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Genealogies of Deviance Genealogies of Deviance
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Father Abraham and Uncle Flem Father Abraham and Uncle Flem
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“They Aint my Sartorises I just Inherited ’Em” “They Aint my Sartorises I just Inherited ’Em”
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America’s Worst Family? America’s Worst Family?
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The Hill Folk The Hill Folk
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“Crimps and Spungs and Feebs” “Crimps and Spungs and Feebs”
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The Faulkner Family Studies The Faulkner Family Studies
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Genealogies of White Deviance: The Eugenic Family Studies, Buck v. Bell, and William Faulkner, 1926–1931
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Published:May 2011
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Abstract
This chapter examines genealogy as a motif from early in William Faulkner’s career and its link to the mainstream eugenics movement in the United States. It looks at Faulkner’s construction of lineages for the Snopes, Sartoris, Compson, Bundren, and Goodwin clans that were for the most part studies in aberrant forms of whiteness. The chapter suggests that Faulkner’s preoccupation with white deviance, dysfunction, and decline is consistent with that of the eugenics movement. It considers a number of Faulkner’s novels in which he tackles socially undesirable white behavior, from Father Abraham (1926) to Sanctuary (1931). The chapter also discusses the eugenics movement’s turn to the South in the 1920s, and considers the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell (1927), which tested the constitutionality of Virginia’s new eugenic sterilization act. Finally, it argues that Faulkner brings to his family studies an emphasis on and respect for the interiority of his subjects that was often absent in eugenics discourse.
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