Peculiar Whiteness

Peculiar Whiteness argues for deeper consideration of the complexities surrounding the disparate treatment of poor whites throughout southern literature and attests to how broad such experiences have been. While the history of prejudice against this group is not the same as the legacy of violence perpetrated against people of color in America, individuals regarded as ‘white trash’ have suffered a dehumanizing process in the writings of various white authors. Poor white characters are frequently maligned as grotesque and anxiety-inducing, especially when they are aligned in close proximity to blacks or with other troubling conditions such as physical difference. Thus, as a symbol, much has been asked of poor whites, and various iterations of the label (e.g., ‘white trash,’ tenant farmers, or even people with a little less money than average) have been subject to a broad spectrum of judgment, pity, compassion, fear, and anxiety. Peculiar Whiteness engages key issues in contemporary critical race studies, whiteness studies, and southern studies, both literary and historical. Through discussions of authors including Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor, the book analyzes how we see how whites in a position of power work to maintain their status, often by finding ways to re-categorize and marginalize people who might not otherwise have seemed to fall under the auspices or boundaries of ‘white trash.’

Angers Past and Present

Thomas Dixon makes the important point that modern anger is nothing like the seemingly parallel phenomena (ira, mênis and so on) of the past. He proposes to show how different it is by employing what he calls an anatomical-genealogical approach – tracing components of the present idea of anger to their antecedents. He criticises my own work on anger as ahistorical because I use the singular term rather than the plurals that the subject demands. I find his critique unconvincing and his approach problematic. I suggest that we explore past notions of anger (and other emotions as well) in their own lived contexts rather than by separate components.

Literature and Visual Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

In the early twentieth century, an increasingly diverse group of Russians and Americans reflected upon their changing worlds in literature and visual culture. They produced competing representations of serfs, enslaved African Americans, peasants, and freedpeople that alternately idealized and criticized the pre and post-emancipation eras. This chapter studies the work of Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, Kate Chopin, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, Anton Chekhov, and Evgenii Opochinin.

The Birth of a Nation

One of the most watched and debated American films in history, The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 silent film by D. W. Griffith known equally for its cinematic innovation and the controversy it caused. The story is based on written works by Thomas Dixon Jr., which aimed to refute the preeminent narrative on race at the time: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Opening in the pre-Civil War era and continuing through Reconstruction, The Birth of a Nation depicts the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic group indispensible in protecting white society from black infiltration. Over three hours long and with a budget of $100,000, its length and budget significantly exceeded any previous American film. Groundbreaking not only in scope and visual technique, it was the first film to be distributed with a uniquely compiled score. Modernist filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin cited Griffith as having influenced their montage technique (Baldwin 2002: 65), although Eisenstein decried the idea of forgiving the film’s racism in light of its cinematic value (Platt 1992: 81).