The anatomy of resistance [Elektronische Ressource] : the rhetoric of anti-lynching in American literature and culture, 1892 - 1936 / vorgelegt von Sascha W. Krause

Sascha Krause

Sujets

• Social work

Informations

• Publié par: universitat_regensburg
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 9
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Anatomy of Resistance:
The Rhetoric of Anti-Lynching in American Literature
and Culture, 1892 – 1936



Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät IV
(Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften) der Universität Regensburg









vorgelegt von
Sascha W. Krause
Regensburg
2005
______________________________

Regensburg 2005





















Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Udo J. Hebel

Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Klaus Benesch Acknowledgements

For generous financial, professional, and personal support I owe many individuals and insti-
tutions. The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung awarded me with a postgraduate fellowship which
provided the necessary financial support to make this study possible in the first place. Fur-
thermore, they kindly sponsored my research trip to the USA and sought to help me ideation-
ally but also humanely at all times throughout the past three years. I am very grateful that
they believed in my project and gave me the chance to realize it.
Prof. Dr. Udo J. Hebel, my supervising professor at the University of Regensburg, has
continued to keep the faith in my work. He has supported and encouraged me wherever and
whenever possible and provided important advice and criticism. I want to thank him for all
the pain he has gone through with me to make this study possible. I am equally indebted to
Prof. Dr. Klaus T. Benesch from the University of Bayreuth, who agreed to help me in the
initial and final phase of my dissertation. Likewise, Dr. Karsten Fitz has been an indispensa-
ble support, especially in the initial phase of my study. Randall Burkett, the African-
American Bibliographer at the Special Collections and Archives of the Robert W. Woodruff
Main Library at Emory University, Atlanta, also took the time to share his invaluable experi-
ence with me. In the final phase of my writing process Julie Spergel, Dorith and Volker Her-
feld volunteered most kindly to proofread my chapters. I don't know how I could have ended
this dissertation without your help! I also want to thank my family for giving me the chance
to write this study.
Finally, I want to thank my wife Julia, who has supported and encouraged me. She
has lived with me through all my highs and lows and has always been my mainstay. She has
contributed not only through her understanding and patience but most of all though her end-
less and uncompromising love to the completion of my project. This study is dedicated to her.
2 Contents

Abbreviations...................................................................................................................... 6

1. Introduction................................................................................................................... 8

2. The Anatomy of Resistance......................................................................................... 24
2.1. Lynching as Discourse.............................................................................................. 24
2.1.1. The Nature of the Rhetoric of Lynching............................................................. 27
2.1.2. The En-gendering of Race.................................................................................. 33
2.1.3. The Racialization of Class.................................................................................. 40
2.2. The Representation of Lynching............................................................................... 46
2.2.1. Intersection with Other Rituals........................................................................... 51
2.2.2. The "Model Lynching"....................................................................................... 55
2.3. Theoretical Approaches to Colonial Resistance ....................................................... 61
2.4. The Anatomy of Resistance to Lynching – Reiteration with a Difference............... 67

3. Reiteration with Difference.......................................................................................... 78
3.1. The Lynching of Negroes – its Causes and its Preventions from a Negro's
Point of View............................................................................................................. 78
3.2. Reiterating the "Policy of Misrepresentation": Sutton E. Griggs's Novel The
Hindered Hand: or, the Reign of the Repressionist .................................................. 86
3.2.1. Griggs's Understanding of Race ......................................................................... 89
3.2.2. Modes of Resistance........................................................................................... 92
3.2.3. Sameness through Othering................................................................................ 94
3.2.4. The Revocation of Knowledge ........................................................................... 98
3.2.4.1. Rape and the Redefinition of Black Gender................................................. 98
3.2.4.2. The Spectacle of Black Suffering................................................................. 103

4. "The Saving of Black America's Body and White America's Soul" - Civiliza-
tion and the Construction of Sameness ................................................................. 115
4.1. "The End of American Innocence": The Crisis of Cultural Authority in Amer-
ica at the Turn of the Century.................................................................................... 116
3 4.1.1. The Meanings of "Civilization".......................................................................... 117
4.1.2. Anti-Lynching as Civilizing Mission ................................................................. 120
4.1.3. Southern Progressivism ...................................................................................... 124
4.2. Contesting the "Old Thread Bare Lie": Ida B. Wells-Barnett's Reiteration of
the Discourse of Civilization and Masculinity .......................................................... 127
4.3. "America's National Disgrace": Lynching as a Universalized Threat to Ameri-
can Civilization in the Writings of James Weldon Johnson...................................... 133
4.4. Race, Class, and Civilization in Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradi-
tion............................................................................................................................. 137
4.4.1. The "Noospaper's" Distortion of Reality ............................................................ 142
4.4.2. Sameness as Othering – Sameness through Othering......................................... 148
4.4.2.1. The Construction of the Mob as Other ......................................................... 149
4.4.2.2. The "New Aristocracy of Wealth"................................................................ 155
4.4.2.3. The "Genteel Racist" – Racism as the Impediment of Civilization ............. 159
4.4.3. The "Apex of an Aristocratic Development" – Delamere as Chesnutt's Ide-
alized Model for Whiteness....................................................................................... 163
4.4.4. The Idea(l) of Sameness ..................................................................................... 166

5. The Failure of Civilization and the Impossibility of Sameness - Walter
White's The Fire in the Flint................................................................................... 175
5.1. "The Mind of the Lyncher": White's Analysis of Lynching and Racism ................. 177
5.2. The Fire in the Flint as Modified Local Color Fiction............................................. 180
5.3. "Like a Scroll Slowly Unwinding before his Eyes" – Kenneth Harper's Initia-
tion into the South ..................................................................................................... 187
5.4. The Social Stratum of the White South and the Prevention of Sameness ................ 191
5.4.1. The "Leading Citizens" of Central City.............................................................. 191
5.4.2. The Lower White Classes................................................................................... 196
5.5. Violence in the Formation of Black Masculinity and as a Mode of Resistance....... 201
5.6. Race as Public Image................................................................................................ 206

6. "What a Mighty Foe to Mob Violence Southern White Women Might Be" –
Motherhood as Sameness in Domestic Anti-Lynching Texts .............................. 211
6.1. Domestic Anti-Lynching Texts – Historical Conditions of Development ............... 211
6.2. The Domestic Allegory............................................................................................. 217
4 6.3. Black Gender Respectability .................................................................................... 219
6.3.1. Rachel as Paradigmatic Formu