Animality against Humanism in Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman and The Marrow of Tradition

Yıl 2021, Sayı: 1, 107 - 127, 28.10.2021

Joseph Sechrist

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15881882

Öz

The fiction of Charles Chesnutt may be easily read and analyzed through his own Enlightenment humanist political lens. However, despite his politics, Chesnutt’s use of animality in The Conjure Woman and The Marrow of Tradition opens an unexpected space of critique towards humanist perspectives and strategies as he addresses racial injustice in the United States in the early 20th century. Given recent critiques of the racial and special construction of the human, animalizing comparisons in literature may be understood in a new light, working to challenge typical humanist understandings of racial degradation and “dehumanization.” I argue that Chesnutt’s fictional use of animality poses such a challenge, prompting a recognition of and response to white material interests, rather than ineffective humanist ideals.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Humanism in literature , African American literature , animal rights , Charles Chesnutt , racial violence

Charles Chesnutt’ın The Conjure Woman ve The Marrow of Tradition’ında Hümanizme Karşı Hayvan

Öz

Charles Chesnutt’ın kurmaca edebiyatı, hiç sorgulanmadan onun aydınlanmacı-hümanist politik görüşleri çerçevesinde değerlendirilip analiz edilebilir. Chesnutt’un bu politik görüşlere sahip olmasına karşın onun The Conjure Woman ve The Marrow of Tradition eserleri 20. yüzyıl ABD’sindeki ırksal adaletsizliği ele alır ve bu sırada hayvan mefhumunun kitaptaki kullanımı hümanist bakış açılarına ve stratejilere karşı beklenmedik bir eleştiri alanının kapısını aralar. İnsanların kendi ırklarını ve kişiliklerini değerlendirmelerine yönelik son zamanlarda yapılan tenkitler göz önüne alındığında onun bu eseri, günümüzdeki literatürde öne çıkan beyaz olmayanları aşağılayan “insanlık-dışı” aydınlanmacı-hümanist tipik anlayışları açık bir şekilde sorgulayan hayvan-odaklı telakkiler ışığında yeni bir perspektifle değerlendirilebilir. Bu açıdan makalemde, Chesnutt’ın eserlerinde hayvanların kurgusal kullanımı ile etkisini yitirmiş aydınlanmacı-hümanist ideallerden ziyade beyaz ırkın somut çıkarlarını ortaya koyan ve bunlara yanıt verilmesini teşvik eden bir meydan okuma zeminini ortaya koyduğunu iddia ediyorum.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Edebiyatta hümanizm , Afro-Amerikan edebiyatı , hayvan hakları , Charles Chesnutt , ırksal şiddet

Kaynakça

• Chesnutt, Charles W. The Conjure Woman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926.
• —. “The Disenfranchisement of the Negro.” In The Marrow of Tradition: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism, edited by Werner Sollors. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012.
• —. Letter from Chas. W. Chesnutt to W. E. B. Du Bois, June 27, 1903. Letter. From Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999. Accessed September 11, 2021. https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b002-i029.
• —. The Marrow of Tradition: The Complete Text in The Marrow of Tradition: Authorita-tive Texts, Contexts, Criticism, edited by Werner Sollors. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012.
• —. “Race Prejudice; Its Causes and Its Cure.” Charles Chesnutt Archive, chesnuttarchive.org/Works/Essays/race.html.
• —. “Selected Letters.” In The Marrow of Tradition: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism, edited by Werner Sollors. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012.DeLombard, Jeannine Marie. “Debunking Dehumanization.” American Literary History30, no: 4 (Winter 2018): 799-810.
• DeSantis, John. “Wilmington, N.C., Revisits a Bloody 1898 Day and Reflects.” New York Times, June 4, 2006.www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/us/04wilmington.html.
• Fields, Karen and Barbara J. Fields. “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America.” In Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. London: Verso, 2012. Francione, Gary L. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.
• Gallagher, Charles A. and Cameron D. Lippard. “Jim Crow Laws.” In Race and Racism in the United States: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic, 634-7.
• Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2014.Goff, Phillip Atiba et al. “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 2 (2008): 292-306.
• Hartman, Saidiya. “Introduction.” In Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Mak-ing in 19th Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Hollingshead, David. “Nonhuman Liability: Charles Chesnutt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and the Racial Discourses of Tort Law.” American Literary Realism 50, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 95-122.
• Jackson, Zakiyyah. “Introduction.” In Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Anti-black World. New York: New York University Press, 2020.
• Jefferson, Thomas. “Laws.” In Notes on the State of Virginia. Boston: Lilly and Wait, 1832.
• Kuhn, Mary. “Chesnutt, Turpentine, and the Political Ecology of White Supremacy.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 136, no. 1 (2021): 39-54. doi:10.1632/S0030812920000048.
• Lam, Joshua. “Black Objects: Animation and Objectification in Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Tales.” College Literature 45, no. 3 (2018): 369-398. doi:10.1353/lit.2018.0024.
• McElrath, Joseph R., and Robert C. Leitz, eds. “To Be an Author”: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997. Accessed September 12, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zvfcf.
• Nibert, David. Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
• Owusu-Bempah, Akwasi. “Race and policing in historical context: Dehumanization and the policing of Black people in the 21st century.” Theoretical Criminology 21, no. 1 (2017): 23-34.
• Pergadia, Samantha. “Like an Animal: Genres of the Nonhuman in the Neo-Slave Novel.” African American Review 51, no. 4 (2018): 289-304. doi:10.1353/afa.2018.0054.
• Ruffin, Kimberly N. Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
• Smith, David Livingstone. On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.