Synopses & Reviews
Faulkner's Subject offers a reading of William Faulkner for our time, and does so by rethinking his masterpieces through the lenses of current critical theory. The book attends equally to the power of his work and to the current theoretical issues that would call that power into question. Drawing on poststructuralist, ideological, and gender theory, Weinstein examines the harrowing process of "becoming oneself" at the heart of these novels. This self is always male, and it achieves focus only through strategically mystifying or marginalizing women and blacks. The cosmos he called his own--the textual world he produced, of which he would be "sole owner and proprietor"--merges as a cosmos no one owns, a verbal territory also generated (and biased) by the larger culture's discourses of gender and race. Like personal identity itself, it is a cosmos no one owns.
Review
"...splendid in the range of questions it raises and the number of illuminating readings it offers....Faulkner's Subject is a work of considerable scholarship....[Weinstein's] study will be indispensable for further ideological analyses." John N. Duvall, Mississippi Quarterly
Review
"Weinstein's readings of all four novels are sensitive, subtle, and at times even impassioned." Susan V. Donaldson, Journal of American History
Review
"Philip Weinstein has written a brilliant, candid, timely book, not just about Faulkner as a writer but also about Faulkner as a changing institution of reading and teaching." Richard C. Moreland, Modern Fiction Stories
Table of Contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Map; Introduction; 1. Gender; 2. Race; 3. Subjectivity; 4. Culture: a cosmos no one owns; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.