Degeneration And Biology:The Influences Of Evolution And Eugenics On Faulkner’s Works

The present dissertation reassesses the literary creations of William Faulkner,the classic American southern writer,by situating him and his works in the biological discourses of evolution and eugenics as well as in the social,historical and political context around the turn of the twentieth century.Basically,the dissertation argues that Faulkner’s dramatization of biological issues in his works is not only influenced by the biopolitics and scientism trend in the American Progressive Era,but also questions,refutes and challenges the biologically informed American disourses on society,race and women.Previous studies on Faulkner lay emphasis on the repressed unconsciousness,war memory,southern legends,class consciousness,suppressed female narratives,and the conceptualized blacks in his works.Such interpretations,on the one hand,are limited within the southern local history,ignoring Faulkner’s responses to the American Progressive Era in which he lives and on the other hand,underline the conscious/unconscious domain rather than the physical/biological one,without which,however,any ideology will lose its function.Moreover,scholars applying biological theories to Faulkner’s works in the recent decade,draw attention to such motifs as southern destiny,historical determinism,Southern family legends and the rights of the disabled.Such readings either fails to tackle with previous academic debates over Faulkner’s disagreeable biological imaginaries,including insanity,degeneration,incest,miscegenation and sexual decadence,or overlook such crucial modernist topics as evolutionist sociology,biological racism and the eugenically based American bio-politics.However,to circumvent these topics would obscure the fascist undercurrent and undemocratic propensity of American politics,as manipulated by the biological discourses during that scientistic era.In this regard,the dissertation explores Faulkner’s dialogue and interaction with social Darwinism,Eugenics,and Progressive Movement over the above-mentioned topics,and tries particularly to answer the question why Faulkner’s work s are replete with the so-called "degenerate" phenomena abhorred by the mainstream Progressivists and eugenicists.It arrives at the conclusion that Faulkner’s literary representation of insanity,degeneration,incest and other biological problems not only mirrors but also offers responses to American scientism at the turn of the 20th century in general and Darwinism and Eugenics in particular.To be specific,the dissertation inquires into three aspects of Faulkner’s literary creations,namely,his doubt of evolutionist sociology,his contestation against biological racism,and his challenge to the American eugenic politics.As a response to evolutionist sociology,Faulkner portrays the modern industrial population as degenerate as fish and protoplasm,since these people adapt to their social environment to an excessive degree,so much so that they finally become dehumanized and aimless mass with no human free will and individuality.In this way,Faulkner not only questions American sociologists’ blind worship of the so-called "progressive" industrial ideal and Herbert Spencer’s "the survival of the fittest," but also exposes the deviation of the industrial organization mode from America’s democratic dream which promises individual dignity and freedom.Under the impact of biological racism around the turn of the 20th century,Faulkner’s Quentin Compson and Isaac McCaslin,the two white men lived in the post-1870 New South,recount and reconstruct the history of southern clans with their own subjectivity and purposes,in a way that echoes the biological dichotomy of"civilization and degeneration" prevailing in the eugenic era.The two men often draw an analogy between incest and miscegenation,to show that miscegenation is a horrible biological taboo;and they also yearn for a clear-cut color line as well as a civilized and superior citizen image,to get rid of the "degenerate" southern genealogy in the eyes of eugenicists.By contrast,Faulkner shows clearly in many textual details that black and white genealogies,both in the short southern history and in the long human evolution history,have always been tangled together instead of separated,which means that the American racial binarism is just a fiction.By showing the deep entanglement between the southern white genealogy and the tropical mixed-blood Creole culture as well as the black bloodline,and acknowledging the common tropical African origin of human race,Faulkner demonstrates that the black and white people are intrinsically the same.Based on such objective history,Faulkner indeed rebuts such radical racist theories as Nordicism,refutes degenerationists’ debasement of black blood,and undermines American whites’obsession with pure blood.Faulkner’s depiction of the female sexuality and reproduction offers the best response to the American eugenic politics.The female rebels in his works either escape from their marriage life and children,or indulge themselves in contraception,abortion,adultery and other sexual activities.With such unorthodox female characters,Faulkner in fact challenges the nation’s coersive or even totalitarian political system,which supports the eugenic population control policy and puts female sexual freedom into national control and persecution.These females,who boldly pursue free love and birth control,are labeled by eugenicists as problem women or the cause of racial degeneration.But in Faulkner’s works,they display a brave resistence to the suffocating eugenic marriage and Comstock Law which forbids contraception and abortion.It is precisely because women’s sexual freedom and privacy have been violated by American society to the most degree,to write about the highly private female sexuality enables Faulkner not only to express his personal aspiration for individual liberty and sexual freedom,but also to voice his criticism of the eugenically based American biopolitics most effectively.