Just One Thing More”
Absalom, Absalom! and the Creditor-Debtor Relationship
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8895666 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Philip Sayers (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 219-238 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-21 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras.2016.016 |
| OpenAlex | W2602956279 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
To what extent, if any, can art provide us with a way of thinking outside of the creditor-debtor relationship? This article looks to William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936) for an answer. I demonstrate, through a reading of the novel's anonymous lawyer, the extent to which the economic logic of the ledger (as a figure for the creditor-debtor relationship) penetrates the novel and its logic of storytelling. The article then goes on to examine, via an analysis of the novel's ending, two “remainders”—two elements that cannot be integrated into this economic logic. Finally, I draw on Judith Butler's work to suggest that Absalom, Absalom! does gesture toward a form of relationality outside of the economic terms of debit and credit, seen in Miss Coldfield's initial framing of her tale and in Butler's idea of “dependency.”
Art · Art history · Humanities · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|