Gifford, Sheryl C.

This dissertation proposes that West Indian contemporary male writers develop
literary authority, or a voice that represents the nation, via a process of individuation.
This process enables the contemporary male writer to unite the disparities of the
matriarchal and patriarchal authorial traditions that inform his development of a
distinctive creative identity. I outline three stages of authorial individuation that are
inspired by Jung’s theory of individuation. The first is the contemporary male writer’s
return to his nationalist forebears’ tradition to dissolve his persona, or identification
with patriarchal authority; Fred D’Aguiar’s “The Last Essay About Slavery” and
Feeding the Ghosts illustrate this stage. The second is his reconciliation of matriarchal
(present) and patriarchal (past) traditions of literary authority via his encounter with his
forebears’ feminized, raced shadow; Robert Antoni’s Blessed Is the Fruit evidences this process. The third is the contemporary male writer’s renunciation of authority defined
by masculinity, which emerges as his incorporation of the anima, or unconscious
feminine; Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women exemplifies this final phase of his
individuation.

Much critical debate has surrounded William Faulkner's treatment of race relations in the South; indeed, it is difficult to believe that a white Southern male could transcend the psychosocial realities that led to racial divisions in the post-Civil War South. However, Faulkner, as the "well-endowed" Aristotelian poet, was able to involve himself in the emotions he sought to imitate, and thus was able to transcend racial issues in the compact fictive space he established. Intent upon mastering the intricacies of the short story, Faulkner, the self-admitted "failed poet," utilizes this genre to construct a subtle yet powerful critique of hypocritical racial divisions common in the postbellum South. The silences and subversive sympathies that abound in such short stories as "Dry September" and "That Evening Sun" are caught up within the confines of this fictive space, provoking the reader to resolve the discrepancies that purposefully exist.