Race-ing images and words: the power of linguistics and visual culture in maintaining racial oppression

by Jon Ward

In response to last week's American Studies Research Seminar, presented wonderfully by A. Robert Lee in a talk entitled "Postcolonial/PostIndian: Literary and Other Representations of Native America", combined with the timely reading of some interesting blog posts about the cultural appropriation of various Halloween outfits, I started to think about the importance of words and images in maintaining racial oppression, and the need to be aware of the potential cultural implications.

News: Halloween 2011

It's Halloween! Link round-up below.

Fateful Birth: William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! turns 75

William Faulkner, looking haunted

by Ed Clough

This week sees the fall of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos – festivals celebrating (ostensibly, anyway) death as abstract and haunting, and as personal and familial; as elemental horror and as intimate loss – and, in both cases, as excuses for some freestyle, heavy-duty material and consumptive excess.

It’s apt, then, that this week should also mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of one of America’s most deathly and gothic literary masterpieces, William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, published on October 26, 1936. Faulkner, in a typically modest evaluation of his talents, referred to it as “the best novel yet written by an American”. Many would doubtless disagree – yet all the same, it’s hard to discount or ignore the sheer brilliance of this richly difficult, bleakly poetic book.