미국 남부 사회와 백인성 만들기 - 『압살롬, 압살롬!』을 중심으로

Abstract

The meaning of whiteness is a construct, not a given as universal and invincible. It is important that the white southerners after the Civil War are central to making whiteness and that the whiteness constructed in that space and time between Reconstruction and World War II have been considered Americaness. After the Civil War, Americans began transforming the meaning of race. Everything changed at the result of emancipation. Most of all, many white southerners had a fear of losing their masterhood over ex-slaves. Furthermore, the very social categories of difference that established white male power were in danger to be collapsed with the emergence of a new black middle class and possible miscegenation. To craft a new southern order and reconcile with the North, white southerners created their modern sense of themselves as different, invincibly, from African Americans. White southerners gave priority to race line over any other things, which led to the culture of segregation, one drop definition, and the very meaning of whiteness as nonblackness. William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, which covers from early nineteens to 1900s in the South, reveals the creation of whiteness as a modern racial identity. Thomas Sutpen, who originates from poor white class, tries to recognize himself as a white patriarch with absolute power and a planter with many slaves. Sutpen sacrifices the others of race, gender, and class to accomplish his design. It is remarkable that Sutpen, an empty center, never speaks of his own past for himself. Four narrators―Mr. Compson, Quentin Compson, Shreve McCannon, and Rosa Coldfield―respectively reconstruct Sutpen's past and their reconstruction reveals how whiteness as a modern racial identity is created and changed.