White Disavowal, Black Enfranchisement, and the Homoerotic in William Faulkner's "Light in August"

The article examines how Faulkner’s Light in August engages with racial identity and white supremacy in the post‑Reconstruction U.S. South. It argues that the novel’s central character, Joe Christmas, represents the instability of racial categories and exposes anxieties in white Southern masculinity. The interplay of racial mixedness (miscegenation) and the homoerotic undertones in Joe’s relationships reveals deep concerns about black empowerment and white identity after slavery. Rather than treating miscegenation only as a metaphor for the entangled history of race, the article suggests that Faulkner uses racial ambiguity to explore the crisis of white masculinity and a pervasive anxiety about black male bodies and desire in Southern culture. Joe Christmas’s body and actions disrupt rigid racial and gender boundaries, showing how black and white identities are mutually constitutive yet contested.

Loại tài liệu:

Article - Bài báo

Tác giả:

Abdur-Rahman, Aliyyah I.

Đề mục:

Literary criticism

Nhà xuất bản:

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Ngày xuất bản:

Fall 2006

Số trang/ tờ:

Định dạng:

pdf

Nguồn gốc:

The Faulkner Journal, Volume 22, Number 1/2, Fall 2006, Pages 176-192,209

Liên kết:

ISSN 0884-2949

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White Disavowal, Black Enfranchisement, and the Homoerotic in William Faulkner's "Light in August"

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