An exploration of the Nobel laureate's work and its interrogations of
whiteness Essays by: Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman Deborah Barker John N.
Duvall Betina Entzminger Taylor Hagood Chuck Jackson Peter Lurie Alfred
J. López Jay Watson William Faulkner wrote during a tumultuous period in
southern racial consciousness, between the years of the enactment of Jim
Crow and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the South.
Throughout the writer's career racial paradigms were in flux, and these
shifting notions are reflected in Faulkner's prose. Faulkner's fiction
contains frequent questions about the ways in which white Americans view
themselves with regard to race along with challenges to the racial codes
and standards of the region, and complex portrayals of the interactions
between blacks and whites. Throughout his work Faulkner contests white
identity--its performance by whites and those passing for white, its
role in shaping the South, and its assumption of normative identity in
opposition to nonwhite "Others." This is true even in novels without a
strong visible African American presence, such as As I Lay Dying, The
Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion. Faulkner and Whiteness explores the
ways in which Faulkner's fiction addresses and destabilizes the concept
of whiteness in American culture. Collectively, the essays argue that
whiteness, as part of the Nobel Laureate's consistent querying of racial
dynamics, is a central element. This anthology places Faulkner's
oeuvre--and scholarly views of it--in the contexts of its contemporary
literature and academic trends exploring race and texts. Jay Watson,
Oxford, Mississippi, is professor of English at the University of
Mississippi. He is the author of Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in
Faulkner and the editor of Conversations with Larry Brown (University
Press of Mississippi).
