“The South lost the Civil War and we’ve never recovered as a nation from that. There’s this angry white guy mentality that’s never gone away. They’re bitter and they want white people to rule the world.” – Eric Andre

“I would sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part II. Okay guys, people took over. What would they have done a day later? How would they re-organize the power? The same state, how would they restructure the power?” – Slavoj Žižek

At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo drops the One Ring into the fires of Mordor and ends the threat of Sauron and his army; Middle Earth enters a new era and, in the film version in particular, there is a sense of peace, love and friendship which permeates the lives of every character. At the end of The Matrix: Revolutions, the humans and machines—after centuries of fighting with each other—reach a truce and develop, we understand, a respect for one another—celebrated by Michael Popper enthusiastically screaming out to a group of terrified humans, “the war is over!” Not to dismiss the multitude of layers which can be found in each of these works of fiction, this is a trope we’re familiar with: the story wraps up, the conflict is resolved, the musical score reaches a crescendo and everything is right in the world. Similarly, in 2005’s film adaptation of V for Vendetta, V accomplishes his goals, blows up parliament and an endless crowd of masked supporters of the cause to overthrow the tyrannical government signal to the viewer that change is coming, and for the better. The victory narrative continues—but as Slavoj Žižek once asked regarding the ending of this film: “What would they have done a day later?”

Perhaps William Faulkner’s The Unvanquished provides an answer for this, and it’s not one that would necessarily fill seats in a theater—or at least wouldn’t allow anyone to feel good after leaving the movie. Despite the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Confederate troops in the Civil War, the reality, as Faulkner illustrates in “Skirmish at Sartoris” is that the Confederacy doesn’t necessarily die. The Emancipation is not the destruction of the One True Ring, the end of the Civil War doesn’t bring about a change of heart for those who saw Black people as inferior—it only shifts the legal structures and when Ringo says that Blacks aren’t “n——, in Jefferson nor nowhere else” the answer to Žižek’s question emerges: the war doesn’t end—what happens next is the realization that the war “just started good” (Faulkner 199).

Legally, the war ends. This is what is meant Eric Andre says that the “South lost the Civil War.” But the reality is, as Faulkner’s narrative portrays, that Andre’s “angry white guy mentality” remains, and this is the true law, the law which placed Black people into bondage in the first place (Darville). The Civil War doesn’t erase the desire to see “white people rule the world,” because that desire cannot be distilled into some simple binary opposition of the kind that we typically see in war films, both of the fantasy and realistic variety. It is not a magical object to be burnt and removed from the world, it is not a villain who can be vanquished and written out of the script moving forward. Faulkner tells us this in “Skirmish at Sartoris” in the most cynical of ways by placing a wedding in the midst of a racist seizure of an election, preventing Blacks from voting. In this moment, the delusion of the Right to naturalize oppression, to bake it into its legal structure, is signaled through a wedding, a swearing-in of sorts, a celebration of bride and groom with the “Yaaaaay, Druisilla! […] Yaaaaaay, John Sartoris! Yaaaaaaay!” (Faulkner 210). Andre’s “angry white guy mentality” lives on through the wedding as a symbol of a return to a natural way of things for the Confederacy, and in this way they don’t so much as lose, as they make an attempt to defy, to rebel (Darville). It is a Ring that refuses to melt, a tyrannical overlord who refuses to vanish from the page, two sides of a war who refuse to agree even after the bullets stop flying. Faulkner gets us asking the kinds of questions Žižek asks at the end of V for Vendetta, and it provides an answer: What happens next is that the losing side refuses to lose.

Through The Unvanquished we can, perhaps, alter our conversation about the Civil War and speak with greater nuance about the cultural and ideological actions which take place after weapons are laid down (or at least the weapons aimed between white people, not the weapons still aimed at Blacks and minorities). Perhaps it becomes more effective to say that Civil War never truly “ended,” as some have chosen to do when speaking of nuclear disarmament in the context of the Cold War. Perhaps we need to be more clear about what ends after events such as the Civil War: Legal institutions may shift, but the underlying ideological impulse remains, and until we address that and its origins, we may end stuck with an eternal legacy of racism which no mere illusion of a “fellowship” can dissolve.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. Vintage International, 1991.

Darville, Jordan. “Eric Andre Is Insanely Honest Because Who Else Is Going To Be?” The FADER, The FADER, 8 Nov. 2017, www.thefader.com/2016/10/26/eric-andre-interview.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Slavoj Žižek: Why There Are No Viable Political Alternatives to Unbridled Capitalism.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Nov. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7JgfB8PaAk.

About three or four years ago, various posts—original and shared—made their way through my social media streams; celebrities and friends of mine, all white like myself, had gotten it in their head that a way to creating safer spaces for those among us we condensed into the monolithic phrase “people of color,” was to openly wear a safety pin on our clothing, letting anyone know that they were “safe with us.”

I’ll confess to the reality that I gave into this for about a week. I punctured a pocket flap of my denim jacket with an obnoxiously large safety pin and went about daily life, attended some political protests, went to work, school, etc; the size of this thing reminded me of a production of The Glass Menagerie I had once heard of where the utensils used for the dinner scenes were exaggerated in size to give the sense that it was all a dream, a memory. Perhaps it was a combination of this memory, an observation of other white people I knew who were doing this and the way I felt around black and brown people I knew that keyed me in to the negative aspect of what I was doing, topped off with articles and blog posts I had come across from minority perspectives about the effect this was having: I was making the conversation about me, about me being white and about me performing a kind of allyship to make myself feel better without considering what the gesture meant.

This is what came to mind through a reading of Native Son. Jan, who arguably does wish to create a safe space for Bigger when they meet, comes from a place where he considers the reality, or at least a part of the reality, of racism and wants to create a safe space for Bigger. It’s hard to read this scene, however, with any sense that the actions are comforting for Bigger or are at all changing the power dynamics between a white and black person—let alone giving sincere contemplation to the reality of them. Jan’s handshake comes with a demand, “Come on and shake” he says and continues to “tighten” his fingers and hold on to Bigger’s hand (Wright). The scene is one of discomfort; the interiority of it reveals a nervous state in Bigger’s mind, he’s not sure what to do with Jan’s demands that he not “say sir” to him and Mary’s insistence that Jan “means it” does nothing (Wright). These actions, if anything, remind Bigger of his otherness, making him “conscious of his black skin [creating] a prodding conviction that Jan and men like him had made it so that he would be conscious of that black skin” (Wright).

Jan is, in effect, making this space about him, making it about gestures that absolve him of any guilt he may carry over his role in the system of racism. He doesn’t realize that though the words and the actions are shifted, the commands are still the same: he’s still commanding Bigger’s body and speech—he’s not allowing a space to exist where Bigger can be who he is. This is what reminds me so much of the issues surrounding the safety pins; my realization was in fact that I was demanding a kind of attention by this gesture, and the reality was that of the white people who I knew who still continued to do this, none of them were asking these questions; in fact, the safety pin allowed things to continue as they were, it was the least amount of minimal effort, a gesture of “desperate, [cheap] sincerity” as Baldwin might put it (Baldwin 23). These performative gestures did nothing to address the “badge of shame” which Bigger carries on his skin, and it, in its most destructive sense, created a “single sharp point of attention” of otherness among whiteness (Wright). It was an empty, performative gesture which made the conversation about what white people were doing, not about the ways in which we were creating harmful spaces in the first place.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. Just Above My Head. Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2000.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. Harper, 2008.

• Balaram, Arita. “(Re)Theorizing Hybridity for the Study of Identity and Difference.” Social & Personality Psychology Compass, vol. 12, no. 10, Oct. 2018, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/spc3.12413.

How do “assimilation and nation-building” work through cultural imperialism to create “racialized hierarchies” that affect and construct one’s sense of self (Balaram 2)? I will be using this source as a means of answering this question while utilizing Balaram’s methods and research to understand “new identities and subjectivity [emerge] from colonization and continued projects of racial domination” (Balaram 2). Balaram’s discussions of politics, history and the “hybrid subject” will be helpful in creating a perspective for viewing the construction of identity.

• Farrugia, Jack P., et al. “‘It Is Usually about the Triumph of the Coloniser’: Exploring Young People’s Conceptualisations of Australian History and the Implications for Australian Identity.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, vol. 28, no. 6, Nov. 2018, pp. 483–494. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/casp.2381.

As outlined in its abstract, this piece goes into the ways in which whites “reconstruct Australian history to silence the mistreatment of Indigienous Australians […] to favour the coloniser perspective” and that “this reconstructed history is typically accepted uncritically” (Farrugia et al. 483). I’m very interested in using this piece in tandem with the themes of historical narratives in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished. Similar to the Garratt piece, while this is a source that looks at a context outside of America and the black experience, it does focus on how “identity is shaped by [specific] ideals” (Farrugia et al 485). Its critical look into how “understanding and experiences of racism” factor into a historical basis for “identity development” (Farrugia 485, 490).

• Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. Vintage Digital, 2013.

Faulkner’s portrayal of the late 19th Century south will serve to provide more American context for the discussion of the historical legacy of slavery and racism and its ties to the cultural and political realms of white America.

• Garratt, Lindsey. “Doubly Estranged: Racism, the Body and Reflection.” Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, Mar. 2017, pp. 617–635. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01419870.2016.1206589.

In one of my two sources which step outside of an American context, Garratt’s research on how “young migrant group boys in Dublin’s north inner city suffer from a break with their embodied selves” (Garratt 617). This research is helpful when considering the effects of racialization on children’s “embodied perspective [which is] at the heart of a child’s identity” (Garratt 620). Garratt’s exploration of how racialization can be observed to have an effect on boys’ ability to play soccer, and how this form of play “[constructs] masculinities” and specifically how “racialized masculinities” affect the “identity associated with the body” is helpful in analyzing what is otherwise an innocent, staple of life–sports. I will use the information gathered from this Irish context and will apply it to an American one through the works of Claudia Rankine, Richard Wright and William Faulkner.

• Nama, Adilifu. Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film. University of Texas Press, 2008.

I am including this source as I think it will provide a unique take on the portrayal and understanding of black identity in media, and a very specific form of media: that of the kinds of fantastical Science Fiction films and will attempt to connect this to themes in Wright’s novel concerning Bigger’s interest in film and media. I am choosing this specifically since it deals with fantastical realms of science fiction which, one might assume, are so removed from present day reality, that they might not carry with it the mechanisms of racism that can, as many of my other sources demonstrate, shape one’s understanding of history and their place in it. Nama’s work highlights very specific films, but I will largely work with a more broad understanding of how “SF films [engage] America’s cultural urges, political yearnings, and ideological dispositions” and how even when we’re talking about alternate realities, we are still very much talking about this one and are still talking and communicating messages of race which carry with it the abilities to shape an understanding of identity and history (Nama 3).

• Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: an American Lyric. Penguin, 2015.

Rankine’s work is of particular interest to me as it deals with a very personal perspective on the formative powers of racism and oppression. I am particularly interested in connecting her use of the second person perspective to much of the dominating messages of oppression that are highlighted in other sources. I am very interested in using her perspectives on media in a modern context both in her book and on her website.

• Seaton, Eleanor K., and Masumi Iida. “Racial Discrimination and Racial Identity: Daily Moderation among Black Youth.” American Psychologist, vol. 74, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 117–127. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/amp0000367.

This dense psychological study examines how “ethnic/racial identity content consists of the meaning and significance that individuals ascribe to their ethnic/racial group” and will provide more nuts-and-bolts psychological examinations of the development of the self through racial perspectives and understandings (Seaton and Iida 117). It is concerned with the intersections of “racial/identity […], racial discrimination experiences and depressive symptoms” (Seaton and Iidia 118). I will incorporate their findings and the understanding of their methods as a mode of application more so than the raw data collection into my work.

• Wright, Richard. Native Son. Vintage Digital, 2016.

Wright’s novel will provide an American context to understand some of the racist and oppresive mechanisms that are outlined in my other sources. I am also interested in the role media plays on Bigger and will connect this both to Rankine’s work.

• Yancy, George. What White Looks like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question. Routledge, 2004.

Most of my resources concern the construction of the identity under siege by racism, but I believe that Yancy’s chapter will provide some analyses on the construction and function of white identity which “attempts to hide from its historicity [and] represents itself as ‘universal'” (Yancy 108). Yancys contention that a “genealogical examination of whiteness” reveals a “kind of historical emergence” which is not natural, but rather very carefully constructed. This is a dense work which I hope will give me some valuable Foucauldian and Nietzchean perspectives to balance out my other psychological and sociological sources.

My sources were the result of research to find information on how the self is constructed under forms of racist oppression through history, media and socialization. Starting with a chapter from Yancy provided by Professor Allred, I went on to find more sources ranging from psychological explorations of the manifestation of the self under racism to that of the ways in which media and history are constructed to become racist and oppressive mechanisms across different geographic and cultural contexts.

For my final project, I aim to consider the ways an image of the self materializes in society through interaction and writing–and specifically the image of a self situated in a minority subject position; this can of course be extrapolated to other operators within this structure, and while I may make reference to this, my writing will focus on the struggle to realize a sense of self in the context of oppression. By the image of self, I am not referring to an intrinsic, immutable soul, but instead an image which exists in the social dynamic. I am thinking of dynamics such as Bigger’s first interactions in Native Son with Mary and Jan, or his state of mind when entering the Dalton residence, or how Ringo feels that he has been “abolished” when the social and economic structure has been radically altered in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished. I will posit that the self is often an illusory phenomenon generated by the material conditions of a society and the roles which it is assigned through bureaucracies, governments and other social roles and contracts; I will refer to Kafka’s work in this case for examples of harsh portrayals of bureaucracy and social function. In centering these themes on the self and the generation and function of the self, my work will make use of Du Bois’ notion of double consciousness and how, for those in marginalized groups, a doubled sense of self can cause a distorted generation of simulated versions of oneself as the result of the “longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge […] double self into a better and truer self” (DuBois). In this I will make use of the variety of texts we’ve read for this class to demonstrate the creation and dynamic struggle of the self on the page. I will also use works from outside of the class to reinforce the points I’m making. I have provided here a list of texts I plan on consulting during the research of this project. This list may change during the writing and research of this project.

In demonstrating the illusory phenomenon of the self, I intend to highlight the absolute threat that forces of oppression have over human lives. If the self can be constructed by social forces, then we can understand the severity and absolute control both physical and social marginalization can have over a people since it penetrates down to the deepest foundation of a human psyche: one’s own seemingly private sense of self.

Outside sources:

Baldwin, James, et al. The Fire Next Time. Taschen, 2017.

Barthes, Roland, et al. Mythologies. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Baudrillard, Jean, and Sheila Faria. Glaser. Simulacra and Simulation. Univ. of Michigan Press, 2014.

Graeber, David. Utopia of Rules. Melville House, 2016.

McQueen, Steve, et al. 12 Years a Slave.