UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Unsettling Racial Capitalism: Horror in African American and Native American Fiction A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Colton Scott Saylor Committee in charge: Professor Stephanie Batiste, Chair Professor Felice Blake Professor Candace Waid June 2018 The dissertation of Colton Scott Saylor is approved. ____________________________________________ Candace Waid ____________________________________________ Felice Blake ____________________________________________ Stephanie Batiste, Committee Chair May 2018 Unsettling Racial Capitalism: Horror in African American and Native American Fiction Copyright © 2018 by Colton Scott Saylor iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I now understand the gravity due in thanking those without whom intellectual work would not be possible. “Unsettling Racial Capitalism” exists because of the guidance and support of a group of individuals whom I am lucky enough to call my teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. First, to my dissertation committee, Drs. Stephanie Batiste, Felice Blake, and Candace Waid: your collective brilliance and compassion is what gave this project shape. You are all the standard by which I measure myself as a teacher and scholar. Dr. Batiste, I will forever be in debt for your diligence in ensuring that this dissertation reflected my own passions; Dr. Blake, your generosity as a mentor and your own commitment to action beyond the classroom have led me to the most impactful experiences of my career, and for that you have all my gratitude; and Dr. Waid, it is no hyperbole to state that this dissertation would not be without the power and genius that defines your scholarship and your teaching. I will always remember the lessons you have imparted about what it means to advocate for your students and what it takes to reckon with the weight of history. To my past professors, Drs. Roberto Strongman, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Ajuan Mance, and many more: thank you for your lessons and for the thoughtful way each of you approach the task of academic work. Dr. Clyde Woods and Otis Madison, your courses changed my intellectual trajectory in ways I am still uncovering. It is one of my greatest regrets that I could not show you the product of your monumental influence, but even still, this dissertation is a testament to the vast knowledge both you left behind. And to Dr. Kirsten iv Saxton: I cannot express my gratitude for your generosity; what success I have accrued is due to your professional and intellectual advice and your diligence as a mentor and friend. To my colleagues: your encouragement and friendship throughout this process have been greatly appreciated. Special thanks to Tyler Shoemaker, Katie Adkison, Elizabeth Floyd, Dr. Tom Doran, Margaret McMurtrey, Robin Selzler, and Roberto Macias, for lending me your superb minds in support of this project and for always being available to commiserate and celebrate when appropriate. To my friends: thank you for centering me when it was required and for holding my memory when I needed it most. Robb, thank you for every late night phone call and sarcastic voicemail. To my family: every challenge I faced in the completion of this doctorate program was made feasible because of your affection and support. I am in awe of your capacity to love so unselfishly, and I am forever blessed to count you as my inner circle. David and Leslie, thank you for welcoming me to your family and for allowing me to welcome you to mine. Kim, Nicole, Chris, Carlo, and my nieces, Olivia and Elliot, the beauty of your love for each other and for me continues to astound. And to Mom and Dad: every day I discover some new strength or ideal that you have bestowed to me, some incalculable way of engaging with the world that links me to the shared splendor that is both of your hearts and minds. I owe you both everything. And finally, to Kacy: we were miles apart for most of my time writing this dissertation, and yet, there you are in every page. There was not one time I sat before a newly blank white screen when you were not in my mind. In every keystroke, in every margin, in v every space between words, you inspire. My best friend and partner, you have all of my love, now and always. vi VITA OF COLTON SCOTT SAYLOR May 2018 EDUCATION PhD in English expected June 2018 University of California, Santa Barbara MA in English Language and Literatures May 2012 Mills College BA in English, with Honors December 2009 University of California, Santa Barbara Minor in Black Studies TEACHING AND ADVISING EXPERIENCE Literature Instructor Summer 2015 – Summer 2017 Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara Teaching Assistant Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara Fall 2013 – Spring 2016 Department of English, Mills College Fall 2010 – Spring 2012 AWARDS AND HONORS Richard Helgerson Graduate Student Achievement Award Spring 2017 Graduate Humanities Research Fellowship 2017 – 2018 PUBLICATIONS (Selections) “Loosening the Jar: Contemplating Race in David Foster Wallace’s Short Fiction,” Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies, no. 1, vol. 1. Accepted and forthcoming. “Printing Outside the Lines: The Printing Press, Broadside Ballads, and Collapsing Binary Oppositions,” The Making of a Broadside Ballad, ed. Patricia Fumerton, Andrew Griffin, and Carl Stahmer. The EMC Imprint; Santa Barbara. 2016. E-Book. http://press.emcimprint.english.ucsb.edu/the-making-of-a-broadside-ballad/colton- revised RESEARCH AREAS 20th Century American Literature Native American Literature Critical Race Studies Post-Colonial Literature African American Literature Late Capitalism vii ABSTRACT Unsettling Racial Capitalism: Horror in African American and Native American Fiction By Colton Scott Saylor “Unsettling Racial Capitalism: Horror in African American and Native American Fiction” develops a critical analysis of race and late capitalism through the reading of twentieth and twenty-first century African American and Native American literature and culture. I examine ‘horror’ as a hermeneutic through which these artists interpret and deconstruct the terms of order by which power rationalizes issues of race beginning in the late twentieth century. The Black and Native literary traditions hinge on oral narratives and non-Western ontologies that critique contemporary forms of what Cedric Robinson calls “racial capitalism”—a theory of power in which racial ideology and capitalism develop and continue to inform one another. The moments of horror brought to fruition in these texts, from scenes of graphic violence to instances of bodily terror, induce deconstructions of state-informed racial categories used to maintain the fixed stability of hegemonic discourse. At the same time, these ruptures create opportunities for Black and Native epistemologies to re-emerge as principal forms of knowledge. Black and Native artists use horror’s affective foci to unpack what as of yet has gone unlooked by recent scholarship: the subject of color’s experience of racial capitalism. viii Relying on what bell hooks refers to as the “authority of experience,” the chapters unmask the mechanisms of racial capitalism via different experiential modes: time, embodiment, and space. The final chapter builds on the work of the previous three by re-reading violent, radical race narratives through a critical horror framework. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction: Horror Hermeneutics in the New Racial Capitalism ……………………..... 1 II. Horror Historicism: Re-Configuring Dominant Time in Kindred and Bone Game …..... 38 III. Disfiguring Resistance: Venus, Chancers, and Body Horror ………………………...... 97 IV. The Horror Spatial Imaginary: Black and Native Mappings of Racialized Space ....... 150 V. Breaking Down the Door: Black and Red Horror Radicalism ...................................... 207 VI. Conclusion: Thinking Horror ....................................................................................... 264 VII. Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 270 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 ................................................................................................................................ 187 Figure 2 ................................................................................................................................ 188 Figure 3 ................................................................................................................................ 190 Figure 4 ................................................................................................................................ 191 Figure 5 .................................................................................................................................199 Figure 6 ................................................................................................................................ 200 Figure 7 ................................................................................................................................ 203 Figure 8 ................................................................................................................................ 204 Figure 9 ................................................................................................................................ 246 Figure 10 .............................................................................................................................