Faulkner and Postmodernism (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series)

221 Pages·2002·0.85 MB·English

by  John N. Duvall

Faulkner and Postmodernism
faulkner and yoknapatawpha
1999
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Faulkner and Postmodernism
faulkner and yoknapatawpha, 1999
edited by
john n. duvall
and
ann j. abadie
UNIVERSITYPRESSOFMISSISSIPPI
JACKSON
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www.upress.state.ms.us
Copyright(cid:1)2002byUniversityPressofMississippi
Allrightsreserved
ManufacturedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 4 3 2 1
(cid:2)(cid:1)
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
FaulknerandYoknapatawphaConference(26th:1999:UniversityofMississippi)
Faulknerandpostmodernism:FaulknerandYoknapatawpha,1999/editedby
JohnN.DuvallandAnnJ.Abadie.
p. cm.
Elevenessaysfromthe1999FaulknerandYoknapatawphaConference,heldatthe
UniversityofMississippi.
ISBN1-57806-459-7(cloth:alk.paper)—ISBN1-57806-460-0(pbk.:alk.paper)
1.Faulkner,William,1897–1962—Criticismandinterpretation—Congresses.
2.Postmodernism(Literature)—UnitedStates—Congresses. 3.Postmodernism
(Literature)—Mississippi—Congresses. 4.YoknapatawphaCounty(Imaginary
place)—Congresses. 5.Mississippi—Inliterature—Congresses.I.Duvall,JohnN.
(JohnNoel),1956– II.Abadie,AnnJ. III.Title.
PS3511.A86Z7832113 1999
813(cid:2).52—dc21 2002000638
BritishLibraryCataloging-in-PublicationDataavailable
..........................9299$$ $$FM 05-10-0210:25:50 PS
Contents
Introduction vii
johnn.duvall
ANoteontheConference xvii
ThePrivationsofPostmodernism:FaulknerasExemplar
(AMeditationinTenParts) 1
ihabhassan
PostmodernIntimations:MusingonInvisibility:William
Faulkner,RichardWright,andRalphEllison 19
philipweinstein
PostmodernYoknapatawpha:WilliamFaulknerasUsablePast 39
johnn.duvall
ModernistDesign,PostmodernistParanoia:ReadingAbsalom,
Absalom!withGravity’sRainbow 57
mollyhite
‘‘I’mthemanhere’’:GoDown,MosesandMasculineIdentity 81
terrelll.tebbetts
RevisingTheSoundandtheFury:Absalom,Absalom!and
Faulkner’sPostmodernTurn 95
doreenfowler
Intertextuality,Transference,andPostmodernisminAbsalom,
Absalom!:TheProductionandReceptionofFaulkner’s
FictionalWorld 109
martinkreiswirth
Postvomiting:PylonandtheFaulknerianSpew 124
josephr.urgo
v
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vi contents
MakeRoomforElvis 143
cheryllester
FaulknerbytheLightofaPaleFire:PostmodernTextual
ScholarshipandFaulknerStudiesattheEndoftheTwentieth
Century 167
philipcohen
MyFaulkner 192
johnbarth
Contributors 196
Index 199
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Introduction
1
Relating William Faulkner to postmodernism is a task complicated by
the plethora of ways that postmodernism has been defined and period-
ized.Thereeffectivelyareinplaythreedistinctversionsofpostmodern-
ism—the philosophical, the cultural, and the aesthetic. And while the
time frame of the latter two can be reconciled to some extent, it does
notsquarewiththatofphilosophicalpostmodernism.Ju¨rgenHabermas’s
philosophical modernity, for example, begins with Descartes’s belief in
the self-sufficiency of reason and continues through Kant and the En-
lightenment; Habermas’s postmodernism beginswith Nietzsche’s attack
onreason.Thereis,therefore,atleastathree-hundred-yeargapbetween
Habermas’smodernityandaestheticmodernism,asituationrenderedall
themorecomplexinasmuchascertainversionsofmodernistaesthetics—
surrealism,Dadaism,mythicintuitionism—wouldfallnecessarilywithin
Habermas’spostmodernism.(ThatJeanFran¸coisLyotardlocatesthebe-
ginning of modernity with Nietzsche shows additionally how easily the
termsofthephilosophicaldebatecancreateconfusion.)
WhenImovedtoPurdueUniversityin1998,Idiscoveredadifferent
issue of definition and periodization—an overlap in the division of the
graduate American literature curriculum in the break between what we
callAmericaIIandAmericaIII.AmericaIIisdefinedastheperiodfrom
theCivilWar to1940.AmericaIII,though,runsfrom1930tothe pres-
ent.Asacolleague explaineditto me,this oddconfigurationreflecteda
compromiseina disputebetweenthemodernist andpostmodernschol-
ars over who would get William Faulkner.1 Despite Faulkner’s usual
identification as a high modernist, our period compromise at Purdue is
notcompletelyidiosyncratic,asIhopetomakeclearinthisintroduction.
Theveryterm‘‘postmodernism,’’however,stillseemstomanyunder-
graduatesanoddterm,onethatstrainscommonsense.Afterall,welive
in the modern world, don’t we, so how can anything be designated as
after the modern? But of course the ‘‘modern’’ in modernism does not
refer to the popular sense but to an aesthetic and a period of literary
history. (That ‘‘modernism’’ is contained in the word ‘‘postmodernism’’
shouldsignalthatthetwotermsarenotunrelated.)Ifmodernismcanbe
defined as the art’s response to the alienating effects of modernization
vii
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viii introduction
and mass culture, then two questions emerge: is there a point at which
alienation ceases to be the dominant affect or emotional felt response
thatpeoplehavetotheircontemporaryexistence,and,ifyes,istherean
aestheticthataddressesthisnewaffect?
Thetimemarkingtheperiodbreakbetweenmodernismandpostmod-
ernism noticeably varies depending on which literary historian one be-
lieves. Some have seen the end of World War II and the advent of the
nuclearageasthedividingline.Otherspointtothecanonizationofhigh
modernisminthelate1950sandearly’60sasthekeyperiodbreak.Here
thethinkingisthatoncethemodernistscanbefoundbetweenthecovers
of the various standard literary anthologies, whatever radical agendas
(whetherformalorpolitical)thatthemodernistsmayhavehadhavebeen
co-optedbythe orderofthings.Stillotherswhowishtolinkcontempo-
raryarttothegrowthofmultinationalcapitalismhavefixedpostmodern-
ism’s beginning as 1973 and the Arab oil embargo. Whichever date one
prefers,itmaybepossibletochartaprogressivecomplicationofthefelt
alienation of the early part of the twentieth century. Following World
WarII,thecontinuousthreatofnuclearannihilationcausesalienationto
transform into the paranoia of the Cold War. More recently still, the
whirlingblitzofinformationandimagesintheageofcomputersandthe
electronic media has made it much more difficult to sort the significant
informationfromthewhitenoiseofculture,somuchsothatperhapsthe
paranoia of the second half of the twentieth century has segued into a
kindofmillennialschizophrenia.
If paranoia and schizophrenia are metaphors describing what it feels
liketoliveinthecontemporaryworld,thepostmodernwriterthematizes
such matters around the representation of identity and identity forma-
tion. The modernist still held out hope for authentic identity. Paris may
havebeenawastelandforthewoundedJakeBarnesinErnestHeming-
way’s The Sun Also Rises, but at least Pamplona, Spain, represented a
site of authentic masculinity. The postmodernists, however, tracking in
the paths of the poststructuralist critique of unified subjectivity, repre-
sentidentityasanideologicalmirage,muchmoreasocialconstructora
performancethananauthenticity.
Havingsaidthisaboutthepostmoderndifference,Icouldimmediately
turntoQuentinCompson’ssenseofidentityinTheSoundandtheFury
toraiseanobjectiontothedistinction.Sittingnextto anAfricanAmeri-
can man on a streetcar, Quentin reflects on how living in the North has
reshaped his sense of race and realizes ‘‘that a nigger is not a person so
much as a form of behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white
people he lives among.’’2 Quentin’s momentary reflection—in which
blackness and ‘‘nigger’’ become unhinged—envisions identity not as an
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introduction ix
essence or an authenticity but as the performance of social scripts. Yet
despiteinstancesinFaulkner’sfictioninwhichhischaractersseemingly
embraceas an intellectual propositionthismore contemporaryperspec-
tive on identity, they generally do not experience themselves and their
ownsubjectivitiesassoradicallycontingentanddecentered.
One should anticipate, therefore, the response of certain readers for
whom any linking of William Faulkner to postmodernism (much less an
entireconference on the subject)will strikethem as perverse. ‘‘Surely,’’
they might object, ‘‘Faulkner is unmistakably a high modernist whose
writing ought to be spoken of in relation to James Joyce’s, not Thomas
Pynchon’s.’’ But even if one grants this objection, then Faulkner’s texts
should allow us a point of reference from which to begin to define the
postmodern difference and perhaps allow us, if not exactly to mark the
momentwhenpostmodernismbegins,atleasttosaywhatapostmodern
textdoes.
Thinking about these matters had begun well before I proposed this
conference on ‘‘Faulkner and Postmodernism.’’ In 1987, Brian McHale
turnedtoAbsalom,Absalom!asaliminaltext,onestandingontheborder
between modernism and postmodernism. For McHale, a particular mo-
mentinchapter8ofAbsalomsuggeststhat‘‘modernistpoeticsthreatens
to break down, or more than threatens, actually does break down’’; this
rupture ‘‘dramatizes the shift of dominant from problems of knowing to
problems of modes of being—from and epistemological dominant to an
ontological one.’’3 In other words, the novel in one vertiginous moment
moves us away from modernism’s obsessive questioning (‘‘How do we
reallyknowThomasSutpenorAddieBundrenor,forthatmatter,Orson
Welles’s Charles Foster Kane?’’) and toward an eerie uncertainty about
exactlywhatkindofworlditisthatisbeingimagined:
InCh.8,QuentinandShrevereachthelimitoftheirknowledgeoftheSutpen
murder-mystery; nevertheless they go on, beyond reconstruction into pure
speculation.Thesignsofthe narrativeactfallaway,andwiththemallques-
tionsofauthorityandreliability.Thetextpassesfrommimesisofthevarious
characters’narrationstounmediateddiegesis,fromcharacters‘‘telling’’tothe
author directly ‘‘showing’’ us what happened between Sutpen, Henry, and
Bon. The murder-mystery is ‘‘solved,’’however, not through epistemological
processes of weighting evidence and making deductions, but through the
imaginative projection of what could—and,the text insists, must—have hap-
pened.4
Turning to Linda Hutcheon’s Poetics of Postmodernism, one may again
wonderaboutFaulknerandpostmodernism.ForHutcheon,postmodern
fictionisdefinedas‘‘historiographicmetafiction.’’Bythisshemeansfic-
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