolence of I larlem. In The Heat's On (1961) Himes describesin graphicdetail how the overcrowded,stiflingly hot, noisy and noisomeHarlem environmentproduces a wave of violent petty crime on a

19C. I-limes,Cotton Comesto Harlem, 7heHarlem CKIe, Vol. 3. pp. 91-92. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 188

20 midsummer night. In Colton Comes to Harlem, he becomeseven more explicit Previously he has only used Ed and Digger's comments about the violence they investigateto reaffirm its absurdityand the absenceof rationalmotives behind it but here they begin to make political statementsabout the causes.At one point Lieutenant Andersonreads out a litany of violent crimesfrom his report sheetfor the day, for which the perpetratorsoffered only ludicrously inadequatemotives (14-15). Grave Digger explainsthe causes:

We've got the highest crime rate on earth among the colored people in Ilar1cm. And there ain't but three things to do about it: Make the criminals pay for it - you don't want to do that; pay the people enough to live decently - you ain't going to do that; so all that's left is to let 'cm, eat one another up (14).

This exemplifieswhat one critic calls the "awkward sermons"Ed and Digger deliver on race in the later novels.21 The awkwardnessexposes how Mines is struggling to make political points about black violence within a detective structure. It also exposesthe immense diffliculty of using Ed and Digger as politically radical figures, a difficulty which stemslargely from the problematicrole of their violencein thesenovels. By choosingto make his detectiveheroes police officers, Ilimcs makes it very difficult to depict their violence functioning in ways which do not reinforce the very forms of racist oppressionthese novels seek to exposeand critique. Ilimes appearsto be deeply ambivalentabout the problematicstatus of his detectivesthroughout the series. Some scenesshow Ed and Digger as heroic figures, who are genuinelyconcerned with the welfare of their community. Wendy Walters claims that Ed and Digger use their violence to protect the Harlcm.community from the less discriminating,less accurately targetedbrutality of white officers. Sheargues cogently in the context of 7he Real Cool Killers, where the murder of a white man seems about to provoke a massive, indiscriminatelybrutal police response.Only the interventionof Ed and Diggcr, using 22 extremebut carefully targetedviolence, prevents this by unmaskingthe true criminals.

20C. tEmes, Me Heat's On, 7heIkrIem Cýde, Vol. 2, pp 343-345.Subsequait mrcmam to Ns novel a in parenthesesin the text. 22ppear M. Denning, "Topographies7, p. 166. 22W. W. Walters,"Limited Options:Strategic Maneuvcrings in I rimes'sI larlervi'%African Amffiaw Review,28: 4 (1994),615-630, pp. 619-621. 189

There is compellingtextual evidenceto supportthis interpretationof Ed and Digger, but it is ultimately reliant on a partial and selectiveuse of the novels.Viewing Me Harlem Cycle as a totality revealsthat the view of them as genuineAfrican American heroesis besetby paradoxesand contradictions. The hardboiled detectiveis conventionallya figure of action and violence, in whom Western,patriarchal ideals of masculine will and strength are writ large. He usually relies heavily on violenceto conducthis investigationssuccessfully. I limes does not question the natural, ideal statusof the patriarchal concept of masculinity which underwritesthis image of the hardboileddetective; he tries to portray his detectivesas heroesthrough their fulfilment of this role. But adapting this figure into an African American detective presents obvious problems, given the dcnial of conventional masculineagency and power to black men we havewitnessed throughout this thesis.Ed and Digger neverdemean themselves before white authorityto retain favour, they defend their policing methodspassionately and often criticisc racism even before the highest officials. Nevertheless,it is abundantlyclear that their status as men is thoroughly dependentupon and rigidly circumscribedby white authority. In one novel, Cotton Comesto Harlem, Ed has to show his police badgejust to gain permissionto use the telephone in a white bar (198). Only very rarely can they deploy their apparently enormousmasculine strength to strike againstracism, such as in All Shot Up, when Ed punchesa white policemanto the ground for repeatedlyusing the word "niggcr" (200). More often, their reactionsto racismexpose their actualpowerlessness, such as in Cotton Comesto Harlem, when they are outragedby the scenesof crime, poverty and family disintegrationsurrounding a Harlembar

"All I wish is that I was God for just one mother-raping second," Grave- Digger said, his voice cotton-dry with rage. "I know, " Coff in Ed said. "You'd concrete the facc of the mother-raping earth and turn white folks into hogs." "But I ain't God," Grave Digger said (39).

Their belief that only God could alter the consequencesof racial oppressionconfirms their actual weakness,despite their seemingstrength, in the face of white racism, the severelimitations of their masculinepower. 190

Himes attemptsto compensatefor these severeconstrictions on his detectives' masculinity by exaggeratingtheir physical strength. Ed and Digger possessa much greaterstrength advantage over their adversariesthan sucharchetypal hcrocs of the genre as SamSpade and Philip Marlowe.They can kill with singleblows, strike terror into even the most hardened criminals and inspire a fearful respect in the entire Harlem community; their mere presencecan even prevent riots.23 But in figuring his black detectivesas men in this way, Himes intersectsdemoniscd images of black masculinity, most obviously the trope of the superhumanprimitive we have witnessedas a figure of 24 white anxietyabout black violcnee. Furthermore,Himes's detectivescan only cnactthis violent, dominatingconcept of masculinityby increasingthe oppressionsuffcrcd by the very peopleHimes is portrayingas victims of racism. Ed and Digger can only operateas effective, heroic detectivesin the hardboiled mould, if they identify and isolatecertain groups within Harlem who they havethe power to dcfme and control. They control these groups through uncompromisingviolence, which they justify by demonisingthese people, and insisting this is the only way to maintainorder in Harlem.As StephenMilliken observes,thesejustifications are:

[R]igidly authoritarian, if not totalitarian. [... ] They believe that society's principle problem is a war against 'criminals or hoodlums,' mcmbcrs of a dangeroussubgroup who are easily distinguishablefrom the 'innocent' by their violent trouble makingtendencies. 23

In YheHeat's On, after a drug dealerthey puncheddies, Digger defendstheir methods, asking indignantly:"You think you can havea peacefulcity letting criminals run loose?" (375). In Colton Comesto Harlem, Digger reflectsthat: "'llese coloredhoodlums had no respectfor colored cops unlessyou beat it into them or blew them away" (34). These statementscomes disturbingly close to reproducingthe figuration of the black male as a naturally criminal type we saw critiqued in Native Son. In YheHarlem Cyrie, however,

23 They kill menwith singleblows in TheHeat's On, whena drug dealerdies afler being puncW by Edý and in Pkrn B whenDigger kills a man instantlywith a pistol blow to the head(412). In CkmlanCows to Harlem, their presenceprevents a riot (135-136). 24For example,we sawhow Faulkner'sdepiction of JoeChristmas as possessingthe strengthalmost to decapitateJoanna Burden with a razorsuggested his anxietiesabout black violence. 23 S. Milliken, ChesterHimes. A OilicalAppraisal (Columbia:University of Missouri Press,1976). pp. 236-237. 191

the narrativesactually participatein this process,particularly in the representationof the centralvillains in eachnovel. As we haveseen, Ifimes attemptsto representthe violenceof Mulcm as a product of the terrible pressuresof racism upon the black psyche. But this tactic becomes particularly perilous in the portrayal of the monstrouslyevil and ruthlessly homicidal villains who lie behindthe centralcrime within most of the novels.The lack of explicit explanationfor their behaviourthreatens to reproducethe associationsof blacknesswith violence and evil which are naturalisedby hegemonicwhite ideology. Such characters demonstratethe risks of mappingthe trope of the conventionalhardboiled villain onto an African American context. Himes's use of white master-villainsin later novels in the series suggesthis anxiety about this. Perhapsthe most brutal villain in Yhe Rarlem Qde is the white ringleader of the criminals in 411Shot Up, who is described in terms which cmphasise that primitive, bestial traits of violence arc not limited to black criminals. 71is man looks like the "Missing Link", with a face which is "beetle browcd and brutal. " Even after he has been shot: "He was like a wounded tiger, silent, crippled, but still as 26 dangerousa killer as the jungle ever saw," (308). In Cotton Comesto 11arlem,Himcs uses a white Southernercalled Colonel Calhoun as the central villain. As Raymond Nelson observes,this characteris an unrealisticanachronism. 27 1 limes portrayshim both as a representativeof Southernpolitical and economicpower, forces which contributed so heavily to making racism a central part of American society, yet somehowalso a criminal involved in the Harlem underworld.This demonstrateshow Himcs was straining the detective form to show white racism, rather than dcmonised images of black criminality, asthe real culprit behindthe violenceof Harlem. However, it is not just black criminals, but also more vulnerablesubsections of African American societywho are demonisedin the serviceof nuking Ed and Digger effective hardboiledheroes. Although much of Himcs's writing showshe was painfully aware of the impossibility of a black man achieving normative masculine status in American society, his detectivenovels still tend to dcfinc Ed and Digger's manhood

26Interestingly, Jerry H. Bryant mistakenlyattributes this descriptionto the black politician this criminal's gang hasbeen holding hostage,perhaps illustrating how easilyreaders associate bestial "ts of violcnce with black men.See: 1. H. Bryant, "Boni in aMighty BadLand%-7he MIMI Uxt In Afrian Americarr Folklore widFiction (Bloomington:Indiana University Press,2003), p. 112. 192

through contrastswith inferior others. Homosexualsare representedas homophobic caricatures,lascivious, effeminate creatureswho are invariably involved with crime. They lack the physical or moral strengthto behavein the honourable,"manly" way Ed andDigger exemplify by contrast.Female characters are frequentlyrepresented as femme fatales,possessing a sexualallure which threatensthe stability of the socialorder unlessit is mastered,if not destroyedby men. Some of the narratives are structured by a disturbing misogynist logic which resembles the pattern we detected in Harlem Renaissancenovels such as Home to Harlem. In A Rage in Harlem, a white police lieutenantthinks of Imabellethat: "It's thesehigh yellow bitcheslike her that causethese black boys to commit so many crimes" (145). The opinions of white policemen on African Americansare rarely reliable in TheHarlem Cyvle,yet the novel largcly supports this view. As Manthia Diawara observes,it is his love of Imabelle which causesthe protagonist,Jackson, to get involved with criminals, leading to the mayhemwhich Ed and Digger seekto resolvein this novel.28 Similarly, in 7he Cray Kill, Dulcy provokes the murderoushostility betweenChink Charlieand Johnny Perry. If womenare idcritified as a centralcause of the violencewhich plaguesHarlem, then the brutal treatmentEd and Digger mete out to them is justified. Furthermore,black womenconstitute another group powerless enough for Ed and Digger to dominate with a conventional dcgrcc of masculineagency, an agencywhich eludesthem if they take on white racismas the cause of Harlem's violence. The difficulties inherentto portrayingEd and Digger as heroic African American hardboiled detectivesappear to have made Himes radically ambivalent about his characters,which the diverse range of critical responsesreflects. In contrastto Wendy Walters, critics such as Gary Storhoff claim that Himcs portrays Ed and Digger as villains as part of his strategyof shockingthe readerinto recognisingthe full cffects or racism.29 Some scenesdo imply Ed and Digger arc as much misshapcn,brutaliscd productsof racist culture as the gallery of violent grotesquesthey encounterduring their investigations.Both men have been disfigured by black criminals. In The Heal's On,

27R. Nelson,"Domestic", p. 275. 211M. Diawara,"Noir by Noirs- Towardsa New Realismin Black Cinema7,Shacks qfNkdr, edLby J. Copjec(New York. Verso, 19961p. 266. 29G. P. StorhofL"Aggravating7, pp. 48-50. 193

Himes writes: "Grave Digger's face was full of lumps where felons had hit him from time to time with variousweapons" (345). The scarringcaused by the acid thrown in Ed's face in A Ragein Harlem is often describedin suggestiveterms, such as in All Shot Up:

The acid scarshad beencovered by skin gmfled from his thigh. But the new skin was a shadeor so lighter than his natural face skin and it had beengrafled on in pieces.The resultwas that Coffin Ed's face lookedas thoughit had beenmade up in Hollywood for the role of Frankenstein'smonster (175).

The word "grafted" implies a conceptof raceas a social constructprojected onto subjects by ideologies.30 But like the construction of Frankenstein'smonster, the American constructionof blacknesshas produceda monstrouslydistorted facsimile of a human subject,a suturedpatchwork of violently sunderedfragments. These physical descriptionssuggest racism has fragmentedEd and DigWr's subjectivity, most obviously becauseof their contradictory status as black men and agentsof white oppressionupon the black community.Peter J. Rabinowitz has posited this contradictionas "a partial explanationfor the rageand violencethat charactcrisctheir actions."31 Some of their violenceis renderedas explosiverage resulting from the terrible pressure of seeking justice by working within a system which actually increases oppression.In 7he Heat's On, Ed ties up a woman and superficially slits her throat to make her revealinformation crucial to his investigation.Himes writes: "Ile knew that he had gonebeyond the line; that he had goneoutside of humanrestraint; be knew that what he was doing was unforgivable. But he didn't want any more lies:" (467). At such moments, I-limes appearsto acknowledgehis detectives' violence is opprcssivc and unjustifiable,a symptomof the effects of racism upon the black community,rather than an effective way of bringing order to this community. But Himes never decided wholeheartedly to portray his detectives as an intentional critique of the dysfunctional modes of black manhood the combination of racist oppression and dominating, patriarchal ideals of masculinity produce in America. His final novels still portray a model of individualist, heroic masculinity, not dissimilar to

30Wendy Walters makes a similar point aboutthis word: "Strategic",pp. 625-626. 31P. J. Rabinowit7,"Chandler Comes to flarlem: RacialPolitics in the Thrillers of ChesterI fi=37% 7he Sleuthwid the Scholar,ed. by D. A. Raderand It G. Zettler (Westport:Greenwood Press. 1988), p. 24. 194

the hardboiled ideal, as the African American community's most potent weapon in the fight against racism. In these final two novels the pressures and strains I have traccd through The Harlem Cycle shatter the conventional detective form. Himcs abandons the conventional detective plot structure to make political arguments about racism more forcefully. Blind Man With a Pistol (1969), as Woody Ilaut notes, was the only novel I-Emes completed after "the spate of inner-city rebellions" which occuffed during the 32 sixties. Theseexplosions of real black violence profoundly influencedIlimcs. Ed and Digger lose their heroic status,and their ability to control the violence of IIarlcnL33 Moments of typical brutality towards suspectsare now juxtaposedincongruously with suggestionsof a new political sensitivitytowards policing the ghetto.They rqJectthe idea of apprehendinga Black Moslem suspectby "burst[ing] into the mosquewith force," eventhough "police officialdom" would conniveat their violence,because: "It would be too much like taking advantageof their 'in' with whitey" (360). Yet all their violence throughoutthe serieshas relied on their "'in' with whitey." The ending of this novel completelyabandons the traditional dctcctivc form of plot resolutionwhich is so problematicin an Affican Americancontext. Thc readeris lcft in the middle of escalatingcrime and chaos,which Himes strongly implies is not the responsibilityof a single criminal, black or white, but of the sociopoliticalstructure of American society.None of the three mysterieswhich structurethe plot arc resolved.Ed and Digger are unableto identify any single instigatorof the riots they havebccn ordmd to investigate,they can only offer their white superiorLieutenant Anderson the following informationabout the culprit:

"Some call him lack of respect for law and order, some lack of [ ] Some him ignorance, Me opportunity, ... call some poverty, some rebellion. and Ed look at him with compassion. We're victims. " "Victims of what?" Anderson asked foolishly. "Victims of your skin," Coffin Ed shouted brutally, his own patchwork of black [ ] grafted skin twitching with passion. ... "Ilat's the mother-raper at the bottom of it, " Grave Digger said. "That's what's making these people run rampage on the streets" (342).

32W. Haut, NeonNoir (London:Serpent's Tail, 1999),p. 2 1. 33At one point, they are forcedto retreat,bloody and battered,after struWing unsuccessfullyto quell a riot with just their fists. See:C. I-limes,BfitadMm Witha Pisiol, Me Harlem Qc1e, Vol. 3, pp. 293-294. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 195

This passageviolates the standardmethod of resolvingdetective stories to draw a more direct link betweenblack criminality and white racism. The novel closes not with the restorationof order,but with a scenewhich suggestsblack violencenow possessesan all- engulfing, apocalyptic potential. Himes will no longer permit any possibility white readerswill enjoy this violence as a depoliticised,exciting or comic performance.11c definesthis vignettein the "Preface,"' as an exampleof the "unorganizedviolence" which is a symptomof rage at racism but which he considersfutile and counterproductivefor African Americans(193). This also revealsHimes's new intention to use his novcls to illustrate the forms of organised,revolutionary black violencehe now advocated. Himes takes these strategiesa stage further in his final attempt at a detective novel, Plan B. His failure to complete this novel shows the immense difficulty of combining black militant ideology with the detectiveformat. 34 Here, he concentrateson directly representingthe forms of violencehe believedAfrican Americansshould deploy to combat racism. Ed and Digger are marginalised in this novel, becauseof the impossibility of using agentsof white authority to commit this kind of revolutionary violence. Himes's new militant perspectiveleads him to condemn unequivocallythe charactershe haspreviously depicted as heroes:'-rhcy had worked for the establishment as hatchetmen on their race,had kissed the white man's ass.'45 I Ic stageswhite corporeal vulnerability to black violence with what one critic aptly labels a "cataclysmicglec. "M Previousnovels had representedthe vulnerability to black violenceof individual whites foolish enoughto seekpleasure in Harlem,but hereHimcs implies the entire white power structureis vulnerableto the emergingforms of revolutionaryblack violence.Ile depicts a lone black gunmanhiding in a cathedralmassacring a paradeof policemen.I Ic devotes over two pagesto describingthe resultingcarnage:

'" flimes worked on this novel during the late sixtiesand early seventies,both beforeand after writing BlindMan Witha Pistol. Ilis inability to finish the novel was partly due to a seriesof debilitatingstrokes. SeeMichel Fabreand Robert E Skinner's"Introduction" in TheHarlem Qck, vol. 3. pp. 383400 for a detailedhistory of the developmentof this manuscript. 33C. Mmes, Plan B, 2heHarlem Cýde, vol. 3. p. 527. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin V, enthesesin the text. G. It Muller, Chester,p. 102.In her introductionto 7heHarlem Cwk, Vol. 3, LesleyI limes statesthat writing both Pkn B andBfindMkm Witha Pistol causedfrequent "incredible outbursts of mirth" from Ifirnes. See:pp. xvi-xvii. 196

The two the far [ ] the bullets in their [ I chiefs on side ... caught teeth. ... Bloodstainedteeth flew like insects.[ ] But throughthe air exotic ... the ultimate damagewas that the headswere cut ofl7justabove the bottomjaws, which swung grotesquelyfrom headlessbodies like fountains.[ ] gory ... In a matterof secondsthe streetswere strewn with the carnage. 11cre were squashybits of explodedviscera, stuffed intestincsýlying in the guttcrs like unfinishedsausages before knotting (515-517).

Rather than objectifying the black body, Himes now defamiliarises the fragmentedcomponents of the white body, in another sign of the influence of black militant political ideasupon these last novels.He emphasises;the vulnerabilityof eventhe most powerful white men to the kind of grotesque,absurd objectification he has previouslyshown African Americansinflicting on eachother. Clearly, this reversalof his previousstrategy is intendedto makesuch scenes frightening rather than entertainingfor white readers.The didacticismregarding racial politics which marks11imes's later novels reachesnew extremeshere; as Gilbert IL Muller observes,Himes now "editorialize[s] almost like a revolutionarypamphleteer. rX Himes is reducedto telling the readerabout his political views becausehe can no longer find a way to dramatisethem within the detectiveform. But, to quote StephenSoitos, "his radical ideas [... ] seemextreme and romanticizedwhen viewed throughhis own words."38 Through the consequencesof this massacre,11imes suggests rather fancifully that such violence can bring down the internationalcapitalist systemwhich he blamesfor maintainingraCiSM. 39 Like John A. Williams, 11imescannot devise a realistic way to representblack violence cnding the hegemonyof racismin Americansociety. Clearly, then, Yhe Harlem Cycle exposessevere difficulties with using the hardboileddetective format for African Americanauthors. The ultimate disintcgrationof the detectiveform in thesenovels has led subsequentAfrican Americandctectivc writers to adaptthis format in different ways.Probably the most commerciallysuccessful author

37G. It Muller, Chester,p. I 10. 39S. F. Soitos,Yhe Blues Detective (Amherst: University of MassachusettsPress, 1996). p. 170. 39Himes claimsthis massacreleads the stock marketto crashand prominent capitalists to investtheir moneyin the Communisteast (519). 197

in this task hasbeen Walter Mosley.Mosley hasrepudiated Himes; as a major influcncc.40 However, there are numerouspoints of comparisonbetween their attemptsto createa viable form of African Americandetective fiction, beginningwith the compromisewith commercialdemands which led them into the genre.Mosley hasdescribed the first novel he wrote as "a psychologicalnovel - two poor young basically uneducatedblack men thinking about their fathers."Al But the manuscript was rejected by "fifteen literary agents"for its lack of commercialpotential, so Mosley transferredhis two protagonists into the "mystery genre.42 Mosley denies this concessionto the market involved compromisinghis political or aestheticaims, insteadclaiming that:

In has Easy [ ] The be but a sensethe genre made stronger. ... genre may mystery, [ ]I have tried the underlying questions are moral and ethical, even existential. ... to stay true to my characters while getting them a toehold in the world of publishing. I gave Easy a new suit, but his skin is still blaCL43

Nevertheless,there are signswithin the novels of the tensionsproduced by commercial demandsto denyand demonise black violencein the waystraditionally most popular. The "Easy Rawlins" novels display two major differencesto Ilimcs's version of the detectiveformat. Firstly, Mosley makeshis detectivean unofficial investigatorrather than a policeman like Ed and Digger. Although Easy's investigationsoften involve morally dubious compromises with law enforcement agencies, Mosley avoids representinghis detective committing violence in direct support or a racist power structure.Secondly, Mosley makeshis detectivea first personnarrator who agoniscsover the moral problemsof using violence in pursuit of justice for the ghetto.This contrasts starkly with our exclusionfrom the minds of Ed and Digger, and their tendencyto justify their violence absolutelyas the only way of enforcing the law in the ghetto. Mosley's novels never appearto endorseoppressive policing methodsor black gangsterviolence, which arc alwaysexplicitly questionedby Easy when he becomesinvolved with them.

40IL Maidment, "Walter Mosley", American Comersations (London: I [odder and Stoughton / Open University Press, 1995), p. 71. 41R. Maidment, "Walter", p. 67. 42W. Mosley, "The Black Dick, " OilicalFictions. - 7he Politics of ImagithwismeWriting, ed. by P. Mariani jSeattle: Bay Press, 1991), p. 132. 3 W. Mosley, "Black", p. 133. 198

Before I consider the representationof Easy Rawlins's violence, however, I want to demonstratehow Mosley uses Easy's perspectiveto refigure conventionalhardboiled tropesof the ghetto. Mosley signals his intention to revise conventional hardboiled images of the ghetto from the start of his first novel. As a number of critics have noted, the opening scene of Devil in a Blue Dress signifies upon the start of Chandler's Farewell My Lovely 44 (1942). Mosley depicts a white man entering a black bar from a black perspective, rather than the white perspective Chandler adopted, thus defamiliarising the white man rather than the bar as strange and Other. Using an African American who lives in this community and understandsits inhabitants and its practices intimately as narrator enables Mosley to reveal the ghetto from the inside as a comprehensibly human environment. Unlike Himes, Mosley does not exaggerate the violence of the Watts ghetto where his novels are set. He presents a less dysfunctional version of African American culture in a sympathetic rather than satirical tonc. Opposing critical reactions to this demonstrate the immense difficulty of negotiating a path between denial and dcmonisation. Liam Kennedy praises Mosley for avoiding demonisation, claiming he figures ghetto culture as 64anormative system of behaviour and expression, attitudes and values. He is not interested in romanticising the poverty of Watts, nor in cxoticising the violence which M5 marks the lives of many of Easy's associates. By contrast, Woody Haut accuses Mosley of deployingstrategies I call denial.He claimsMosley confuses"the meanstreets with memorylane. A6 I agreemore with Kennedy;Mosley's use of a historical setting may appearto createan opportunityfor nostalgia,and suggestsa degreeof trepidationabout whether he could accuratelyrepresent a contemporarysituation which profoundly depresseshim without appearingeither dishonestlyoptimistic, and thus denying black violence, or despairingabout the ghetto,and thus demonisingblack violence.47 However, his choice

44See for example:P, Berger,"'The Black Dick': Race,Sexuality, and Discourse in the L A. Novelsof Walter Mosley", African AmericanReview, 31: 2 (1997),281-294, pp. 283-285and L. Kennedy,"Black Noir: Raceand Urban Spacein Walter Mosley's DetectiveFiction7, Crimbacd Proceedings, ed. by P. Messent(London: Pluto Press,1997), pp. 50-51. 45L. Kennedy,"Black Noir", p.5 1. 46W. Haut Neon,pp. 105-106. 47In interviews,Mosley hasclaimed the hopehe perceivedfor African Americansin Los Angeles,while growing up in the fifties and sixties,has disappeared. See: & Maidment.American, pp. 72-73.Despite this 199

of a starting point which coincideswith the beginningsof massblack migm(ion to Los Angeles after World War II, suggestshe believesthis black community can only be accuratelydepicted by showinghow it has evolved into its presentform. His depictions of the poverty and the extremeforms of racist oppressionof the past certainly suggest explanationsfor the violent criminality anddespair of the present. From the start of Devil in a Blue Dress(1990), Mosley seeksto avoid denyingor demonisingthe violenceof the ghetto.Easy's descriptionsof the ghetto environmenthe traversesin pursuit of cluesreveal the normativerole of extralegalviolence in all forms of businessoperation, legitimate or illicit. In Vernie's brothel, the presenceof "fast and vicious" Huey Barnes"caused all businessat Vemie's to run smoothly."43 In Ernest's barbershopEasy notes:

One nice thing about barbersis that they have a dozen straight razorsthat they to keep in [ ] You had be be barbcr, will use order their shop. ... to tough to a becauseyour place was the center of businessfor a certain clement in the [ ] The barbershop like And had community. ... was a social club. any social club to haveorder to run smoothly(117-118).

And indeed, while Easy is there, Ernest has to threatentwo customerswith a razor to preventa fight in his shop.But Mosley avoidspresenting this pervasivevio1cncc as pure entertaimnentor as a consequenceof racially detcrinined black characteristics.Ile suggestsa different explanationthrough references to the rclation of the ghctto to white authority.Later, Easyreflects:

The police didn't care about crime amongNegroes. I mean, some soft-hcarted cops got upsetif a man killed his wife, or did any such harm to a child. But the kind of violenceFrank Greendished out, the businesskind of violence,didn't 8ct anybodyworried (142).

pessimism,he hasrecently written two short story cycleslocated in the contemporaryghctto, featuringthe ex-convict,Socrates Fordow. These stories seek to humanisethe inhabitantsof this environmentmuch like the "Easy Rawlins" novels. 48W. Mosley,Devil in a Blue Dress, Ae WafterMosley Omidbus(London: Picador, 19961 p. I 11. 200

This inconsistentattitude to black crime is emphasisedthroughout the series.In A Little YellowDog (1996), Mouse is simply releasedwithout chargeby the police after a brief, violent interrogationfails to makehim confessto shootingSweet William Doakcs. Mosley's aim, I believe, is not to show that inadequatepolicing leads African Americansto commit more violencebecause they can do so with impunity, but to show that it createsan environmentwhere people have to rely on personalviolence to protect their lives, their families and their businesses.In an interview, he has describedthe Los Angeles ghettoof this era as a place where:"You couldn't dependon the law to protect you, so of courseguns and violencegrew out of the frustration."49 In his novels,Mosley demonstrateshow this createsa volatile culture of honour, where peoplewill maim and kill at the slightestprovocation, and where the strongdominate the weak. Mosley never understatesor sentimentalisesthe harmfulconsequences of this absenceof a reliable legal system for African American society.Early in the first novel, Easy reflects that in his childhood in the ghetto of Houston,Texas, where the police gave even less attention to black-on-blackcrime, "men would kill over a dime wager or a rash word. And it was always the evil onesthat would kill the good or the stupid" (3 1). As the seriesprogresses, this description becomesincreasingly applicable to the Watts ghetto, where violence escalatesas the black populationexpands. Mosley frequentlyjuxtaposes scenes of this violence with descriptionsof the massive,mechanised slaughter Easy witnessed in World War 11.Easy has a particulartendency to recall the horrorsof ConcentrationCamps whcn reflecting on ghettoviolence. After the trouble in Ernest'sbarbershop mentioned above, Easy recallsencountering Concentration Camp survivors (122). This could be interpreted as a natural processof mentalassociation on Easy's parL But I believe it is a deliberate rhetorical strategy,disrupting any complacentinterpretation of violenceas an cxclusivcly or naturallyblack problemby remindingthe readerthat the most cxtrcmc vioicncc of the twentiethcentury was committed by white people. Like Himes, Mosley commentscritically on other cultural representationsof black violence. TItroughoutthe series,he makescriticisms of the mcdia such as "The papershardly ever evenreported a coloredmurder. And when they did it was way in the 201

back pages"(142). Or "A black womangetting killed wasn't photographmaterial for the newspapersin 1956."50 For Mosley, the bardboiled forniat becomes a means of recuperatingand disseminatingto a wide audiencea history of black violence and sufferingwhich is unrecordedby official historical discourseand would otherwisebe lost to American cultural memory.As Julian Murphet observes,"Easy's voice is claimed by an ethic of witnessing."51 But there are also hints of the sameanxiety we saw in Ilimes about whether using this form inevitably involves sensationalisingblack violence and providing whites with superficial entertainment.In A Little Yellow Dog, Easy claims: "You had to kill someonewhite to get any kind of news splashin the sixties. Foreign blacks the however.[ ] To the Americans, made news, ... white press,and many white black peoplewere easierto seeas exotic foreigners."52 This statementsuggests Mosley fears renderingAfirican Americans in a hardboiledframe of referencepciforms the same function. The creationof extraordinary,violent mysteriesand charactersaccording to the conventionsof the genre,exoticises black lives. Mosley offers the readera temporal if not geographicaldistance from this violence,which may make it easierfor white readers to consume these novels as entertainment. Roger A. Berger claims that: "one gets the distinct senseMosley fully recognises that part of his successis attributable to a market strategy that exploits race to sell his 'exotic' detective novelS."53 I will rcturn to the question of Mosley's possible exoticisation of black violence when we considcr Mouse. As I notedabove, the conventionalmorphology of the hardboilcddetective novel cannotbe mappedonto an African Americancontext without risking the endorsementof racist stereotypesabout black criminality. Mosley showshis awarenessof this problem by adoptingan increasinglypoliticised perspectiveon the violent black criminals within his narratives.In his first novel, he mapsthe conventionaltrope of the hardboilcdvillain onto the central black criminal in a similar mannerto Himcs's early detective novels.

49Quoted in: G. H. Muller, "Double Agent: The Los AngelesCrime Cycle of Walter Mosley'%Las AMeles in Fiction: A CollectionofF. &Ws, RevisedEdn., ed. by D. Fine (Alberqurque:University of New Mexico Press,1995), p. 288. " W. Mosley, WkiteButterj7y, 7he WalterMosley Omnibus,p. 43 1. Subsequentreferences to this novrA appearin parenthesesin the text. I Murphet,Literature wadRacein Los Angeles(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 200 1), p. 64. 52W. Mosley,A Little YellowDog, (London:Picador, 1997), pp. 135436. Subsequentmfcrence3 to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 53R. A- Berger,"BlacV, p. 292. 202

Frank Green is a shadowyfigure whose malevolentbrutality is representedwith little biographicalor social context.But by the fifth novel in the series,Mosley has begunto explain the links between such violence and the experienceof racism. Consider his descriptionof the psychologyof the most ruthlessblack gangsterin this novel:

Sallie Monroe was a life-taker, a man who had a good mind and greatstrength of body but legal [ j Sallie hated will and - nowhere to use them. ... white pcople because,on the whole, they didn't respecthis mind. Ile was a buck to them, suitedonly to tote andbreak under the weight of unrelentinglabor. Like most black men,Sallie took out his angeron other Negroes(74-75).

Mosley also adoptsa moreradical strategy to preventthe conventionalhardboiled plot structureproducing racism in his novels.Like Himes, he struggleswith the difficulty of resolving his plots without blaming the violence of the ghetto entirely on black criminals. He often negotiatesthis problem not just by using a white villain, but by creating endings which reveal that white violence has been masqueradingas black throughoutthe novel. Alternatively, rather than bringing white criminals into the ghctto in unlikely plots like someof Himes's novels,Mosley showshow white peoplecan assert control over the ghettofrom externalpositions. He exposesconcealed white manipulation as responsiblefor violence which had appearedto be purely a consequenceof black criminality. In Black Betty, white villains, including one policeman, arc ultimately exposedas responsiblefor what appearedto be actsof black-on-blackviolence. In A Red Death (1991) and "ite Butterfly (1992), white men who hold powerful, respectable positionsin societywhich placethem beyondpolice suspiciondeliberately disguise their violence as black. Through the revelationof their guilt, Mosley usesshock tactics in a more subtleand controlledway than Himes. He adaptsan establishedtrope of detective fiction - the climactic revelationof an unexpectedvillain - to shock the readerout of racist assumptionsand expectationsabout violence. In A RedDeath,all the charactersassume that the murderswhich occur during the narrative are being perpetratedby a black man. Even Easy initially deducesthat the culprit is his businessassociate Mofass. Only in the final pagesis the white tax inspector 203

' Agent Lawrenceexposed as the villain. in "ite Butterfly Easy spendsmost of the novel pursuinga black serial killer who he believesmurdered the woman referredto by the title. Only nearthe end doeshe discoverthat the woman's father faked the "MO" of the serial killer to concealhis murderof his daughter(648). Suchplot resolutionsexpose not just the fallacy of white society's tendency to conccptualisc violence as an exclusively black problem, but also how this attitude to violence is bound up with the work blacknessperforms in the constructionof hegemonicwhite sclihood. Thesewhite charactersproject things which disturb their senseof stable, superior sclihood onto disempowered,silenced others and then seek to eliminate them through violence. They mask their attemptsto control their own illicit desiresas a necessarydiscipline, a vital imposition of law andorder on a racial group who thereforehave to be figured as violent, wild and primitive. ConsiderAgent Lawrence's incoherentcfforts to explain, and to admit to himself, why he abusedand finally murderedthe black woman with whom he having "And bitch lived like [ J Filthy. And like was an affair. the a pig. ... she acted I be like 11(415). There is his intolerablehe could, could ever that... a part of psycheso cannot articulateit. Throughviolence, he soughtto destroythe part of himself obsessed with black sexuality and maintain his self-image as an upholder of a rational, white supremacistlegal system. Similarly, in "ite Bullerj7y, prosecutingattorney Vernon Garnett murderedhis daughterin an attemptto destroythe intolerableshame of the fact that she has had a mixed-racebaby (643). This critique of the violent processesthrough which white masculinityis constructedsuggests Mosley regardsmasculine identity as a cultural construction, not a natural essence,and he maintains this attitude in his representationsof black masculinity. In a far more deliberate, self-consciousway than llimcs, Mosley uses the charactcrisationof his detective to interrogate the link between black vioicncc and masculinity. Instead of valorising the hegemonic, patriarchal white concept or masculinity as natural or desirablefor black men, he underminesany idea of a natural, fixed way of being manly, revealingmultiple masculiniticson both sidesof the colour- line. Instead of participating in the ways hegcmonicmasculinc subjectsdcrine their

54 W. Mosley,A RedDealh, 7he WalferMosleyOmnibus, p. 415. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 204

superiority in opposition to inferior others, Mosley lays bare and critiques these processes,particularly through Easy's attitude towards women. The attemptsof black male charactersto fulfil hegemonic,patriarchal concepts of masculinity always end in frustration, and compoundthe damagingimpact of racism on the black male psyche. Easy believes that through violence he can achieve a fixed, authentic masculinity, rccognised by his society, but Mosley shows that masculinity is continually (re)constructcdthrough performance.Violence only offers more temporary masks, in what Julian Murphet calls the continual "adaptive role play," which constitutesEasy's identity in thesenovels. 55 In Devil in a Blue Dress, as Liam Kennedy observes,quoting Kobcna Mercer, Easy's relationship with DeWitt Albright draws attention to "the racial dialectic of projection and internalisationthrough which white and black men have shapedtheir masksof masculinity."56 Both men seemto feet a needto asserttheir masculinestatus, to have the other recogniseit. Easy's desire to prove his masculinity to Albright sccms related to his acuteawareness of the political power which white men monopoliscin his culture to grantor denymasculine status. During their f irst encounter,Easy statcs:

DeWitt Albright mademe a little nervous.I le was a big man and powcrful by the look him. [ ] full But I a big man too. And like most young of ... of violence. was men I neverliked to admit I could be dissuadedby fear. Whetherhe knew it or not, DeWitt Albright had me caughtby my own pride (13).

Meanwhile Albright is the first in a seriesof white malecharacters who sockto subjugatc and master Easy, as if to prove their authentically male power over the excessive, troubling hypervirility they project onto black men. DeWitt repeatedlyquestions Easy about his experiencesof violenceand his war record,asking him if he ever killed a man with his hands.He then tells him "some of us can kill with no more trouble than drinking a glassof bourbon"(21-22).

551 Murphet,Literature, p. 70. He notesthat Easyswitches between "caring father,hardboilod machismo, shuffling 'darky'l acquisitivebourgeois and so on" accordingto his situation. 56L. Kennedy,-Black Noir", p. 56 andK. Mercer and1. Julien, "Race7, p. 99. 205

Throughoutthe series,Easy repeatedlyparticipates in this dialectic. In a society which denies him access to social signifiers of masculine status, Easy relies on recognition of his physical strengthand toughnessfrom white men to confirm his scnsc of equality with them. In Devil in a Blue Dress, he admits he joined the army during World War H "to prove to myself that I was a man" (42). Furthermore,when the non- combatduties assigned to African Americansprovoked sneers from white soldiersabout "Negro soldiers being "cowards," he volunteered for combat (87-88). However, in contrast to 11imes,Mosley does not participatein this attempt to assertthe equality of black masculinity purely through physical strength. Ile repeatedly undermines the perceptionof violenceas essentialto genuinemasculinity in the conventionalhardboiled, macho rhetoric which shapesEasy's narrative voice. Easy initially claims an equality with white men groundedin violencewhen he statesthat: "I was usedto white peopleby 1948.[ ]I killed blue-eyed know dic ... enough young mento they werejust as afraid to as I was" (3). But the degreeof empty bravado in this statementis exposedby Easy's second encounterwith a white man in this novel. Easy is so gripped by fear that he emptieshis mind of everythingin a reflex learntduring his Texaschildhood, making him temporarily unableto talk. He reflects:

I hatedmyself for it, but I also hated white people,and colored peopletoo, for that [ ]I have liked to have the from his making me way. ... would ripped skin face,as I hadonce done to anotherwhite boy (14).

This reveals the real origins of Easy's violent impulses in the psychologically disabling effects of racism. The fear and self-loathing generatedby the white racist gazc produce a desperationin Easy to obliteratethe mark of status,the white skin, which cnabicsthis man to terrify him. Easy's desire for violence is not proof of his masculinequality to this man but of how racism makeshim feel inferior. In an interview, Mosley has said that: "One of the interestingthings about racism is that its not so much how it comes from the outside,you can deal with that, but the way it comes from the inside, that's really the problem."57 Such scenesshow his intention of using the dctcctivc format to investigatethese internal ramifications of racism,which Himeswas unable to articulatc.

57 RL Maidment,Ameriam, p. 72. 206

Unsurprisingly,then, on later occasionsin the serieswhen Easyactually doesuse violence againstwhite men,it fails to securehis senseof his own manhood.At one point in Black Belly, he overpowersa white man, reducinghim to a cringing, crying heap,aftcr this man threatenedhim with a gunand called him "nigger"

But I didn't enjoy it. One of the problemswith so many oppressedpeople is that they don't have the stomachto give what they get. I hurt that simple white man becauseI was scaredof him. If he'd called me boy or nigger one more time I might havestarted gibbering myself 58

By showing Easy reacting in this way, Mosley implicitly rejects the black militant ideology Himes endorsedin his later novels, derived from Fanon, which valoriscs violence as a route to genuinemanhood for oppressedpeoples. Easy's traditional concept of masculinitymakes him want to believein sucha theory, but in practice,he cannotdo so. Subjugatinga white man and obtaining respectfor his physical strength does not securehis senseof manhood,itjust confirmshow racismhas traumatised him. Mosley also holds conventional ideologies of masculinity responsible for producing violence within black gender relations, particularly in While Bullerj7y. Ile refusesto deny the existenceof black male misogynistviolence or to demoniscblack men as naturallyviolent towardswomen. Easy's tendency towards misogynist violence is not figured as a natural male trait, black or white, instead it confirms how the combination of patriarchalideology and racism have warped him psychologically.Ile seeksdominance over the women in his life becausethey are amongthe only peoplehe can dominatein the mannerpatriarchal ideologies have convincedhim is authentically manly. Easy initially believes women should be subservientand sexually willing. In "ite Butterfly, he rapeshis wife, Regina, insisting to himself and the readerthat she enjoys it (451). But unlike most of Himcs's femalecharactcrs, Regina is given a voice to contestEasy's perspective,accusing him of seeingher "the sameway a dog be lookin' after raw meat" (529). As Andrew Pepperstates, her protestcontributes to "redressing previous gender stereotypesand rectifying a situation in which the voices of black

51W. Mosley,Black Befty, (London: Serpent'sTail, 1994ýp. 37. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 207

women havebeen deliberately suppressed or silenced."59 In this way, Mosley succeedsin adaptingconventional, hardboiled forms of violenceto exposethe cffects of racism and recuperatea lost history of black suffering. During the novel, Regina and Easy argue repeatedlyabout the tough, secretiveexterior he maintains.At one point they disagree revealingly aboutthe traumatisedsilence maintained by Easy's adoptiveson, Jesus,who Easy rescued from a child abuser in Devil in a Blue Dress. Easy advocates a conventional,individualist, masculineway for Jesusto copewith his past,saying: "flow you handleyour problemsmeans what kind of man you gonnabe" (447). For Easy,the formation of adult male identity conformsto JonathanRutherford's descriptionof the history of masculinity.It is all aboutovercoming and masteringthe emotionalpart of the self and producingthe body as an instrumentof the will. 60This is how Easy has coped with the traumasof his Texaschildhood. But, as we haveseen, this questfor absoluteself control leads white male subjects to commit violence, especially when it involves projecting unconscionableelements of the self onto racial and sexualothers. By contrast, Regina arguesthey haveto find a way to communicatewith Jesusabout his past:"Jesus is just a little boy. I don't know what kind of trouble he's had,but I do know that it's too much for hirW' (447). She arguesthat a collectively formed, interdependentmodel of identity offers the only way for oppressedpeople to overcometrauma, and to avoid repeatingthese traumas in new actsof violence. As the novel progresses,Easy increasinglyrecognises the validity of Regina's arguments,but cannotalter his own dominating,hostile attitudetowards women. Mosley showsthat this misogynisthostility is not evidenceof masculinestrength but a symptom of the traumaticimpact of Easy's Texaschildhood upon him. Easyoften reflectsthat his mode of masculinity stems from his experienceof family disintegration under the pressuresof racism, which left him to fcnd for himself in a lawless, poverty stricken environment(564-565). Tough, secretive individualism became ingrained in his character as a survival mechanism,so that the thoughtof revealinghimself to Regina"brought out a cold sweat;the kind of sweatyou get when your life is in mortal danger" (563). Ile idea of changeis so threateningto Easythat he respondswith impulsestowards violence:

59 A. Pepper, Contemporary, P. 134. 601 Rutherford, "Who's That Nlanr, Male Order.' L4,wrqýpjngMawufinity, pp. 26-27. 208

"hearing it from my wife mademe want to tear her headoff. I held my temperthough. I knew I deservedher abuse"(53 1). Mosley avoids representingthis misogynistviolence as an exclusivelyblack problembyjuxtaposing it with similar white violence.He embeds this storyline about Easy's marriagewithin a mystery plot concerninga white woman who has been murdered by a white man with an excessiveconcept of patriarchal authority. This emphasisesthat the modesof masculinityMosley blamesfor misogynist violence originatein mainstreamwhite culture. Despite this clear critique of Easy's misogyny, Mosley's novels may appearto reproducethe misogynistlogic regardingthe origins of black violence we witnessedin The Harlem Cycle. A number of female charactersappear whose powerful sexuality disturbs the social order and provokesextreme criminal violence. 71us critics such as Andrew Pepperand Roger A. Berger accuseMosley of essentialisingblack sexuality, invoking "the stereotypeof the black male's voracioussexual appetite" and reducing women to "femme fatales or sexualobjects who exude sexualattraction and desirc."61 Mosley does exploit the prurient entertainmentsuch female characterscan produce, perhaps showing the pressureof commercial demandson these novels, but he also questions and underminesthe idea of African American women as femme fatales. Consider the representationof the titular characterin Black Belly, who Peppercites as typifying Mosley's "duplicitous, aggressivewomen who use their powerful sexuality to ensnare men."62 Certainly, as an awe-struck child and, initially, as an adult, Easy perceivesBetty in theseterms, as the following quotationsdemonstrate:

Betty Men died in her [ ] Many was a great shark of a woman. wake. ... a night yesterday'sboyfriend went up against tonight's man. Betty could draw blood three nights in a week and if it ever botheredher shenever let it show. [... ] Betty had [ ] [a] look hungry Men to ... that was at once and satisfied. communicated Betty with their bodiesand sex. She didn't careabout our words or our hearts(5-6 and220-22 1).

For RogerA. Berger,such passages imply that Betty is "in a senseresponsible" for being rapedby her white boss,Albert Cain: "Her unchainedsexuality in essencedrove him to

61PL A. Berger, "Black", p. 288. 62A. Pepper, Contemporwy, p. 133. 209

it., 963This reading positions Betty as the origin of all the violence in the novel; her sexuality seducesCain into leaving her his fortune, and thus provokes the desperate attempts of members of his family to wrest this inheritance from her. But this interpretationrelies too heavily on Easy's inadequate,distorting perspectiveon women, which Mosley undermines.When the novel endsin the prosecutionof the men who have killed to this told: "Me trial destroyedBetty. [ ] They plotted and steal money,we are ... madeher seemlike a whore who had beguiledAlbert Cain" (277). To interpretBetty as a conventional femme fatale is to accept the hegemonicracist perspectiveof judicial authority. But Mosley has supplied enough information by this stage to construct a different interpretationof Betty. He revealsthat Betty silently submittedto Cain's abuse to protect her brother and children, and that she had no role in Cain's decisionto leave her his fortune. Instead,she has beena pawn in the violent machinationsof men who want to take this moneyfrom her (226-228).In this way, Mosley showsthat in a racist, patriarchal society, black women are more likely to be abusedand exploited by male violence thanto causeand manipulate it throughtheir sexuality. We can seethen, that Mosley critiquesthe idea of violenceas crucial to authentic masculinity in numerousways, exposingviolence as a symptomof the pathologyracism has engenderedin white and black masculinity. Easy's inability to use violence to conflirm his manhoodis closely linked to the ethical dilemmaswhich make any violent act problematic for him. As Liam Kennedy observes,Easy's rcflections on violence "illustrate his ambivalenceabout violent assertionsof masculinity."64 In A RedDeath, he claims he wants to use violence in a clear contestof good and evil: "Like most men, I wanted a war I could go down shooting in. Not this uselessconfusion of blood and innocence"(383). But Mosley will permit him no simple, absolutedivision of the world into good and evil. In contrast to 11imcs,he will not endorsethe demonisationof a portion of the ghettopopulation in termsreminiscent of racist ideologiesregarding black criminality to justify his detective'sviolence. Because no one is dcmoniscdby absolute moral judgementsin these novels, Easy can never use violence with an entirely clear conscience,even to strike back at white people,which he regardsas a weaknessof his

63 R, A. Berger,"Black", pp. 288-289. 64L Kennedy,"Black Noir", p. 56. 210

character.But for Mosley, this ability to feel guilt and reflect self-consciouslymakes Easy superior to the white men who mask their brutality as the upholding of law and order. It enablesMosley to use him to analysethe relationsbetween racism, masculinity and violence,and focus a debateon the ethics of violence.In Black Belly, Easy laments the pervasive presenceof violence in his life, from his Texas childhood to the mechanisedslaughter of World War 11.Now caughtup in anotherviolent situationin Los Angeles, he realisesthat: "I'd always be surroundedby violence and insanity. I saw it [ ) it in feeling everywhere; ... was even me. That of angerwrapped tight under my skin, in my hands"(56). However, althoughMosley makesEasy central to the debateon the origins and the ethics of black violence which pervadesthese novels, he portraysEasy committing little seriousviolence himself Mosley doesnot make the use of violence the sourceof Easy's greatestinvestigative achievements. Instead, as many critics have noted, Easy functions most effectively as a detectivethrough the use of trickster techniquessuch as signifying and mask-wearing.65 Nevertheless, in a violent environment,violence remains essentialfor Easy to complete his investigationssuccessfully and to preservehis life. Most of this violence is committedby his best friend and sidekick Raymond"Mouse" Alexander. It is here that commercialpressures tell most heavily on the Easy Rawlins series. The violent black male is conventionallya phobic, Other figure in American culture, as we haveseen throughout this thesis.Mosley seemsto have felt he could only make Easy a sympatheticcharacter, whose moral dilemmasreaders could identify with, by not making him the agentof most of the violencenecessary to his investigations.As Jerry H. Bryant has noted, Easy constitutesthe "solid ethical centre" of these novels becausehe optsfor the "very bestof middle classvalues, " but his admirable,sympathetic characteris achievedat the cost of portrayinganother character in disturbinglytraditional imagesof demonisation.66 The depictionsof Mouse'sviolence threaten to undermineand deconstructthe attitudetowards black violencedeveloped through the charactcrisationof Easy. In a pattern we have often seenin this thesis, representationsof black violence disrupt and underndnethe main ideologicalthrust of the novels.As in YheConfessions of

65 See for example: R Lock, "Invisible Detection: The Case of Walter Mosley", A&LUS, 26: 1 (2001177- 89. 211

Nat Turner, the creationof a sympathetic,focal black characterseems dependent on the projection of most of his violence onto a characterwho remainspsychologically other to the text. Mouseis not figured in the samephobic tropesof black violenceas Will, but his characterisationdoes reproduce some of the traditional strategiesfor making black violence commerciallyappealing used in hardboiledfiction. This underminesthe attempt to reveal a complexof social and ideologicalmotives behind black violencewhich I have traced in the characterisationof Easy. Mouse threatensto reproduceideas of black violence as natural and instinctive. His othernessdenies the reader any senseof the cultural origins of his violence. Mousemay excite,amuse or horrify, but he is alwayspsychologically other to the text, beyondthe understandingof the narrator,Easy, and thereforeincomprehensible to the reader.This opensa spaceto interpret his violence as essentialand natural, rather than as a product of cultural, social circumstances,particularly when Easy often understandsMouse's violence as a natural, instinctive elementof his bcing.67 A scene from Black Betty exemplifiesthis problem.Easy picks up Mouse after his releasefrom prison, and discovers that already Mouse wants to shoot two men he believes are laughingat him. Easyreflects:

Any other man, eventhe craziestkiller, I could've talked senseto. I could have said that therewere policemen in the station,that they'd throw him back in prison. But not Mouse.He was like an ancientpagan needing to celebrateand anoint his freedomwith blood (58-59).

This reflection reinforces the sense that Mouse exists beyond reason, beyond the "normal" mental functioning which hegcmonic American ideology always associates with whiteness. The final simile is particularly disturbing, linking Mouse's violent irrationality to images of exoticness and primitivism in a manner most African American authors have avoided since the controversies of the Harlem Renaissance.Mosley's own anxieties about this figuration of Mouse are suggestedby the scene he places next. Easy recalls, in a brief, separate section of text, unrelated to the main plot, how Mouse once killed a Texas sheriff he knew was planning to beat him to death by biting through his

66J. H. Bryant,Bom, pp. 152-153. 212

throat (59-60). This may appearto representanother cxamplc of the feral quality of Mouse's violence,but it also displaysa rare emphasison the role of white oppressionin the formation of Mouse's homicidal character.Mosley emphasisesthat Mouse's violent masculinity is not an exotic, racially determinedtrait, but a social product of racist oppression,which hasmade killing essentialto his survival. It might be objectedthat Mouseis seenonly from Easy's perspective.Ile terms in which he is portrayedmay simply reflect Easy'sfascination with violence,from which Mosley maintainsa critical distance,and extendthese novels' investigationof the ethics of black violence.Perhaps Mosley is simply trying to make us understandthe mixture of admirationand dreadwith which African Americanscontemplated "badmcn7 figures, to feel the radicalambivalence Easy experiences towards Mouse:

Raymond Alexander was the most perfect human being a black man could imagine. He was a lover and a killer and one of the best storytellersyou ever heard. He wasn't afraid of white people in general,or the police in particular (237).

Easy admiresMouse, in spite of his moral qualmsabout his violence,because he appears to have achievedfull masculinity,free from the stricturesof racism. Somepassages do seemdesigned to exposeEasy's admirationfor Mouseas reliant on a misconception.In "ite Bufferj7y,Easy declares:

He was the only black man I'd ever known who had never beenchained, in his mind, by the white man.Mouse was brashand wild and free. He might havebeen insane,but any Negro who daredto believein his own freedomin Americahad to be mad(536).

Easy fails to see that Mouse's madness- his psychopathicviolence - is preciselythe form in which white racismhas intrudedon Mouse'smind. lie may not be downtrodden and servile,but his masculinityis still a dysfunctionalrcaction-formation to white racism. The feelings of guilt which alwaysaccompany Easy's idolisation of Mouse suggesthis own underlying awarenessthat this violence is not glorious and manly but a further

67In A RedDeath,Easy states that "killing satisfiedsome nerve he hadsomewhere (405). 213

negativeeffect of racismon the black community.Throughout the series,he is haunted by memoriesof his involvementin Mouse'smurder of his stepfatherfor money. However, there is still a strong sense that Mosley relies on the style and excitement Easy perceives in Mouse's violence to make his novels commercially appealing.Unlike most of the violent black charactersEasy encounters, Mouse's violence is permitted to maintain an exotic, fascinatinglyalien quality. Mosley does not always figure Mouse'sviolence within the contextof an ethical debateabout the role of violence in African American life; sometimes,he seemsto participatein Easy's valorisation of Mouse's violence.Mouse enables Mosley to usea modeof depictingblack violencewith a long pedigreeof commercialsuccess in American literature,which we saw in Carl Van Vechten's depiction of the ScarletCreeper. From his first appearance,Mouse's fancy, exotic clothing is describedin detail. Ile epitomisesnotions of style and cool in the black community, functioning as an expertjoker and storyteller,and this senseof stylishness inevitably extendsonto descriptionsof his highly effective violence. Although Mosley generally rejects the absurd, slapstick tone Himes used to depict violence, Mouse's violence often functionsto createhumour and excitement,almost becomingan element of local colour within the depiction of the ghetto. In the most recent "Easy Rawlins" novel, Bad Boy Brawly,Brown (2002),Mouse is apparentlydeadý and doesnot appearin the narrative present.But Mosley still punctuatesthe text with Easy's recollectionsof Mouse's violence,which havelittle relevanceto the plot, but add excitementand humour to the narrative.68 Mosley's anxietiesabout his depictionof Mouse'sviolence arc revealedat greater length by his continually shifting deploymentsof Mouse's role in Easy's investigations. In the first novel in the series,Easy tells Mouse he feels guilty about his involvementin Mouse's violence.Mouse replies: "Maybe you gonnashow me how a poor man can live without blood" (136). But Easynever can find a way, nor can Mosley show the readera way. Violence remains essential to Easy's survival and his achievementsas an investigator.Easy is motivatedas a detectiveby a desireto avert violenceand promotea

68For example: W. Mosley, BadBoy Brawly Brown, (London: Serpent's Tail, 2002), pp. 82-83. Subsequentreferences to this novel appear in parenthesesin the text. 214

69 fairer form of justice in the ghetto. Easy's separation from white authority makes this easier for Mosley to represent occurring than it was for Himcs, but it also compels Easy to rely on other morally dubious forms of violence. 'Me denouement of the first novel exemplifies the problems and contradictions this creates. Mouse arrives in the nick of time, like a conventionally heroic character, to save Easy's life and ensure that the case is resolved. But he then shoots a man tied to a chair, purely to frighten a woman into giving him money. The focus switches abruptly from the excitement and physical skill of Mouse's violence to a graphic concentration on the suffering of his victim:

He turned [ ] Joppy in Joppy's casually ... and shot the groin. eyes openedwide and he startedhonking like a seal. He rocked back and forth trying to grab his [ ]. After few Mouse levelled his Joppy in wound ... a seconds pistol and shot the head. One moment Joppy had two bulging eyes, then his left eye was just a bloody, raggedhole (177).

BecauseEasy is the narratorof this scene,critics such as Marilyn C. Wesleyargue this abrupt changeof tone is anotherdeliberate reflection of his ambivalenceabout Mouse's violence. Yet there is a senseMosley shareshis protagonist'sagonised ambivalence about the crucial yet morally indefensible role of Mouse's violence in Easy's investigations.Throughout the series,he vacillates betweenpermitting Easy to portray Mouse as an exciting hero and using him to exposethe full horror of ghetto violence, which suggeststhe tensionbetween commercial demands for excitementand his desireto expose black violence as a negative effect of racism. As the series progresses,be repeatedlyseeks ways to divorce Easy's achievementsas a detective from Mouse's violence. In the next novel, Mosley contrives a role for Mouse's violence in the investigationwhich removesthe troubling sensethat Mouse is contributing to suffering and injusticein the ghetto.At the climax ofA RedDeath, Mouse shoots Agent Lawrence, when he is about to shoot Easy (416). The scene seemsexplicitly designedto use Mouse's violence in a way which challengesand strikes back against racism. Agent

69Easy sometimes proudly describeshis role in the ghettoas a sourceof extralegaljustice, suchas in A Red Dealh: "People if had troublesbut to the [ ]I would cometo me they serious couldn't go poh(r- ... settled disputesthat would otherwisehave come to bloodshed.I hada reputationfor fairnessand the strengthof my convictionsamong the poor" (196) 215

Lawrence seeksto negateEasy's human selfbood ideologically as well as physically, calling him "nigger" as he aims his gun. But as he utters this word, Mouse shootshim. Scott McCracken "rhe from Mouse's 41 is It is claims: shot . a momentofjouissance. a kind of ejaculationwhich shattersthe oppressivesocial conventionof racismand allows Easy to be reborn."70 I believe the pleasureMcCracken detects in this moment of violence stems from how Mosley has positioned it in the plot. By making Mouse intervene at the crucial moment in an exciting way, Mosley uses black violence to challengewhite racism while simultaneouslyconforming to the dramaticconventions of detective fiction. However, Mosley appearsto have Tecognisedthat he could not use Mouse's violence as an effective weapon against white racism without denying the political realities of his historical context and the social realities of the way men like Mouse usedviolence. In the next novel, "ite Butterj7y,although Mouse still intervenes at crucial moments, his violence has a more marginal role and receives less direct representation.Then, in Black Betty, the representationof Mouse's violence becomes considerablydarker and more disturbing.Easy is hauntedby memoriesand dreamsof Mouse shootinga man for refusing to honour a twenty-five cent bet, somethingwhich disturbshim more than any act of violence since his involvementin Mouse's killing of his stepfather.In the later part of the novel, when Mouse is releasedfrom prison for this crime, his violence takes the form of a desperatemge for vengeanceagainst whoever informed on him to the police. This violenceis completelydivorced from Easy's cfforts to solve his case;it is figured only as a destructive,chaotic force which cannot assist Easy's efforts to bringjustice to the black community.Ultimately, however,Mosley finds a rathercontrived way to defuseMouse's murderousmge, when Easy persuadeshim the target for his vengeanceis a man who wants to end his suffering from terminal illness (278). Even as he insistson the negativequality of Mouse's violence,Mosley still avoids making Mouse utterly abhorrentto the readerin a way which would compromisethe commercialappeal he givesthese novels. For many critics, the sensethat Easyand Mouse represent different elementsof a single psyche on a symbolic level redeemsMosley from any accusationsof racial

70 S. McCracken,Pulp. - Rea&ngPopularFiction (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 173. 216

stereotypingin his characterisationof Mouse.71 Scott McCrackenclaims Mousedoes not constitute a realistic individual subjectivity. Instead,he and Easy representtogether a range of possible black masculine identities under the pressure of racism. Mouse symbolises a side which Easy repressesbeneath his bourgeois, rational self, an unconsciousso traurnatisedby racism that it wants to strike out with indiscriminate violence.72 There is ample evidenceto support this interpretation,in particular, Easy's frequent claims that at momentsof extremepressure, a voice entershis consciousness advisinghim to commit lethal violence.However, this symbolic elementin the figuration of thesetwo charactersonly increasesthe sensethat Mosley is resortingto strategiesof denial and demonisation.Expressing the full impact of racism upon Easy's psyche through a separatecharacter enables Mosley to maintain Easy's statusas a sympathetic hero. Mosley's own dissatisfactionwith his symbolic usage of his two protagonists becomesevident in the fifth "Easy Rawlins" novel, A Little YellowDog. Here, Mosley attemptsboth to humaniseMouse as a subjectivelyrevealed, fully roundedcharacter, and expressthe dark, violent side of Easy'scharacter through Easy himself In this novel, as Wiliam R. Nashhas observed, Mouse retells a story he first told in A RedDeath to amuse 73 and entertainfriends in a bar in a very different way. The story concernsMouse hitting a man with a bottle who discoveredMouse having sexual relations with his girlfriend (245). In its secondtelling, this story occursin the context of an anguishedattempt by Mouse to explain the feelingsof guilt which he now experiencesabout his violent past. Mosley too is now using this story in a more seriousway, to explore the psychological consequencesof making homicidal violence a way of life, rather thanjust to entertain readers.This suggestshis dissatisfactionwith his previoustactic of Othering the most extremeviolence in thesenovels. However, the changein Mouse is renderedin rather brief, superficial scenes,which still give the readerlittle senseof the workings of his mind. During one of Mouse's confusedattempt to explain his new attitude towards violence, Easy reflects: "I didn't know what he was talking about" (222). TIc same barrier in comprehensionlimits the reader.

71See, for example:R. A. Berger,"Black", p. 150and J. IL Bryant,"Born". pp. 148-149. 72S. McCracken,Pulp, p. 171. 217

Mosley also now attemptsto render the kind of violence which has been the exclusivepreserve of Mousebeing committedby his focal character.This suggestsa new ambition to show how racism producesviolence in the black mind from an internal perspective. But Mosley encountersthe difficulties which confronted most of the previous authors in this thesis who have attempted this task. The most powerful psychologicaleffects of racismare too traumaticfor Easyto articulateconsciously. Easy cannotexplain his new, strongerimpulses towards violence, which usuallytake evenhim by surprise.As a numberof critics havenoted, he and Mouseseem to swaproles during his investigation,and this extendsto the incomprehensiblityof his violence.At one point, as they questiontwo suspects,Easy becomes violent without warning

"We ain't goin' -7' Tony startedsaying. But he didn't finish his sentencebecause I grabbedhim by his throat and pulled him acrossthe table. "Move your assor I'll do it for you," I said in a voice so hoarseand deep that it surprisedme (226).

Later, Easy is shown knocking on the door of a man he believesto be involved in the crime he is investigating."The next thing I knew my shoulderwas making kindling from the door. I stumbledinto the housestunned by my own violence" (234). The first person narrative perspectivewhich has enabled Mosley to demystify and humanise ghetto violence in so many ways now becomesa limitation- He cannotpenetrate beneath Easy's consciousnessin the mannerof authorssuch as Faulknerand Wright. Insteadýhe can only gesturetowards motives for the changein Easythrough the structureof the plot. In this novel, Easyis working in a regular,full-timejob, in a hierarchydominated by white men, for the first time sincethe beginningof Devil in a Blue Dress.Easy's new, more powerful impulses towards violence seem to stem from the psychologically lacerating experienceof the white racist gaze. Every day involves numerous pctty incidents of humiliation and an imposed sense of inferiority. Easy has previously deployedhis double-consciousnessto his own advantageas a detective.It enableshim to

73W. K Nash,"'Maybe I Killed My Own Blood': Dopplegangersand the Deathof DoubloConsciousness in Walter Mosley's A Little YellowDog", Multicultural Detectiveriction, ed. by A. J. Gosselin(1-ondon: GarlandPublishing, 1999), p. 311. 218

decodesign systemson either side of the colour-line,seeing the world from a dual, black and white perspective.But his detectivework has also accustomedhim to receiving a degreeof respectfrom black and white people.Now, he cannottolerate the inferior image of himself which his double-consciousnessenables him to seereflected in the behaviour of white colleagues.At one point, when he is about to encountera patronisinglyracist colleague,he declares:"I found myself hoping he would start a fight with me. It would have given me no end of pleasureto inflict pain on someonewho was trying to hurt me" (199). This suggestionof the kind of sadismwhich has been the exclusivepreserve of Mouse suggestsviolence is the only releasefor the traumatic pressurecreated by the racist gaze. These motives are of coursenot dissimilar to those we traced in Easy's previous impulses towards violence, which he usually did not act upon. Now these impulses overwhelm the rational, peaceful, moral element of Easy's character.His violence culminatesat the climax of the novel, when he and Sallie Monroe attempt to strangleeach other, which marksa significantdeparture in Mosley's representationof his hero. For the finst time, Easy takes personalresponsibility for the homicidal violence necessary to save his life previously always committed by Mouse, and claims unequivocallyto enjoy this violence.74 But Mosley quickly drawsback from the immense difficulties of portr*ng a black characterso traumatisedby racism he takes pleasure from extremeviolence. Easy soon feels as remorsefulabout killing Monroe as he has previouslyfelt abouthis complicity with Mouse's violence,describing it as a murderhe regrets(264). Furthermore,the most recent "Easy Rawlins" novel, Bad Boy Brawly Brown, reversesthe trend towards increasinglevels of violence previously displayed by the series, and Easy largely becomeshis old self again. Of particular significance is the absenceof any momentduring his investigationwhere, without Mouse'sprotection, Easy would have to kill or be ldlled. Instead,Mosley effects a rather contrived revolution, where Easy can use relatively minor violence to savea man from prison and achievea

74 As we haveseen, in DevilinaBlue Dress,and A RedDealh,Mouse intervenes at the climactic moment to kill the centralvillain of the novel and saveEasy's life. In "ife Butlerj7y,Easy shrinks from killing both a convict who attemptsto stabhim in prisonand VernonGarnett, despite his ragewhen he discovershe killed his daughter(635 and 648). In Black Belly, Easyhas to beata manunconscious who is trying to shoothim, but doesnot kill him (268). Evenwithin A Little YellowDog, Easyrelented and did not kill the first time he experienceda murderousfit of rage(237). 219

kind ofjustice, suggestinghis anxietyabout making his hero a killer (305-306).There are still momentswhere Easy appears to enjoy the violencewhich he hasto commit, working alone, but not in the samedisturbingly sadistic mannerof the previous novel. At one point Easy discoversa white man beatinga black man he needsto question,saying to him: "after I bum your ass, you won't ever forget to pay anybody again7(117).Easy respondsby punchingthe white manto the ground,and then:

I kicked him twice when he wasdown and out. I didn't kick him out of revengeor least [ ] The impact body rage, at mostly those weren't the reasons. ... of those blows him if he [ ] [A]nything would slow up even regainedconsciousness. ... having to do with ropesor fire when it comesto black-whiterelations was bound to setmy teethon edge(117-118).

Here, his violence becomesmore limited, more rationally motivated, and much more closely linked to his fear and hatredof racism.Mosley makesEasy understandhis own violent impulsesmore clearly in this novel, enablinghim to draw an explicit link between theseimpulses and the traumatisingeffects of the racist violencehe witnessedduring his Texaschildhood. The violent extremeracism of Texasprovides more obviousand easily acceptablegrounds for Easy's violent impulsesthan the moresubtle, quotidian, racism of Los Angeles,which appearedto be responsiblein the previousnovel. This eliminatesthe possibility of readersinterpreting Easy as naturally sadistic,but it also diminishesthe seriousnessof the psychologicalimpact of this kind of Northern, urban racism, which Molsey hassought to insist upon throughthe rest of the series. As a numberof critics haveobserved, Easy "darkens his perspectiveas the cycle evolves," and the transition from an epoch of absolute segregationto the dynamic uncertaintiesof the Civil Rights era increaseslevels of interracialhostility. 75 However, in stark contrastto Himes, Mosley never advocatesviolent rebellion as a viable route to racial equality.This may be a consequenceof the different historical contextsin which the two men wrote their novels; the belief that violencecan advancethe causeof racial equality has far less currencyin contemporaryculture than during the Black Power cra when Himes wrote his last novels.In interviewsand essays,Mosley showsconsiderably fewer signs of the bitternessand rage about the impact of racism upon his life than 220

I-limes.Perhaps as a consequenceof this, Mosley doesnot seekto representthe corporeal vulnerability and destructionof white Americanswith the samecompulsive glee which Himes increasingly displayed. Bad Boy Brawly Brown approachesthe cra of black militancy representedin I-limes's final detectivenovels. But the dynamicsof the plot imply a very different attitudeto the role of violencein Civil Rights activism. The chief advocateof black militancy is eventuallyrevealed as a police agent provocateur, and many of his comradesas criminals actingpurely out of greed.Furthermore, when one of the genuine,idealistic Civil Rights campaignersin the novel asks Easy why the police would go to such elaborateIcngths; to discredit her orgmisation, he replies:'ro make it look like you're crazy killer criminals.To havepeople both black and white happywhen you get run down like dogsand thrown into prison for the rest of your lives" (277). This suggestsMosley believesblack violenceis more likely to harm than help the strugglefor racial equality. It also gives an impressionof his increasingsensitivity to the cultural work images of black violence can perform, assisting begemonic strategies or demonisationeven when they were intendedto function very differently. The slowing chronologicalprogress of thesenovels supports this impression.Bad Boy Brawly Brown is set only a year after A Little YellowDog, in contrastto Mosley's previous habit of 76 moving forward an averageof three years in each novel. T'his suggestsMosley's difficulty with confrontingthe Watts riots of 1965,a historical instanceof extremeblack violence, to which Easy's relation would be problematic.If he joined this extremeform of violent resistanceto racism,it may alienatewhite readersympathy. In conclusion,Mosley is unable to completelyresolve the question of how to representextreme black violencein a hardboiledstructure without reproducingelements of denial and demonisation.He obtains a critical perspective on the reactionary constructionsof masculinityand genderpolitics which are conventionalin this gcnrc, in contrastto Flimes.He also transformsthe ethical problemsinherent to representingthe violence of a black detectiveinto a subjectfor debate,rather than a tensionwhich strains the form of his narratives.But the sympatheticcharacterisation of his hcro relics on strategiesof denial, and he still relies partially on the thrilling, sensationalcharacter of

75G. R Muller, "Double7,p. 291. 221

conventionalimages of ghettoviolence to give his novelscommercial appeal. Mosley has so far avoidedshattering the detectiveformat in his novels in the serviceof a politically motivated didacticism.However, his recent retreat from representingthe most extreme forms of violence makeshim more vulnerableto accusationsthat he adoptsa nostalgic and blandly liberal perspective,denying the realitiesof black violence.

76 The recentlypublished collection of short stories,Six FasyPieces (2003). featuring Easy and Mouse, also fails to movebeyond the early sixtiessetting of the last two novels. 222

CEAPTER EIGHT

"SPECIFYING IT, PARTICULARIZING IT, NAILING ITS MEANING DOWN, WAS FUTILE": RACIAL TRAUMA, BLACK VIOLENCE AND LITERARY FORM IN TONI MORRISON'S PAR,4DISE

The representationof black violence has always been a central clementof Toni Morrison's fiction. All the novels in the trilogy completedby Paradise (1997) revolve around acts of extreme violence which the narrative struggles to articulate and comprehend.In each novel, Morrison representsthe experienceof racism as a trauma which is crucial to the aetiology of this violence. In Paradise, she extends and complicatesher attempt to articulate the link betweenracism and black violence in unprecedentedways. Sheattempts to demonstratehow the totality of racism,as ideology and social praxis, traumatisesAfrican Americansas a cultural group, producingeffects which are collective and transgenerational.This is an ambitiousstrategy which produces a narrative of great power and originality on the long-term consequencesof racism. However, it also exacerbatesthe immensedifficulties we have seenarc attendantupon any representationof black violence throughoutthis thesis. This createsa number of anxietiesvisible within the narrative,anxieties first discerniblein the settingof Paradise. It is disappointingthat a novel which concludesa trilogy on black history avoids all considerationof the most common, controversialand widely debated form of black violence in contemporaryAmerican: the violence which plaguesthe ghettosof modem American cities. By focussingon a communitywhich severedits links with America at the start of the Jim Crow era, Morrison ensurescontemporary mcial politics will only enterthe novel indirectly. Morrison may haveshied away from contemporary,realistic forms of violencefor aestheticreasons. Her novels have always shown an acute awarenessof the risks of representingviolence in literary form, and, as we shall see,Paradise displays doubts about the adequacyof languageto representextreme violence. BarbaraJohnson claims that by "choosingto aestheticize"such scenesas "a father's rape of his daughterin Me Bluest Eye" and "the scarson a slave woman's back in Beloved,Morrison makesthe 223

aestheticinextricable from trauma,taboo and violation."' Certainly,Morrison hasalways soughtto deconstructbarriers between the aestheticand the political, insisting that art is always political. But in seeking a literary mode to representviolence, Morrison is ambivalentabout the effectsof aestheticisation.In Beloved,the scarson Sethe'sback are aestheticisedat one moment,when PaulD describesthem as, "the decorativework of an ironsmith too passionatefor display.,2 But, only a few pageslater, he describesher back very differently as,"a revolting clump of scars."3 This changein perceptionillustrates not only Paul D's ambivalencetowards Sethe, but also Morrison's anxietiesabout whether describingviolence in stylised,aesthetic terms detractsfrom its full horror. The narrator ofJa=, expandson this anxiety:

I break lives to prove I can mend them back again. And although the pain is theirs, I it don't I? Of [ ] But [ ]I Feeling bit share course...... am uneasynow. a false. What I wonder, would I be without a few brilliant spots of blood to ponder?4

We should of coursebe wary of identifying this unreliablenarrator too closely with the author. Nevertheless,these reflections are telling in the context of this metafictional novel, wherethe linguistic virtuosity of the narratorfrequently seems to scparateus from the violence and suffering of the characters.As Henry Louis Gates,Jr. notes about the ending: "We will not weep for Dorcas,rather we are fcfl spellboundby the narrator's final aria. *5As we shall seelater, this contributesto making the genderpolitics of J= problematic. HoweverI believethe most importantreasons for Morrison's refusalto represent realistic contemporaryforms of black violence involve anxieties about rcproducing demonised stereotypes.Ile bulk of the narrative in Paradise is preoccupiedwith articulating the link between the brutal massacreof the Convent Women and the traumaticexperiences of racismin the communalhistory of the men who attackthem. To

1B. Johnson,Ae FeministDifference: Literature, Psychoariabais, Race ivid Getxkr (London:I larvard University Press,1998), pp. 86-87. 2 T. Morrison,Beloved (London: Vintage, 1997),p. 17. 3 T. Morrison,Beloved, p. 21. 4 T. Morrison,Jazz (London: Picador, 19931 p. 219. 3 IL L. Gates,Jr., "Ja=", ToniMorrison: Critical PerspectivesPast widPresent, ed. by ILL Gates,Jr. and K. A. Appiah (New York: Ainistad, 1993),p. 54. 224

do this, Morrison relies on recent developmentsin trauma theory, which offer a vocabularyfor articulatingthe cffectsof racismon the black psyche,a vocabularywhose absencewas a problem for earlier authors such as Richard Wright. The psychologist Laura Brown has defined "insidious trauma" as forms "of oppressionthat are not necessarilyovertly violent or threateningto bodily well being at the given moment,but that do violenceto the soul and spirit"6 Accordingto this theory, non-violentexperiences of extreme shame and humiliation can cause identical psychological damage to conventional,violent forms of traumaticexperience. Morrison hasalways taken a similar position in essaysand interviews,arguing that racismas an ideologyconstitutes a trauma, for both racists and victims: "Everybody remembers the first time they were taught part of the human race is Other. That's a trauma. It's as though I told you your left hand is not part of your body.vv7 However,Morrison has neverused this form of traumaas the central motive for such brutal violenceas the massacrein Paradise,and sherisks readersmisunderstanding the connectionbetween these things. Although the violence of previouscharacters such as Cholly Breedlovein YheBluest Eye and Joe Trace in Ja-- was controversial,it was easily linked with thesecharacters' personal experiences of conventional,violent forms of racist trauma.8 By contrast,the killers of the ConventWomen in Paradisehave lived most of their lives in isolation from white racism. Furthermore,the inherited trauma Morrison makes central to their psychology involved no violence, or even any direct insult, and was perpetrated not by white racists but by other African Americans. 'Me complaints of some reviewers that the massacreis inadequately motivated cmphasise the risks of this strategy. Craig Raine claims that "nothing we are told about the murderers the in [ ] This black hole makes outcome any way probable - not even remotely. ... where the motivation should be is the major weakness."9 Similarly, Geoffrey Bent argues that Paradise constitutes the worst example of a problem he detects with all the violence in Morrison's fiction: "the motivation never quite meshes with the mayhem." Ile believes

6 L. Brown, "Not Outsidethe Range:One Feminist Perspective on PsychicTrauma". Truwmw Erplorations in Memory, ed. by C. Caruth(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 107. 7 B. Angelo,"The Pain of Being Black: An Interviewwith Toni Morrisorr, ConwrsatiotisWth Toni Morrison, ed. by D. Taylor-Guthrie(Jackson: University of MississippiPress. 1994), p. 258. 3 Cholly Breedloverapes his daughterPecola. See: T. Morrison, Me BluestFw (London:Chatto and Windus, 1979)pp. 128-129.Joe Trace shoots his girlfriend Dorcas.See: T. Morrison,Ja=7, pp. 192-193 225

the massacreviolates the code of "machismo,"' which would prevent the men killing a weakerfoe in cold blood.10 I think both these interpretationsmisunderstand the effects of the Disallowing upon the killers, but they emphasisedifficulties with representingthese effects Morrison seemsto havebeen acutely aware of while writing the novel. Shegoes to great lengthsto emphasisethe power of the Disallowing's effects on her characters,using numerous imagesand metaphorsof extremeviolence describe its impact. It is describedas having made the Old Fathersblood boil, before becominga cold blooded obsession."" The "shamethreatened to crack opentheir bones",and for their descendants,the experienceis lodged like a "bullet in the brain," or, it is like a "bum whosescar tissue" neverbecomes "numb" (95,109 and 194).This repeatsRichard Wright's strategyof using metaphorsof physical violence to emphasisethe terrible psychologicaleffects of racism, suggesting Morrison's concernsabout whether the trauma theory she uses will be understood. Authorial anxiety about the adequacyof the Disallowing as a motive for the massacre may also explain Morrison's decision to representa very similar event during the community's secondmigration, from Haven to Ruby. The manner of Ruby Morgan's death, after white hospitals refuse to treat her, is perfectly plausible in its historical context, but it appearscarefully designedto recapitulateand emphasisehow racism has affected thesepeople. Ruby dies while a nursetries to find a veterinarianwho will see her, making this anotherobvious moment of dehumanisingshame, like the Disallowin& which shapesthe mindsetof the community(113). It is particularlytraumatic for her twin brothers,Deacon and Steward,who are leading figures;in the massacre,and amongthe most violent andbigoted characters in the novel. I suspect Morrison felt this need to emphasisethe causesof the massacrebecause of anxieties about preventing interpretations of this violence in terms of dcmonised stereotypes. We have seen throughout this thesis that contentious political issuessurround any representation of black violence, and the nineties context in which Paradise was written is no different. As Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham have observed,

9 C. Raine,"Toni Morrison's Para&se, in Defewe TS Flot (London:Picador, 2000). 373-374. 10 of pp. G. Bent, "Less than Divine: Toni Morrison's Para&se", Southem Rewew, 35: 1 (19991145-149, pp. 146-147 226 although it was rejected by many when it was published, the Moynihan Report's "normative premisesand prescriptions have insinuated themselves in contemporaryracial discourse.vý12 The supposedmatriarchal dysfunction within the organisationof African American societyhas become a potent,if often unspokenelement in modemexplanations for black violence. Morrison emphatically rejects such theories, making Ruby an overwhelminglypatriarchal community, a mirror imageof the white Southernsociety her migrants fled from in terms of genderroles. Ruby's official history is dominatedby figures with nameslike "Big Daddy" and "Big Papa," and by two generationsof men known as the "Old Fathers"and the "New Fathers." In the narrativepresent, almost every family in the town is controlledby a powerful father figure, and thesemen also possess hegemonicauthority in the public sphere. This assiduousavoidance of one contemporarystereotype of black violence, however,may leadMorrison to invoke another.Ruby initially appearsto be free from the pressureof racismand closelymodelled on white cultural norms,regarded by hegemonic ideology as the basisof peacefulcivilisation. Readersmay thereforeconclude there is no way of explaining the atrocity committed by its leading male citizens except through demonisedstereotypes of black men as naturallyviolent. The massacreis motivatedby a complexmixture of desireand aggression;some of the killcrs havehad relationshipswith women from the Convent. Representationsof such black violence struggle to escape demonised stereotypesof black male sexuality as pathological. The controversies surrounding African American women's fiction at the time Paradise was published illustrate how such demonisedimages of blacknessretain power in American culture. Black womenauthors have been accused of inadvertentlyrecuperating these stereotypes. The sociologistJonathan Rutherford argues powerful, unflinching representationsof the suffering black male misogyny and violence inflicts upon women can support the denigration of "the black man" as "the unspoken devil of white sexual political discourse." Attempts to exposethe oppressionof black women can be appropriatedby hegemonicideology "to confirm racist stereotypesand the idea that black masculinityis

11T. Morrison,Paradise (London: Vintageý 1998), p. 14. Subsequentreferences to this novel appearin parenthesesin the text. 227

an inferior and defectivecopy of white masculinity."" Ilis is a particular dangerwhen portraying black men committing such appalling violence while imitating the ideology and practicesof white masculinity so closely. Similarly, bell books has criticised such novels for implying that "the most exploitativeand oppressiveforce in the lives of black femalesis black men," thus liberating white societyof "responsibility" for the "painful and brutal impact of racism."" Paradise risks doing this in portraying black men inflicting violenceon black womenin a completelyisolated black community. Morrison has shown her acute awarenessof the difficulties of avoiding racist paradigmsin her critical work, Playing in the Dark. She claims the hegemonyof racist ideology in American culture has enabledthe inscription of black charactersthrough an "[e]conomy of stereotype." Readerswill quickly assumethe import of an image of blackness,she argues, without the writer needingto supply"specificity, accuracy,or even narratively useful description."' 5 Shedescribes the aim of her fiction as the liberation of 16 words from the chains of stereotypedracial associationswhich bind their meaning. Perhapsit is her determinationto achievethis aim in Paradise which leadsMorrison to articulatea particularaetiology for the massacrerather insistently. She carefully occludes any sense that her black male charactersare naturally violent or are exclusively responsiblefor black female suffering. Nevertheless,I believe she is giving black men responsibility for the massacre,but not accordingto the tenetsof demoniseddiscourse. Like Walter Mosley, Morrison representsthe hegemonicideal of masculinity as a discursive construct, not a natural form of identity, which producesviolence when African Americansattempt to fulfil it. She is seekingto exposegeneral problems within American ideals of masculinity, which impact upon African American men with particularforce becauseof the effectsof racism. Morrison's insistentproscription of racist stereotypesin her representationof the causes of the massacreclashes somewhat with her aesthetic philosophy on the

12M. Blount andG. P. Cunningham,RepresentingXick Men (London:Routledge, 1996), p. xi. They give the exampleof a 1993Newsweek article which tracedthe problemsof ghettosociety to the failure of black fathersto fulfil conventionalpatriarchal roles. 13J. Rutherford,"Who's 7bat Man?" Male Order.- UnwrcppingMasculinity, ed. by R. Chapmanand L Rutherford(London: Lawrence and Wishartý1996), p. 65. 14b. hooks,Yearning. - Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (London:Tumaround Press, 19911 p. 72. 3 T. Morrison,PAaj4ng in the Dark (London:Picador, 1993), p. 67. 16T. Morrison,PA*ing, p. xiii. 228

representationof violence, creating a tension between the form and the content of Paradise. The form appearsto enact the position on representingextreme violence Morrison articulated in her Nobel Lecture: "Languagecan never 'pin down' slavery, genocide,war. Nor should it ycarn for the arroganceto be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach towards the ineffable."' 7 Ostensibly,this statementrefers to the inability of languageto expressfully the pain and suffering atrocities inflict, but it also implies that languagecannot "pin down" the meaningof atrocities,it cannotdefinitively explain their causesand consequences.Hcncc Paradise begins with an accountof the massacreof the ConventWomen written in abrupt,staccato sentences which plungethe reader into the midst of this violence, with no explanatory information concerning characterand setting.Here Morrison implies ratherthan explicitly statesthe causesof the massacre.By initially withholding the racial identity of the killers, shetempts the reader into identifying these men as a white lynch mob. They kill calmly and rationally, justifying their violence by describing their victims in terms I have shown to be conventionallypart of the discourseof demonisation,such as: "venom". "detritus" and "satanic" (4 and 7).18 By reversingthe establishedtropes, Morrison makesthe revelation of the killers' blacknessa Jarring experience.She shocks readersinto reconsidering preconceptionsabout race and violence,and thinking abouthow theseAfrican Americans havebecome a mirror imageof the white bigotstheir ancestorssought to escape. Morrison then insertsa vast sectionof retrospectivenarrative, before concluding the novel with a secondrepresentation of the massacre.This structureimplies that all the interveningmaterial will assistthe readerin understandingthis extraordinaryscene when they witness it a secondtime. But Morrison focalisesthis narrative through a diverse range of characters,allowing contestingvoices to offer varied accountsof the events which led to it. The third person narrator used throughout is not omniscient or empowered to provide a definitive account of the causes of the massacre.This fragmentary, polyphonic structure implies that acts of extreme violence are

17T. Morrison, Ae NobelLecture in Literature. 1993(London: Chatto and Windus, 19941p. 21. 18As we sawin ChapterOne, the violenceof white lynch mobsoften was frenziedand sadistic.but the racial ideologyThomas Dixon's novelscontributed to repressedthis beneatha faqadeof ritualisedcalm and control. Ratherthan deployingthe supposedwildness of black violenceas proof of black humanitylike JohnA- Williams, in SonsofDarkness, Sons oftight, Morrison suggeststhat anyonepossessed of a particularpsychology can commit violencein this supposedlywhite way. 229

overdeterminedand cannot be circumscribed within any individual utterance. To determine the truth of the massacreand its meaning, each reader has to participate creatively. This too conforms to Morrison's professedaesthetic philosophy, in an interview sheclaimed:

My writing expects, demandsparticipatory reading, and I think this is what literatureis supposedto do. It's not just telling the story, it's about involving the [ ] (you I book, reader, ... we the readerand the author)come together to makethis to feel this experience.19

A number of critics have contendedthat in readingParadise the readerhas to mediate between competingperspectives, creating their own version of the narrative from the differing accounts.Michael Wood claims that becausethe narrativeis always focalised through the subjectiveperspectives of characterswho haveemotional investments in the 20 town and its history,no singleversion of an eventis entirely reliable. This is true of the opinions voiced on most subjectswe receiveduring the novel. For example,Patricia Best and the ReverendMisner argue about contemporaryblack political movementsand the importance of Africa to African American identity without one view receiving clear authorialendorsement (207-209). However, with regard to the massacre,once one has come to terms with the labyrinthine chronology and the bewildering frequency of changesof perspective,a surprisingly didactic tone becomesevident. Morrison emphaticallyprivileges the views of certaincharacters throughout the multi-voicednarrative, particularly Reverend Misncr, Lone Du Presand Patricia Best. Their perspectivesare not sufficient individually because of the limitations of their knowledge.Yet despitecertain minor discrepancies,their views fit together to form a very consistentexplanatory commentary on the causesof the massacre.Pat Best's attemptto write a history of the communityhelps give someclarity to the confusingand mysteriousaspects of the pastwhich hegcmonicstories repress. But it also enablesMorrison to emphasisethe connectionbetween the Disallowing and the massacreexplicitly, when Pat makesstatements such as: "Everything anybodywanted to

19C. Tate, "Toni Morrison", Conversations With TonlMorrison, P. 164. 20 M. Wood, "Sensations of Loss", Me Aesthetics of Toni Morrison, edLby Nt C. Conncr (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2000), pp. 118-119. 230

know aboutthe citizensof Havenand Ruby lay in the rainificationsof that one rebuff out of many" (189). Similarly, evenwithout Morrison's statementin an interview that Misner is the character "closest to my own sensibility about moral problems," authorial sympathy for his views is evident.21 His status as the only outsider, exempt from the communal traurna of town history, signals his touchstone role, and he is given considerabletextual spacefor reflecting on and explaining the eventsof the narrative. Other charactersare not denied authorial sympathy.Morrison representsthe relation betweenthe terrible pressuresof racismand their psychologicalstate with understanding and compassion.But their views on any subject relatedto the massacreare always too self-serving or too obviously contradictedby eventsto be credible. Their thoughtsand their actionsjust demonstraterather schematically how they havebeen traumatised. Ilis is notable even in the opening descriptionof the massacre.During their searchof the Convent,one of the killers reflectsthat "there wasn't a slack or slovenwoman anywhere in town," and that womenare both "free and protected"in Ruby because"[nlothing for ninety miles aroundthought shewas prey" (11). Not only doesthis passagesatirise this man's patriarchalnotions of female freedomthrough the limited range of activities he imagineswomen in Ruby are free to commit, there is also an obvious and monumental irony in his claiming that womenare not prey in Ruby while attemptingto kill a groupof women. By using the different narrativevoices in this way, Morrison is able to provide a clear accountof the model of masculinity she wants the readerto perceiveas the root causeof the massacre.Prior to their migration, the Old Fatherstypiried the problematic relations African American men have experiencedhistorically to hcgcmonic ideals of masculinity. Their nineteenthcentury society prized autonomy,agency, and power over self, family and environment, as the crucial components of manhood, and of Americannessitself 22As Morrison has shown in Playing in the Dark, "the American as new, white and male' was constitutedby "autonomy,authority, newnessand difference,

21 Z. Jafrrey,"The SalonInterview - Toni Morrison", httpJ/dir.salon. conVbooksftnt/1998/02/cou si 02.int. html(2O December2001) 22See E. AnthonyRotundo, American MwThýa-d. Transfonnations in Mascwfinityfrox the Revolutionto the Modem Fra (New York- HarperCollins,1993), pp. 34, for an explanationof how freedomfrom Europeanhierarchies and socially definedidentities led nineteenthcentury American white men to believe they possesseduntrammeled will power. 231

absolutepower. 2923 Crucial to this conceptof masculineauthority was the subjugationof African Americans;the masculinity of white men was confirmed by superiority to and masteryover racially Other men reducedto objects.This subjugationhelps explain why Orlando Pattersoncharacterises the experienceof slaveryas "social deadL"24Unable to own property,or imposetheir wills on their environmentor eventheir own bodies,slave men were totally unmannedaccording to Americannotions of masculinity.As offlicialsin Reconstructionregimes, the Old Fathers were briefly able to escapethis traumatic objectification and achievehegemonic masculine status, obtaining respectand authority in the public sphere.But the return of white supremacyto the Southstripped them of this status,reducing them to a shamefulimpotence which they repressedfrom consciousness. In defianceof social reality and experience,they maintainedan increasinglyrigid fagadc of masculine pride. They became"stiffer, prouder with each misfortune" (14). 11cy behaved with a "dignified mannee' and "studied speccV other African Americans interpretedas "arrogance"(302). ZechariahMorgan's rejection of his twin brotherTea, for dancing for drunken white men who threatenotherwise to shoot him, exemplifies their denial of their actual, shameful loss of masculine power. As one character eventually recognises,Zechariah did this not merely out of disgust at his brother's behaviour,but becauseseeing his brotherbecame a reminderthat "the shame"produced by suchhumiliating, emasculatingexperiences was also "in himseir (303). For the Old Fathers,the wildernessof the Oklahoma Territory bcyond white authority offered a unique opportunityto escapethe humiliations of racism. But upon migrating there, they suffered a humiliation which threatenedto shattcr their already fragile, embattled masculinity: the Disallowing. This experience inflicted such devastating shame partly because the Old Fathers interpreted being classified as unworthy to enter a town populated by light-skinned African Americans as a dehumanisingjudgement on their dark skin. But Morrison also cmphasiscshow it impactedupon thesemen's masculinity.Consider the reflectionsof StewardMorgan, on

23 T. Morrison,PlqDft, pp. 43-44. 24 0. Patterson,Slavery widSocial Death (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1982). See especially p. 13, wherePatterson explains how "social death"was inflicted by strippingslave men of agencyand honour,by quotingFrederick Douglass's famous statement: "A manwithout force is without the essential dignity of a man.- 232

the inability of his ancestorsto challengetheir exclusion, or even provide food and shelterfor their families:

It was the shameof seeing one's pregnantwife or sister or daughterrefused shelterthat had rockedthem and changedthem for all time. Ile humiliation did more than it threatenedto their bones.[ I Even in 1973, rankle; crack open ... now riding his own land, with free wind blowing Night's mane, the thought of that level of helplessnessmade him want to shootsomebody (95-96).

This passageemphasises that the Disallowing was traumaticbecause it shatteredthe Old Father's sense of masculine control over their situation. It reduced them to an emasculatedhelplessness, unable even to provide the kind of protection for female relatives patriarchal culture deemsan essentialpart of genuine manhood.Steward's reaction to this memoryalso makesclear the traumahas becometransgenerational, and revealsthe powerful desiremen of his generationfeel to externalisethis inheritedshame in violence. I am not arguingParadise representswomen, black or white, as lesssusceptible to traumatic shame.The experiencesof someof the ConventWomen demonstratehow powerfully contemptand humiliation can impact upon women.25 But the specific type of shame the Disallowing engendersis far more damaging to people who aspire to conventionally masculineforms of identity. Philip Weinstein has written that in the nineteenthcentury South, gaining the ability to exert the power of the will over the external world was crucial to the emergenceof white male identity from the sclf-less impotence and confusion of infanCy.21 Tbus an experiencewhich abrogatedthe will, which denied a man any control over his circumstances,could shatter masculine selfhood: "to be essentiallywithout such [will] power" was "to risk the loss of one's identity. ,27 The imagesof violence and bodily disintegrationMorrison usesto describe the effects of the Disallowing confirm that it possessedthis power for the Old Fathers. Facing theseself-shattering effects honestly would have requiredthem to reconsiderthe

25See: I Brooks Bouson,Quiet As It's Kep4 Shame,Trauma aradRace in dmNoveLsof ToWAforrism (Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press,2000), for a readingofPhrafise which considersthe importanceof all forms of shamein this novel. 26 p. Weinstein, What Else But Love?, p. 99. 27 p. Weinstein, H%W,p. 105. 233

most fundamentalelements of their masculineidentity. To avoid this difficult task, they 28 responded with what J. Brooks Bouson calls -a "shame-rage" defence. They aggressivelydenied the shameand self-hatredinduced by this rejection by dcflecting it onto a humiliated and excludedOther, establishing a modeof dealing with shamewhich is handeddown throughthe generations.They repeatedthis trauma,even as they denied its effects, by "Disallowing" the rest of American societyýdemonising it as unworthy of inclusion in their superior community. Zechariah Morgan bolstered his threatened masculinityby assumingthe role of a biblical patriarchwho leadshis people.His visions of an angelicmessenger who leadsthe migrantsto the site of Haven seemlike desperate hallucinationsto counterthe shameof the Disallowing, enabling the people to believe they are divinely chosen(97-98). The Old Fathers continued to react against the traumatic impact of the Disallowing throughtheir constructionof their own town. StewardMorgan explainshow thesemen perceivedthe uncultivatedland on which they establishedHaven:

To the Old Fathersit signalledluxury - an amplitudeof soul and staturethat was freedom borders [ ]. Here freedom [... ] droppings without ... was not the table from the entitled.Here freedomwas a test administeredby the naturalworld that a man had to take for himself every day. And if he passedenough tests long enoughhe wasking (99).

The migrants countered the shameful experience of inflicted impotence by conceptualisingthe town they carvedout of the wildernessas a symbol of their "soul and stature," irrefutable evidence that they possessthe masculine strength of will the Disallowing abrogated.Morrison createsa strongresemblance between this perceptionof their land and the classically American concept of masculinity Philip Weinstein has tracedto the philosophyof JohnLocke. Locke rejectednotions of humanidentity as defined through ancestryand class. Instead,as Weinstein puts it: "Our labor, the activation of our personalresources, the individually [ ] to be thought [ I inalienable goods we gather ... these are of ... as our property, central to our unfettered,self-shaped idcnfity. '49 In Haven, the Old Fathers

29See: I Brooks Bouson,Quiet, pp. 199-200. 29 p. Weinstein,ff'hat, p. 90. 234

believe they are finally free to realisetheir masculineidentity through the productsof their labour, the controlling and shapingof their environment.They believe they no longer needto considerthe hostile white gazeof white Americanculture which refusedto recognisethem as men. Instead,by conqueringnature and shapingit to their will they can constructthemselves as "king[s]." The almost superhumanlevel of effort they put in and the hardshipsthey endureto establisha self-sufficient town illustrate how desperately they need these achievementsto counterthe shameof their past. The townsmenalso counter the shamingracism they perceivedin the Disallowing by inverting the racial hierarchy of American society.They interpret the successof their town as proof of the purity and superiority of their "eight-rock" skin. Just as nineteenthcentury American white men fetishisedpure white blood as crucial to authentic masculinity, these men make their blacknessthe mark of their manhood.They are secretlypleased when other African American towns in Oklahoma, inhabited by lightcr-skinncd people, fail, believing this confirmstheir superiority. Morrison allows no possibility that readerswill interpretthis as a positive process of subjective development.She makes very clear that beneath the townspeople's achievements,the consequencesof the Disallowing persist in hidden but debilitating form, consequencespassed on to every new generation.Narrative featuressuch as the sterility of Steward and Dovey Morgan's marriage, and the "damaged" Fleetwood children are obvioussymbols of a seriousdysfunction within the transmissionof cultural identity. Morrison drawson ideasfrom contemporarytrauma theory to demonstratehow this happensin a slightly schematicway. Traumatheorist Maria Root hasargued that:

The effectsof ] traumacan be passeddown transgcncrationallythrough stories [ Over this type trauma itself in of atrocities ... time, the natureof of manifests one's reactivity to certaintypes of environmentalstimuli, as one carriesnot only one's own direct experiences,but also the unresolvedtraumatic experiencesof thosewho went before.30

30M. Root, "Women of Color andTraumatic Stress in 'DomesticCaptivity': Genderand Raceas D isempoweringS tatuses", Ethnocultural Aspects q)f Postiraumatic Stress Dkwrder: IssueXResearch aal ClinicalApplication%ed. by A. L Marsellaet al (Washington:American Psychological Association, 1996). p. 374. 235

Morrison depictsthe descendantsof the Old Fathersas immersedfrom birth in the stories of community history usedto transformthe shameof the Disallowing into pride. These stories become a personal traumatic experience for every generation, which they compulsively commemorateand repeat.Reverend Misner summarisesthis fixation in very expositoryterms:

Over and over and with the least provocation,they pulled from their stock of tales the folks. [ ] Dangerous stories about old ... confrontations,clever maneuvers. Testimoniesto wit, skill and strength.Tales of luck and outrage.But why were there no storiesto tell of themselves?About their own lives they shut up. Had nothingto say,pass on. As thoughpast heroismwas enoughof a future to live by (161).

Evidently, these stories do not acknowledgeand work through the shame of the Disallowing. Instead, like their forefathers, the modem townsmen compulsively transform "outrage" into evidenceof positive masculinequalities. T11epoverty of their own lived experience,the lack of storiesabout themselves,reveals the specific way in which they are traumatiscd. They are totally self-alienatcd, because they cannot contemplate their own lives, their own selves, in ways which may reveal shame. Morrison clarifies the link betweenthis ossifiedform of identity and violencethrough her descriptionof Deacon'sreaction to the disputeover the Oven inscription.The angerand confusioncaused by the of the young people"swole Deck's neck and, on a weekday,had him blowing out the brainsof quail to keephis own from exploding" (104). Any internal confusionhas to be externaliscdin physicalviolence to avoid unsettlingtheir rigid egos. In modem Ruby, the focus of the townsmen on preservingtheir forefathers' achievementsprevents them having any personalaccomplishments through which to define their masculinity.Instead, they define their identities purely through the wealth and possessionstheir forefathers' achievementsgenerate. The descriptionof Deacon's journey to work in his perfectlypolished sedan exemplifies this:

The sillinessof driving to wherehe could walk in lesstime than it takesto somea cigar was eliminated,in his view, by the weight of the gesture.His car was big he did in it horsepower [ ] lie and whatever was and worthy of commcnt. ... laughedalong with his friends at his vanity becausehe knew their dclight at his 236

weaknesswent hand in hand with their awe: the magical way he (and his twin) accumulatedmoney. His propheticwisdom. His total memory(107).

In Deacon'smind, his car symbolises,indeed almost embodies, all the admirable,manly qualities which his community recognises he possesses.This mode of defining masculinity in Ruby makes inner thoughts and desires irrelevant to malc identity, potentially shameful things which are repressed.Ile men are haunted by an inner emptiness,a senseof loss which Morrison signalsexplicitly throughDovey's reflections her husbandSteward: "Almost [ ] Dovey Morgan her on always, ... when thought about husbandit in he had lost. [ ] Contrary to his (and Ruby's) was terms of what ... all of assessment,the more Stewardacquired, the morevisible his losses"(82). Morrison representsa range of profound social problems resulting from the hegemonyof this conceptof masculinityin Ruby, which push the townspeopletowards various forms of violent conflict that foreshadowthe massacre.Tle "losses" Dovcy refers to include the gradualerosion of all the valuesMorrison depictsas positive which enabledthe original successof this community.Because possessions and social status have becomeso crucial to the formation of masculineidentity, the moderntownspeople are competitiveand suspiciousof eachother, losing the communalbonds which were so crucial to their forefathers'achievements. Consider the disputebetween the Flcctwoods and the Morgans, one of the central events in the narrative present.To achieve true manhood, the men of both families believe they must dominate the town, by monopolisingthe symbolsof wealth and statuswhich now determinemasculine identity. For the Fleetwoods,their debtsand their failure to exert enoughcontrol over their women to prevent Arriette's pregnancyare deeply shameful,unmanly failings. In keeping with their community's -shame-rage"mode of reacting to dishonour, they feel strongly inclined to externalisetheir senseof humiliation in violence.The Morgansarc similarly incapableof acknowledgingthat their nephewK D. has behavedin a shamefulmanner and bears responsibilityfor Arriette's pregnancy,relying on their wealth and political power to preventthem havingto acceptany disgrace.These attitudes bring the families to the vergeof seriousviolence, causing incidents where "JcfTerson Fleetwood pulled a gun on K D. " and where "Menus had to interrupt a pushing match betweenSteward and Arnold" (154). 237

Through such incidents, Morrison implies that instituting patriarchy will only exacerbatethe dysfunctionswhich, accordingto Moynihan Report orthodoxy, produce violence within African American society. Men who feel insecure in their grasp on hegemonic forms of masculinitywill turn quickly to violence to confirm their possession of the forms of strengthand will powercentral to this identity. Becausethe men of Ruby have not beenable to escapethe shaming,racist gazewhich deniesblack manhood,they use violence to compensatefor repressedinsecurities. Although they repudiate the American governmentas far as possiblein every other respcctýthe townsmenarc proud of the uniforms and medalsawarded to them for military service. Like Molscy's Easy Rawlins, they believe thesethings provide recognition of their masculinity from white society, which they still secretlydesire. Steward Morgan has his honourabledischarge papersframed in his house(88). Jeff Fleetwoodhas a tendencyto criticise "K D., who had never servedin the military" (156). According to Ruby's criteria, this is reasonin itself for regardingK D. as an inferior man. Violencebecomes the basicway of proving you possessmasculine will power over your environment.Morrison showsthis method of enacting masculinity can easily turn to indiscriminate,desperate violence when the will is frustrated.Thus Jeff Fleetwoodresponds to the shameof his "damaged"children by wanting "to kill somebody.Since he couldn't kill the Veteran'sAdministration, others might just have to do" (58). Once again, Morrison providesan explicit portent of how this model of masculinityleads to the massacre. The men of Ruby will permit no questioningor revision of their conceptof male identity, to avoid considerationof the traumatic shamerepressed beneath their rigid, idealised self-images.Men who transgressthe narrow limits of this monolithic form of masculinity are either banishedor forced to return to community norms. For example, Menus Harperis forcedto give up the mixed-race"prostitute" he falls in love with during military serviceoutside Ruby. Youngergenerations are forcedto acceptthe transmission of a fixed form of masculineidentity from father to son without revision.Morrison makes clear black manhoodis not monolithic and ahistorical through stories which highlight how the values and practicesof the townsmenhave becomediametrically opposedto those of their ancestors.The Old Fathersbrought along outcaststhey discoveredduring their migration, but their descendantsexclude the vulnerable. The story of Elder 238

Morgan's defenceof a socially stigmatisedwoman againstmale abusecontrasts sharply with how his youngerbrothers attack such women (95). The dominant men of modem Ruby can only masksuch radical discontinuitiesand contradictions by insistentlyreading back their own conceptof masculinityonto town history, and silencing dissenterswith threatsof violence.Consider the threatSteward Morgan uses to settlethe disputeover the Oven inscription: "If you, any of you, ignore, change,take away, or add to the word in the mouth of that oven, I will blow your head off just like you was a hood eye snake" (87). It is through the townsmen'streatment of women that Morrison representsmost powerfully and explicitly how white patriarchal modes of masculinity cause black violence. The idea learnt from white American culture that manhoodinvolves mastery over an inferior Other leads the men of Ruby to seek total dominanceover the only people more disempowcrcdthan themselves:the women of their community. Female independenceis intolerable for these men, becausewomen constitute the territory on which they enactand confirm their masculineauthority. At the meetingabout K D. and Arriette, Arnold Fleetwoodis infuriatedby the Morgan's veiled insultsabout his financial and family problems, which compromisehis masculinestatus in this community. lie respondsto Steward'ssuggestion that Arriette may decideher own futurc, by blustering: "I'm her father.I'll arrangeher mind" (61). Womenliving undermale control are denied any subjectiveindependence. At her wedding,Amette reflects that her fiancd, K D., is knew her body "all she knew about her self - which is to say everything she of was connectedto him. Exceptfor Billie Delia, no-onehad told her therewas any other way to think of herself"(148). Only Billie Delia a marginal,ostracised figure, beyondthe control of the hegemonicmen, has grown up able to conceptualiseher self outside subordinate relations to men. The men of Ruby also seek total control over women becausethcir fetishisationof racial purity leadsthem to value women primarily as producersof new generationsof "eight-rock" men. This leads them to seek total control over female sexuality. As Pat observes,"everything that worries them must come from women" (217). Such attitudesto women make it inevitable that the Convent women, who exist beyond the townsmen'scontrol on the margins of their community, will becomethe 239

target of the violencebubbling below the surfaceof Ruby society.The autonomyof the Convent community undermines the townsmen's sense of manhood. Because the Convent Womenlack any public voice or power to determinetheir image in Ruby, they are easily moulded into a scapegoatfor town problemsthe men cannot understandor control:

Outragesthat had beenaccumulating all along took shapeas evidence.A mother was knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyeddaughter. Four damagedinfants were born in one family. Daughtersrefused to get out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honeymoons.Two brothersshot eachother on New Year's Day. Trips to Demby for V.D. shotscommon. And what went on at the Oven thesedays was not to be believed. the onething that connectedall thesecatastrophes was in the Convent(11).

The rest of the narrativemakes absolutely clear that most of these"outrages" can only be indirectly connectedto the Convent Women,and that to perceivethem as the causeof any of the problemsrequires grossly distorted logic. As we have seen, most of these problems involve intergenerationaltensions which are created by the model of masculinity and the racist traumasthe dominant men are responsiblefor. But because they cannotface thesetraumas or reconsidertheir conceptof masculinity,the townsmen have to believe they can manage these problems through traditional assertionsof masculinewill power.The massacreis a responseto an intolerablyshameful sense of loss of control over the town and its citizens. Morrison describesthe killers as "fecling so young and good" holding their gunsduring the massacre,because "guns are more than decoration,intimidation or comfort. They are meant" (285). The murderousfinality of gun violence recuperatestheir senseof masculineauthority. As Pat concludes,these men attackedthe Conventnot just becausethey perceivedthe women as "impure," but also (297). Ile because"they could - which was what being an eight rock meantto them" massacreconstitutes a reassertionof the will power which is essentialto their conccptof racially pure, authenticmasculinity. The Conventwomen are also scapegoatedbecause of the relationshipsmany of the killers have had with them. Morrison shows the townsmen's insistenceon total control over women is bound up with a belief in sclkontrol, which is crucial to the 240

hegmonic concept of masculinity they attempt to copy. Jonathan Rutherford has summarisedthe classicmasculine attitude to sexualityand femininity

Flesh, sexuality, emotionality, these become seen as uncontrollable forces and a source [ I We learn to them because they the of anxiety. ... repress are antithesis of what it means to be masculine. It's a repression that We pr314q cct onto others. Our struggle for self-control is acted out as mastery over others.

The men of Ruby aspireto a particularlysevere subjugation of desireand emotion to the rational, moral will, becauseof their continuing desire to prove their masculinity according to the Victorian values of the white society which rejected their ancestors. Their fierce battle for sexual self-control is acted out as control over fcmlc sexuality. The burdenof sexualmorality is projectedentirely onto women,a fact bestdemonstrated by K D. 's refusal to accept any responsibility for Arnette's pregnancy,because he believesshe initiated and wassolely responsible for their sexualactivity (54). During the novel, Deaconrecalls a boyhoodmemory of a group of wcll-dressed, demure women posing for a photograph,which he has fixed in his mind as a feminine ideal: "His remembrancewas pastel-colored and eternal"(110). For him they were purely visual objectsof the male gaze,not mobile, desiring subjectivehuman bcings.They are an almost spiritual vision againstwhich Deaconmeasures all other women.Deacon nee& the women in his life to fulfil this ideal to confirm his own senseof moral perfection.nc other men sharethis need for women to symbolisemoral perfection; one blames the Convent Women for calling "into questionthe value of almost every woman he knew" (8). But rather than affmning male moral purity, the Convent Women outmgc the townsmen by becoming reminders of their lack of total self-control. The men have developed relationshipswith them becauseof illicit dcsircs and traumatic memories which are incompatible with their self-images,yet cannot be entirely masteredand repressed.They convince themselvesthey can eliminate this intolerableinternal shame by killing the women onto whom they project it. DeaconMorgan is deeply ashamedof his adulterousaffair with Connie,a product of desircswhich transgressthe strict racial and moral codes of his community. He projects responsibility for these dcsires onto

31 J. Rutherford,"Who's That Manr, p. 26. 241

Connie, telling himself that she"tried to trap a man, close him up in a cellar room with liquor to enfeeblehim so they could do carrialthings, unnatural things" (279). The men convince themselvesso fully the Convent Women are to blame for personaland communityproblems, that they figure the massacreas a righteous,morally justified act. This explainsMorrison's initially puzzling referencesto the Morgan twins'. possibly the most violent and bigoted men in Ruby, as "innocent."32 This refers to the type of male innocenceMorrison has always condemnedin her novels. As Philip Weinstein has shown, innocencefor Morrison refers not to a state of virtuous isolation from worldly evils, but a male fantasy of pure, intact selfhood, and sovereignwill, untainted by the intrusion of shame.33 This fantasy enablesa denial of how one is inevitably, as a humanbeing, involved and implicated in sin, and bcnce a belief in the absoluterighteousness of one's actions.It hasoflen servedtojustify appallingviolence in Morrison's earlier novels,and it enablesthe killers in Paradiseto justify their actionsas morally necessaryto the survival of their town. They commit this atrocity with the "odor of righteousness," conceiving of the killings in the following terms: "God at their side, the men take aim. For Ruby" (18). In myriad ways, then, the middle sectionof narrativecoaxes the readcrtowards accepting a particular explanationfor the massacre.This need to determine meaning becomes more pronouncedtowards the end of the novel. Many critics have heapcd uncritical praise on Paradise for conforming to contemporarytrends in literary theory regarding linguistic ambiguity and textual openness.Philip Page claims: "Morrison's constructionof her novel values openness,multiplicity and creative interpretation.[... ) Readersare thrown into the midst of a work in continual process,a work with many versionsand endlessinterpretative possibilities. "34 Similarly, Katrinc DalsgW describes Morrison's narrativemode as: "Open-ended,fragmented, and multivoiced,it works in the serviceof collectiveand subjectivememory and againstthe notion of a totalizing mastcr

32 Both Morgan twins are describedas having"wide innocenteyes7 during the first depictionof the massacre,and Stewardis later referredto againas having"innocent eyesr (12 and 156). 33 See:P. Weinstein,What, pp. 130-131. Morrison condemnsthis form of innocencemost forcefully in Tor Baby: "An innocentman is a sin beforeGod. inhumanand thereforeunworthy. No manshould live without absorbingthe sinsof his kind, the foul air of his innocence." T. Morrison, Tar Baby (New York: Penguin Plume, 1982),p. 243. 34 P. Page,"Furrowing All the Brows: Interpretationand the Transcendentin Toni Morrison's Paradw, AfricxiAmeri=ReWew, 35:4 (2001),637-648, p. 641 andp. 648. 242

[ I the intangible narrative, ... story of the massacreemerges as and not susceptibleto one final meaning., 35 But sucheulogies ignore how certainelements of the novel consistently work to close down "endlessinterpretative possibilities" in ways which ultimately do give the massacre"one final meaning." The reader's interpretationof the massacreis ultimately determinedby a one-way transmissionof meaning betweentext and reader which makesthe enormouscomplexity of the narrativestructure seem almost redundant. The ending of the novel contradictsthe explicit warningswithin the text aboutthe futility of attemptsto fix meanings.For example,during the intergenerationaldispute over the inscription on the communalOven, Dovey Morgan decidesthat the inscription shouldbe left in its current ambiguouscondition: "Specifying it, particularizing it, nailing its meaning down was futile. The only nailing needingto be done had alreadytaken place. On the cross" (93). The crucifixion metaphor suggestsmeanings can only be fixed through violence,and, as we have seen,the meaningof the inscription is finally fixed by a violent threat. Yet Morrison doesultimately attemptto nail down the meaningof the massacre,in a processwhich beginsin a scenejust before the secondrepresentation of this atrocity. Lone Du Pres;is permittedto readthe mindsof the killers while they are plotting, explaining clearly to the readerthe motives of eachman. Obviously, thesemen cannot articulate the real reasonsfor their violence,which involve illicit dcsiresand memories repressedfrom consciousness.But Morrison doesnot risk letting the readersdeduce these motives from the action of the narrative. Menus Harper's alcoholism and his painful drying out have been representedduring the narrative.But Lonc still explains cxactly why Menusparticipates: "Getting rid of someunattached women who had wiped up after him, [ ] listened his his him for that he ... to cursesas well as sobsmight convince a while was truly a man unpolluted" (278). Furthermore,the third personnarrator is permitteda rare momentof absoluteauthority here, intervening to correctLone's views. Lonc tells us that Deacon participatesbecause he could not "Put up with what he couldn't control" (278-279).But the narratorthen takesdirect control of narrationto explain how Dcacon's shameabout his affair with Conniemotivates him, and stating-"But she[Loncl could not

33K DalsgArd,"The One All-Black Town Worth the Pain:(African) AmericanExceptionalism, I listotical Narration andthe Critique of Nationhoodin Toni Morrison's Pankfisi", Afriaw Americwt ReWew,35: 2 243

have fathomedhis personalshame or understoodhow important it was to eraseboth the shameand the kind of womanhe believedwas its source"(279). Morrison spellsout how these men are projecting personal shameonto the Convent Women to separatetheir violence definitively from demonisedstereotypes of black masculinity. This processcontinues in the short sectionof the text which succeedsthe second accountof the massacre,where the contradictionsbetween narrative structure and content become most pronounced.Here Morrison becomesvisibly concernednot only with clarifying the causesof the massacre,but also its consequences.Reverend Misner reflects on the massacrein termswhich seemto nail down its meaningand imposeclosure on the apparentlyopen-ended narrative:

Whetherthey be the first or the last, representingthe oldest black families or the [ ] had betrayingit They think they have the newest, ... they endedup all. outfoxed whiteman when in fact they imitate him. They think they are protecting thcir wives and children when in fact they are maiming them, and when the maimed childrenask for help, they look elsewherefor the cause.Bom out of an old hatred, one that beganwhen one kind of black man scornedanother kind, and that kind took the hatredto anotherlevel, their selfishnesshad trashedtwo hundredyears of suffering in a moment of such pomposityand error and callousnessit froze the mind (305-306).

This is far shorterthan Max's trial speech,but like RichardWright, Morrison returnsto a sceneof black violenceshe originally articulatedwith a shocking,traumatic immediacy, anxiously and insistentlyattempting to fix the terms of its interpretation-Not only does this verdict recapitulatethe causesof the massacrein the clearestterms yet, telling us overtly that male behaviourin Ruby mirrors white masculinity,and that the massacreis a consequence of the traumatic effects of prejudice against dark skin, it also unambiguouslycondemns the massacreas destructiveof all the aims and aspirations which led to the foundationof this community.it might be objectedthat this isjust one of multiple versionsof the massacrearticulated in the final pages.Two "official" versions are circulated:one statesthat the men only went to the Conventto persuadethe womento leave, who then disappeared.The other claims five men went to evict the women, followed by four anxiousto preventviolence, and that the womenattacked them, before

(2001), 233-248, p. 238 and 243. 244

fleeing, exceptfor the "old woman" who was killed by a man who "lost his head" (296- 297). But Morrison's direct depictionsof the massacreinvalidate both thesestories, so they do not contribute to textual openness;they do not give the reader hcrrncncutic choice. Morrison's needto condemnthe massacreso clearly and authoritativcly suggests an anxiety that this violence will appear to have positive consequences.The plot dynamicsof Paradisethreaten to recuperatea disturbingparadigm in Morrison's fiction, criticised by Trudier Harris in 1991:"Ultimately, the questionof who hasvalue in Toni Morrison's down [ 1. If novels comes to a seeminglyeasy answer men ... most of the women are to be sacrificedto communityor masculinegrowth, what does that suggest about a feminist perspective in Morrison's work?"36 This pattern is particularly noticeablein Ja=, where the plot structureposits a direct link betweenDorcas's murder and the potential for masculine growth offered by the ending. Dorcas's death conveniently removesher as an obstaclein Joe and Violet's marriage and seemsto provoke characterdevelopment in Joe.37 In Paradise this patternthreatens to rc-cmcrgc, when the disappearanceof the Convent Women after the raid seemsto give Ruby a secondchance, and the experienceof the massacreprecipitates subjective growth in at least one man: DeaconMorgan. The endingthreatens to vindicatethe townsmen'sbelief that the elimination of the ConventWomen was crucial to the future of Ruby. Morrison's anxiety about this readingis noticeablewhen Pat considers,but quickly rejectsthe idea that the raid had positive consequences.Pat then explainsin detail how it has failed to solve the personaland community problems the men projectedonto the ConventWomen (299). The only reliable characterwho does believe "God had given Ruby a second chance' by removingthe bodiesfrom the Convent,Lone, is describedas having become "unhinged" (297-298). Even Deacon's tentative character reformation is heavily counterbalancedby the unrepentantdefiance of the other killcrS. But if Morrison carefully eliminatesthe possibility the massacrehas a positive effect upon its perpetrators,ironically, she almost implies it bcncrIts its victims. TI)c reappearanceof the ConventWomen in the rinal pagesthreatens to detractfrom the sense

36T. Harris,FjcfionandFolklore in theNovels of ToidMmison (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,199 1), pp. 188-189. 245

of seriousnessthe text hasworked so hard to impart to representationsof black violence. In trying to producea degreeof optimismin the potentiallydevastating conclusion of this narrative, Morrison introducesa form of denial into the text. She does not directly deny the existenceof black violenceitself, accordingto the patternI havetraced through most examplesstrategy of denial in this thesis.But by suggestingresolutions to the problem which underestimateits seriousness,she deniesthe seriousnessof the cffects of racism which it reveals.TIlis criticism may appearinattentive to the differencesbetween fiction and representationsof historical reality. Michael Wood suggeststhat the imaginative quality of fiction, its distancefrom direct representationof reality, opens a space to explore political possibilitiesthat "are often cancelledby the intractablereal, " without diminishing the seriousnessand pain of that reality.38 Wood argues that Paradise demonstrates"the ability of fiction to engagewith the very loss it cannot dcny. [... ] Fiction cannotrestore our lossesbut it can get us beyondtheir helplessreenactment. "39 This appearsto be Morrison's aim in her ending, to suggestways of overcomingthe "helpless reenactment"of the cycle of trauma and violence she believes racism has inflicted uponAfrican Americansociety. Although sherejects conventional, exclusionary paradisesas either achievableor desirablein this novel, Morrison still wantedto makea statementabout better forms of (African) American community, where the typcs of oppressiveviolence shedepicts would not occur. In her Nobel Lecture,she spokeof her commitmentto "a view of heavenas life," the kind of heavenwe could find at our feet if we took "the time to understandother languages,other views, other naffativcs.-lo ne fictional modeofParadise is plainly not social realism,and the endingis best understood as an imaginative,symbolic attemptto envisagealternative social formations,a1tcrnativc modes of self-fashioning,to the ones which perpetuatetraumatisation and violence. However,it is not that the resurrectionof the ConventWomen is unrealisticthat createsa senseMorrison is denyingthe seriousnessof black violence.It is the inadequaciesof the healing processleading to thesefinal, symbolicscenes of hopeand redemptionwhich arc problematic.

37 See:T. Morrison,Jazz, particularly pp. 192-193. 39Nj Wood, "Sensations",p. 125. 39M. Wood, "Sensations",p. 125. 40T. Morrison, Nobel, p. 21. 246

Shortly before the massacre,the Convent Women come to terms with the traumatic experienceswhich precipitatedtheir flight to the Convent through a process Morrison calls "loud dreaming." The basic structure of this processand its aims fit logically into the argumentof the novel. Morrison suggeststhe cycle of trauma and violence which has such devastatingeffects on Ruby can only be transcendedby accepting the repressed,shameful Othernesswithin the self Only through coming to terms with traumatic experiencescan people overcomethe compulsion to deny and project shameonto others. However, the depiction of loud dreaming is too brief and lacking in detail for it to be credible as an effective therapeuticprocess. As Patricia Storacenoted in her review of Paradise: "the Convent rituals that heal and free them seem to resolve their overweeningpain too late and too quickly."41 John Duvall has perceptively suggestedthat Morrison's authorial function is representedby two charactersin Paradise: historian and social analystPat and the magical, healing figure Connie. He claims: "Morrison hopesthat her writing performsthe samehealing that the gifts of Consolataenact, but simultaneouslyfears that her writing, like Pat Best's, may only be able to diagnosethe diseaseof American racialized discoursC.,42 This fear is clearly evident in Morrison's depiction of the loud dreaming. The healing occurs predominatelythrough non-linguistic expressive forms suchas art and dancing,reducing the extent to which Morrison has to representthis processdirectly. Even the verbal elementsare representeddiegetically, not mimetically, in contrastto Morrison's previous depictionsof characterscoming to terms with traumas,such as Beloved's extraordinary monologue.43 Morrison writes: "In loud dreaming,monologue is no different from a shriek, " suggesting proper words are hardly used in this process; what is happening is beyond linguistic articulation (264). The process is also heavily reliant on magic. Ile connections with Candombld, an Afro-Brazilian hybrid of Catholicism and African spirit worship, obscure and exoticise the process and seem designed to compensate ror the inadequate, facile nature of the realistic elements. Although apparently magical events have often been used in Morrison's previous novels, they have never bccn rclicd on so heavily to resolve political problems which have proven intractable on a realistic level.

41 P. Storace, "The Scripture of Utopia7, New York Review OfBooks, II June 1998.6"9, p. 69. 42 j. I)U VaIL 7-he2 ljw fifiyng Fictions of ToniAlorrism i (Basingstoke: Pal gra ve, 2000), p. 151. 247

Theseproblems with the representationof the loud dreamingensure that it feels inadequateto the seriousnessof the problems of trauma and violence the novel has articulatedso forcefully and in suchdetail. The final vision of the ConventWomen in an earthly paradisefeels more like a desperateattempt to concealand compensatefor the inadequacies of this novel's attempts to overcome violence than a triumphant transcendenceof this violence. Morrison's needto explain the origins of black violence in precise detail, which I have traced through this chapter,and prevent interpretations which recuperatedemonised stereotypes denies her the spaceto representcredible ways of overcomingthis violence in adequatedetail. Theseproblems make Paradise a suitable place to end this thesis. It exemplifiesthe difficultics with representingblack violence which still plague American literature. Like so many of the novels consideredin this thesis, its attempts to posit solutions to the problems of black violence in America involve a retreatinto denial. This is not to deny the extraordinary changes and developments in the representationof black violence this thesis has traced through twentieth century American literature. There has been a generalmovement away from the propagandist demonisationof Dixon's novels,which reducesblack humanityto white fantasy,towards attemptsto understandthe social and psychologicalcauses of black violence.But racial tensionsat the historical momentof productionoften ]cad authorsto reproducefantasies and anxietiesabout black violence.Even the careful,detailed attempts of modernauthors like Mosley and Morrison to reveal the cultural causes of black violence cannot completely escapedenial and demonisation.Representing black violence remains a controversialand difficult task,and a clear sign of how the presenceof racismpersists in American culture. ne two basic literary strategiesI idcntified in my introduction as governingthe representationof black violencearc still visible in contemporaryfiction.

43See: T. Morrison,Beloved, pp. 210-213. 248

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