Artikel Lisa Seuberth* Anti-Supremacist Speculations: George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) © 2022 Lisa Seuberth, licensee De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License 2 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 Abstract: While the prevalence of White supremacist groups in the US seems to be on the rise during the 21st century, popular cultural productions of this period suggest an increase in awareness concerning the social construction of Whiteness and its dependence on the degradation of non-Whiteness. As a test case for this hypothesis, the fantastic ghost story Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) is examined in terms of its engagement with the discursive practice Toni Morrison termed American Africanism, a specific form of White supremacist discourse that targets African Americans in particular. Morrison’s analytical catego- ries are applied to the contemporary novel to verify whether its anti-supremacist program at the story level matches its own discursive practice. Keywords: White supremacy, historical fantasy, American Africanism, Africanist presence, contem- porary literature, USA *Lisa Seuberth, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Department of English and American Studies, Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik, insbesondere Literaturwissenschaft (Prof. Dr. Kley)/ Chair for American Literary Studies (Prof. Dr. Kley), lisa.seuberth@fau.de 1 L incoln in the Bardo as a ing their own interpretations of history more pow- Fantastical (Re-)Writing erful (Kleinberg 2007, 114). Following Foucault’s of History argument in “Orders of Discourse” (1971), the exchange of discourses and ideas constitutes the Kleinberg describes historical accounts as “a repla- complexity and dynamics of history (23). In order cing of this sort where the past event or figure is to unravel this entanglement of discourses and silently determined by the telling that replaces it. exchanges, the cultural dependency of the histor- But the telling in the present is haunted by the ical narrative must be made visible. By treating ghost of the past, which is neither present nor historical accounts like literary texts that need to absent, neither here nor gone” (2007, 2). Accor- be interpreted, as narrative pieces of fiction, new dingly, as cultural productions, historical accounts historians like Hayden White demonstrate their do not merely reflect the prevalent ideologies skepticism toward the traditional assumption of of a certain place or moment in time but par- an objectively accessible history (2014, xxxi). ticipate themselves in complex interactions and Based on the “poetic nature of the historical exchanges among narratives of the past and the work” (2014, xxx), White proposes an analysis of present. According to LaCapra, the interpretation historical accounts by methods of literary analy- of dominant accounts of history “engages us as sis, bridging the gap between historiography and interpreters in a particularly compelling conver- literature. Thus, historiography relates to fiction sation with the past” (2018, 28). through their shared systems of meaning produc- In reference to Michel Foucault’s theory of tion. While historiography focuses on the narra- power circulation, history is determined by this tion of ‘facts’ and fiction on the narration of the constant dialogical exchange between discourses, imaginary, they both produce meaning through which he claims to be at the core of the circulation narration (White 1995, 44-45). Linda Hutcheon’s of power (1980, 93). Thus, by writing about the concept of “historiographic metafiction” (1988, past, historians engage in certain discourses and 105) also highlights this common ground between thereby promote, consciously or unconsciously, historiography and fiction. Her concept refers to their own culturally shaped points of view, render- fictional texts that comment on the impossibility Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 3 of an objective rendering of history by explicitly links the past, the present, and the future, as well calling attention to their own cultural construction as the fantastical and the real, by opening spaces (Hutcheon 1988, 112). in between to act out criticism and possibilities: According to this postmodern understanding “historical fantasy […] works […] as a basis for of historical accounts as subjectively and cultur- recognizing and understanding the construction of ally biased narratives, historical novels can just as the new political destinies we may witness taking well serve to “re-write or to re-present the past” shape among diasporic groups in the US today” (Hutcheon 1988, 110). Spaulding argues that, (Saldívar 2011, 595). Accordingly, the fantastical even when historical fiction is not governed by space in Lincoln in the Bardo serves to display the realistic principle of verisimilitude – or exactly and question the culturally established dichotomy because it does not seek to construct narrowly between Whiteness and Blackness as an overar- realistic depictions – it can offer possibilities for ching system that structures the narrative, the a reconstruction of history that factual accounts past, and the present. Its retelling of slavery from cannot. The retelling of the past with imagined a 21st-century perspective casts a new light on this and fantastic elements opens another space of part of American history, as well as on its impor- reflection, a space of the imaginary in which tance to the present. Although such a (re-)writing hypotheses can be tested. This freedom of imagi- of US enslavement history cannot dissolve deeply nation enables texts not only to reveal the ideolo- anchored structural racism, it can work toward this gies that remain latent or covert in traditional his- objective by disrupting patterns of racialized imag- torical accounts, but also to “claim authority over ination: It can add new voices and images to the […] the historical record” (Spaulding 2005, 2). circulation of discourses, it can foreground what Even though fictional narratives sometimes seem has been hidden, and it can name injustices com- disconnected from historical reality, they are nev- mitted in the slavery system, the “wake” (Sharpe ertheless always connected to a dominant ver- 2016) of which stretches into the present moment. sion of history through their cultural dependency Part of this “afterlife of slavery” (Hartman (LaCapra 2018, 9-10). Every narrative must posi- 2007, 6) involves the division of society into the tion itself within the network of past narratives to social constructs of Black and White, into inferior be able to engage in the circulation of discourse ‘subhuman’ and superior ‘prototype-human’ (Del- and power (Foucault 1971, 23). This is how the gado and Stefancic 2017, 84). Afropessimist schol- past continues to haunt the present. ars, such as Wilderson, Hartman, and Sharpe, see Historical novels thus engage in the circula- a linearity between the social structures produced tion of power by promoting their own perspectives within the slavery system and those found in on past events, responding to previous versions present-day American society, which tie race to a of history, and contributing to the (re-) defini- socially ascribed status: “The means and modes tion of what Lyotard calls “grand narratives,” i.e. of Black subjugation may have changed, but the prevalent discourses of a culture that provide and fact and structure of that subjugation remain” legitimate a point of view in a specific place and (Sharpe 2016, 12). Wilderson diagnoses not only a time (1984, xxiii-xxiv). The historical fantasy Lin- transtemporal persistence of anti-Black violence, coln in the Bardo (2017) is one instance of such but also a “parasitic” (2020, 16) relation between a performance of power. It casts the 19th-century humanity and anti-Blackness. According to him, US-American history of enslavement in the light Black people work as “implements for the execu- of a 21st-century perspective, while also includ- tion of White and Non-Black fantasies” (Wilder- ing historical quotes that, in the sense of histo- son 2020, 15) and are therefore “instrumentalized riographic metafiction, continuously remind the for postcolonial, immigrant, LGBT, and workers’ reader of the novel’s own construction. Through agendas” (Wilderson 2020, 15). This instrumen- combining historical fact and fantasy, the novel talization is what Morrison refers to when she engages in what Saldívar calls “speculative real- describes the “parasitical nature of white freedom” ism”: “a hybrid amalgam of realism, magical real- (1992, 57). In Playing in the Dark (1992), Morrison ism, meta-fiction, and genre fiction, including sci- argues that the dominant slavery-era discourses ence fiction, graphic narrative and fantasy proper” that divided society into White masters and Black (2013, 13). According to Saldívar, this combination slaves still dominate discourses of the 20th century 4 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 (1992, 11). She locates this dichotomy in a dis- plary analyses of works by Poe, Hemingway, and cursive practice she calls “American Africanism” Twain among others, she claims that the African- (Morrison 1992, 6-7), tying the persistence of ist presence has been continuously inscribed into anti-Blackness in the US to the construction of a the national canon. Investigations of works by dominant White identity. White Americans estab- other canonical authors, such as William Faulkner, lished an image of an Africanist persona as sav- resulted in a more ambivalent picture of racial- age, inferior, and powerless in order to form their ized discourses in US-American literature of the own identity as civilized, superior, and powerful 19th and 20th centuries. The sometimes contra- (Morrison 1992, 52). Even though this defining dictory interpretations of the racial imagination “act of violence” (Levine-Rasky 2016, 16) allowed enacted in Faulkner’s texts, collected in Fowler White Americans to minoritize Black people to the and Abadie’s Faulkner and Race (1987), illustrate extent of complete omission from their literary the covert operation of American Africanism. writing, it is inextricably linked to White American While a rather clear consensus seems to be found identity, and thus is always, consciously or uncon- among scholars on the White supremacist imag- sciously, present in their cultural productions as ination of Poe (Brown 1937, 11; Sundquist 1987, the “Africanist presence” (Morrison 1992, 9-17). 25), Faulkner’s texts are more difficult to situate. With her focus on the construction of White- Blyden Jackson and Pamela Rhodes, for example, ness and its reliance on discursive anti-Black- see both a stereotypical representation of Black ness, Morrison can be situated as an Afropessi- people and a more nuanced attempt to depict mist within the field of Critical Whiteness Studies. Black consciousness in his texts, while Thadious However, Morrison proposes a more optimistic M. Davis diagnoses “the burden of inadequate outlook to the future than Wilderson’s Afropessi- racial assumptions” (1987, 85) in both modes mism in stating that a race conscious reading of of characterization (Fowler and Abadie 1987, US-American literature can help to detect and viii-xi). Sundquist arrives at a balanced conclu- challenge the discursive practices that maintain sion about Faulkner’s texts’ racial discourses, an ontological relation between White norm and claiming that the texts visibly attempt to chal- Black other (1992, 14-15). As Yancy observes, lenge anti-Black stereotypes without successfully White supremacy is constructed through ritual- freeing themselves from an underlying White ized performances, a set of well-established prac- supremacist thought (1987, 3). López’s claim that tices that “may come to represent the ‘natural’ “there remains in the early twenty-first century order of things” (2004, 15) and grant “epistemic a postcolonial whiteness struggling to come into authority” to Whiteness (Mills 2007, 34). Those being” (2005, 6), meaning a still missing “spirit of performances “create an illusion of substance intersubjectivity and mutual recognition between that appears bodily” (Warren 2003, 29) when postcolonial whiteness and its others” (2005, 6), Whiteness is nothing more than an imaginary highlights the continuing prevalence of White construct, however with real effects on Ameri- supremacy and its cultural practices. As Mills puts can society and culture (Frankenberg 2001, 76). it, the “original fusion of personhood – what is to Detecting the imaginary Africanist presence in be human – with membership of a particular race literary works therefore also reveals the absent, will continue to shape white perception, concep- meaning invisible, omnipresence of an imaginary tualization, and affect in unconscious and sub- Whiteness (Garner 2007, 34). By making the tle ways even in apparently nonracist contexts” invisible visible, literature and literary criticism (2003, 46). In order to approach the question to can help to acknowledge and to unlearn the silent what degree this dimension of slavery’s “afterlife” acceptance of Whiteness as norm from which continues to manifest itself in US-American litera- Blackness deviates. ture as an Africanist presence, this article outlines Morrison analyzes canonical texts written by an analysis of George Saunders’s award-winning White Americans during the 19th and the early 20th novel Lincoln in the Bardo as a test case. I argue centuries to point toward literary performances that this contemporary novel renegotiates the of Whiteness and anti-Blackness. With her exem- White American discourse informed by the Afri- Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 5 canist presence, disclosing its constructedness and the past to the present. By mixing historical and confronting it with a visible, complex, and sources with invented ones in the documentary powerful African American presence. Lincoln in parts of the novel, the line between fact and fic- the Bardo insists on the need for a disruption of tion becomes blurred (Moseley 2019, 6-8), which African Americans’ “narratively condemned sta- highlights the constructedness of both the novel tus” (Wynter 1994, 70) and a persistent decon- and historical accounts in the manner of histori- struction of the Black-White dichotomy in the ographic metafiction. The fantastical is used to White mind in favor of transcultural1 enrichment. open spaces of possibility, or as Morse puts it, As Sue Park indicates, Lincoln in the Bardo to offer “a fantastical continuation” (2018, 26) of is filled with dichotomies and their transgres- the present space of the living. The Black-White sions (2018, 81). One major dichotomy is the dichotomy that existed in the world of the liv- division between fact and fiction that is found in ing persists in the Bardo. Fantasy, however, per- this historically informed ghost story (Moseley mits the deferment of this binary opposition and 2019). The novel portrays the story of Abraham allows the possibility for boundary transgression Lincoln’s son Willie’s death in 1862 and imagines to be displayed. In this way, a Black character his ghost’s proceeding to a transitional space can enter Lincoln’s body, and a dialogue between between the afterlife and the living world, called the free and the unfree becomes possible (Morse the Bardo.2 In this intermediary space, situated 2018, 29). Lincoln in the Bardo’s historical setting in the graveyard where Willie Lincoln is buried, of 1862 Georgetown in Washington, D.C., along he encounters other ghosts who are themselves with its implanting of the Bardo within this setting, unable to proceed from the Bardo to the after- enables the novel to transmit a message about life. Believing to be merely sick and not dead, both the past and the present: the need to con- they want to help Willie exit the Bardo and return tinually expose and resist culturally constructed to his father, who moves the ghosts with his dichotomies (Moseley 2019, 1-7; Park 2018, 31). affectionate mourning over his dead son in the The dichotomy of White and free versus Black graveyard. However, the ghosts do not succeed and enslaved is depicted through the novel’s rep- in their endeavor and eventually come to realize resentation of the Africanist presence in White the truth of their deaths. Through an event called Americans’ minds. The critique on this cultural the “matterlightblooming phenomenon” (Saun- construct is articulated through the exposure of ders 2017, 296), which is triggered by the ghosts’ Whiteness and Blackness as social constructs and realization of being dead, the ghosts individually the introduction of an African American presence exit the Bardo and proceed to an unknown after- as a central, powerful, and free counter-image to life. While the main sections are composed of dia- the marginalized Africanist presence. logue between the characters in an experimental, Although on the surface the story seems to drama-like arrangement, other sections include hinge on the fate of a White American father quotations from fictive and non-fictive historical mourning his son, the issues of slavery and the texts to capture the discursive atmosphere of Civil War resonate deeply throughout the novel, the Civil War. The historical citations, as well as accompanied by the discourse of the Africanist the historical setting, connect fiction back to fact presence. With its contradictions and multiple perspectives, the novel represents the various 1 I understand the term “transcultural” as referring to the discourses of slavery, using the fantastic context transgression of “classical cultural boundaries” (Welsch of a ghost story to broaden the possibilities sur- 1999, 198), acknowledging the “mixes and permeations” (Welsch 1999, 198) of cultures. In Wolfgang Welsch’s rounding narration, representation, and criticism. terms, “[t]ransculturality is, in the first place, a conse- This opening of narrative possibilities is already quence of the inner differentiation and complexity of mod- visible in the discursive form of the novel. The ern cultures. These encompass […] a number of ways of story is not told by one single narrator but con- life and cultures, which also interpenetrate or emerge from veyed through multiple homodiegetic narrators. one another” (Welsch 1999, 198). The different voices belong to the story’s vari- 2 The etymological origin of the word bardo lies in Sanskrit and means ‘transitional state’ (Morse 29). It further refers ous characters, whose pieces of dialogue are to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation (Moseley 2019, 10; arranged in fragments with the respective speak- Morse 2018, 29). er’s name indicated at the end of each part. This 6 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 collage of voices resembles more a theatrical parts and the number of characters, the first part play than a continuous narration (Selejan 2019, of the novel distinctly privileges the White charac- 109), increasing the impression of immediacy for ters. The principal characters, Willie and Abraham the reader. Initially, there seems to be no nar- Lincoln, Hans Vollmann, Roger Bevins, and the rative authority at all, because the story is told Reverend Everly Thomas, are all White. This privi- through an assemblage of characters’ quotes. As leged representation of White characters works to the story continues, however, the impression of reproduce and display the discriminatory practi- mediacy occasionally increases, thereby reveal- ces operating in American society that rely on the ing the novel’s narrative guidance of the reader. image of the marginalized and ‘absent’ Africanist This fragmentary arrangement of multiple per- presence. This changes significantly, however, spectives and voices allows the reader further in the second part of the novel. The display of insight into each character (Thompson 2019, White supremacy and a sense of frustration in the 300). S/he is confronted with various and often first part is then followed in the second part by a contradictory opinions, mirroring the unreliabil- much stronger presence of Black characters and ity of individual accounts and the diversity of dis- a disruption of entrenched modes of depiction. As courses present in the highly polarized Civil War Sue Park claims, the novel is structurally divided era, divided broadly into pro- and anti-slavery.3 into two parts: The first relates to “frustration Through the multiplicity of narrative voices, the and urgency” (2018, 81) and the second consists reader is seemingly left to his/her own judgment of “escape and a tentative convergence” (2018, regarding the narrated events. However, the nov- 82) of dichotomies. The marginalization of Black el’s critical exposure of the Africanist presence characters is redressed through their shift from reveals its own bias in favor of an anti-suprema- the narrative margins to the center of the novel, cist discourse as well as its aspiration for a soci- most prominently in the case of Thomas Havens. ety that internalizes not an Africanist but an Afri- Initially being positioned as a minor character can American presence. who contributes just another small part to the fragmentary collage of narratives, he later fuses with Lincoln to become the President’s inner self 2 The White Other and the African and voice, thereby drastically transforming into American Persona the most important figure for the continuation of the story and of history. Notably, the President is the only character whose speech is always media- The indication of the characters’ names in lower ted through other characters, therefore depriving case printing implies the equality of all charac- one of the most powerful White American men of ters, thus strengthening the impression that the his discursive power. The novel thus progresses text deliberately avoids lending one or several from well-known patterns of White dominance to positions more authority than another. How this a replacement of the Africanist divide between narrative situation works to criticize discrimina- Black and White with an acknowledgment of the tory practices becomes clear when looking at the mutual construction of both concepts. distribution of the characters’ portions of speech. In terms of character constellation, the ini- At first the novel seems to engage in Africanism tial display of White domination is further under- because, although all of the characters are given mined by the characterization of the White ghosts a chance to speak, the White characters’ speech as peculiarly deformed, creating an alienation dominates the narrative. The White characters effect that is also transported by the fragmented, are placed into the narrator’s position more fre- elliptical syntax and the unusual punctuation in quently than the Black characters and thereby Willie’s description of Roger Bevins: hold more power over the discourses promoted in the novel. Concerning the distribution of speech ’Bevins’ had several sets of eyes All darting to and fro Several noses All sniffing His hands (he had multiple sets of hands, or else his hands were so quick 3 This is also a metafictional reference to the postmodern they seemed to be many) struck this way and that, understanding of the genre of historical novels as presen- picking things up, bringing them to his face with a ting no ‘facts’ but versions of the past. most inquisitive Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 7 Little bit scary Wright’s ‘deformity’ relates to her having gone In telling his story he had grown so many extra eyes mute following of her traumatic experience of and noses and hands that his body all but vanished multiple rape. Litzie’s silence not only refers to Eyes like grapes on a vine Hands feeling the eyes the collective trauma of slavery but also to the Noses smelling the hands (Saunders 2017, 27) erasure of the African American voice from Amer- ican history. However, these deformations are Willie’s struggle to express the White charac- not presented as alien, fantastic features but as ter’s fantastical deformation with ordinary lan- a realistic result of their lives as slaves, which is guage underlines the latter’s alterity. By assig- again transported in the novel’s syntax: ning otherness to the White perpetrator of Black othering, the novel subverts the racial hierarchy […] her feet, worn to nubs, left two trails of blood implied in the American Africanist discourse. behind her, and as she placed her hands (also worked to nubs) on the mulatto’s hips, in support, she left Equally defamiliarized are the characters of Hans bloody prints in two places there on the ale smock, as Vollmann and the Reverend Everly Thomas. Voll- the mulatto continued to thrum and shake (Saunders mann’s unfulfilled desire for the “consummation 2017, 221) of marriage” (Saunders 2017, 28) with his young wife results in him appearing to have a constant In contrast to Willie’s description of Bevins, the erection in the Bardo. The Reverend preaches a Reverend uses coherent and unmarked senten- life without sin but is himself on the verge of ent- ces to portray the two women. He offers causal ering the hell of afterlife, which is why his face connections, for example between Mrs. Hodge’s is frozen in a terrified look. While the physical nubs and hard slave work, rather than disjointed deformation of these characters is a consequence fragments. Consequently, the defamiliarization of of their unfulfilled happiness and their longing to the White characters as fantastic, alien others is return to life, it also represents their punishment opposed to a realist portrayal of the Black char- for denying the undeniable, both in the Bardo and acters. The novel’s characterization techniques during their lifetimes. In the Bardo, they deny therefore highlight the inversion of the Africanist their deaths, convincing themselves that they pattern of Whiteness as norm and Blackness as are merely sick, which prevents them from being deviation from that norm, revealing this division released from the transitional space. The denial to be not “the ‘natural’ order of things” (Yancy of death can be seen as parallel to the denial of 2004, 15) but a social invention. African Americans’ humanity. The White charac- Although many of its characters engage in ters’ deformed image of African Americans as an the discourse of American Africanism, the novel othered presence in the world of the living is thus manages to embed the practice in a way that mirrored by their own captivity and deformation does not promote but, on the contrary, exposes in the Bardo. Unless they gain consciousness and subverts its racist implications (Farsi 2020, about their deaths and their reliance on an Afri- 319). A poignant example of this is represented canist presence, they will remain captured in an by the scene in which Lieutenant Cecil Stone is eternal transition. The novel therefore performs a introduced to the reader. Working against the kind of poetic justice that transfers the stereoty- Lieutenant’s perception of himself as White, and pical role of an othered, enslaved Blackness over therefore human in opposition to the non-human to Whiteness in order to reveal the arbitrariness Africanist presence, the novel portrays him not as of both constructs. a nuanced individual but as a static and isolated In contrast, the Black characters are markedly type, aptly captured by the telling name “Stone.” not presented with an alienating physical appear- He defines himself very overtly in opposition ance. The way that Thomas Havens and Elson to his “SHARDS” (Saunders 2017, 82), a name Farwell are portrayed, for instance, focuses more that he uses as a metaphor for the collective of on describing their fates and relationships to their Black slaves, objectifying and reducing them to masters than on their physical traits (Saunders a homogenous assemblage of minor splinters. 2017, 214-220). Mrs. Francis Hodge is physically The Lieutenant explains his choice of name by ‘deformed’ in respect to the bloody stumps she drawing a parallel between the color of coal and possesses instead of hands and feet, while Litzie the slaves’ dark skin: “they were, indeed, dark as 8 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 Night, like unto so many SHARDS OF COAL, which sonality that is revealed as soon as he opens his did give me abundant Heat” (Saunders 2017, 82). mouth. The novel’s caricature of the Lieutenant, Here, coal is used as an image that conjures up achieved through discrepancies and exaggera- the long tradition of stereotyping, uniting both a tions in characterization, effectively reveals, crit- devaluation of darkness and a desire for it in an icizes, and even ridicules his White supremacist ambivalent Africanist other. construction of an Africanist presence. Through its caricature of the Lieutenant, the As yet another example of a racialized mindset novel criticizes the delusional character’s adher- informed by the Africanist presence, the Barons’ ence to the Africanist belief in White superior- discourse demonstrates that all social groups found ity over Blackness. Right from the beginning, in the Bardo society are determined by the White his self-aggrandizement is made explicit when supremacist belief system. Eddie and Betsy Baron he enters the scene by interrupting Willie with are a poor White servant couple, buried in the same his self-characterization: “When in my merry mass grave as the former slaves who occupy the red Jacket of Velvet I moved past Flower-bright Bardo. Although they are portrayed as uneducated Hedges in the full Flush of my Youth, I cut a fine through their vulgar speech, they are also shown Figure indeed” (Saunders 2017, 82). The overly to be open-minded, as they are the only White poetic speech used for his narcissistic glorification characters in the Bardo who are friends with Black stands in opposition to his aggressive and vulgar slaves. Despite this friendship, it becomes clear innuendos such as “that SHARD would be made that these two characters also define themselves to give off SPARKS” (Saunders 2017, 83), refer- in opposition to an Africanist presence: “He’s one ring to rape. The random capitalization reveals of them, but he’s still our friend” (Saunders 2017, his lack of self-control as well as his obsession 215). By objectifying Elson Farwell as a means of with power, which exposes his self-description as entertainment (Saunders 2017, 216), debasing that of a “fine Figure” to be a ridiculous delusion. his eloquent speech as “so G----- complicated” The caricature of Lieutenant Stone progresses (Saunders 2017, 214), and simultaneously ignor- through the discrepancy between his distorted ing their own intellectual insufficiencies, they treat self-perception and the characterization implied Elson as an Africanist persona in order to build an in the other characters’ annoyed reactions to him, empowered White identity for themselves. Instead such as Vollmann’s “Good Lord” (Saunders 2017, of unlearning the “epistemic authority” of White- 82) or Bevin’s ironic comment “He’s in fine form ness (Mills 2007, 34), they perform it. tonight” (Saunders 2017, 82). Although the other This explicit performance of American African- White ghosts disapprove of the Lieutenant’s Afri- ism is undercut by the discrepancy between the canist claims, the lack of intervention shows just Barons’ self-perception and the text’s portrayal how established such racialized discourse is in the of them, which ridicules their groundless belief in Bardo. Nevertheless, the Lieutenant’s exagger- their own superiority. The disparaging behavior ated form of American Africanism seems to sur- of the other White characters toward the Barons pass the generally accepted racist language in the serves as an indirect characterization of these ghosts’ frame of reference and is therefore crit- characters, revealing their lowly position and rep- icized. Like the other White ghosts, the Lieuten- utation within the White community. For exam- ant is also portrayed as deformed, turning “pen- ple, the Reverend directly rejects their request to cil-thin in places, tall as the tallest of our pines” talk to Willie and repeatedly attempts to silence (Saunders 2017, 83) while articulating his racist them (Saunders 2017, 83-87), while Bevins’s thoughts. The growth in height represents the remark “These were the Barons” (Saunders 2017, Lieutenant’s superficial grandeur, which proves to 87) closes the caricature of them as if they were be unsubstantiated, as he becomes as thin as the performing a theatrical play. Just as Elson was foundation upon which he bases his White supe- used as an ‘entertaining object’ by the Barons, riority. His usual physical appearance is described the novel appropriates this powerplay by placing symbolically as “of average size, beautifully the Barons into the same position. The transfer of dressed, but with terrible teeth” (Saunders 2017, the role of the objectified onto Whiteness, which 83), hence contrasting his superficial, “beautiful” usually does the objectifying, thus expresses the appearance with the deteriorated “terrible” per- novel’s condemnation of American Africanism. Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 9 The Barons are further ridiculed through the anti-supremacist discourses shows further in the way in which the individual segments of their depiction of an empowered African American speech are presented. Their elliptical speech presence through the characterization of Black fragments alternate in rapid succession, creat- figures as powerful and free human beings. None ing a tangled impression rather than providing of them is portrayed as inhuman, evil, or not “pos- a compelling story of their past (Saunders 2017, sess[ing] human emotions” (Saunders 2017, 320) 83-87). The numerous expletives and repetitions as the Lieutenant describes them in a racist spirit. make the Barons’ story redundant and reduce its On the contrary, Elson, the first Black character importance: “F---- them! those f----ing ingrate to be introduced in the novel, is highly emotional snakes have no G---ed right to blame us for a when remembering the injustice done to him as a f----ing thing until they walk a f----ing mile in slave. With his death, the serviceable slave turns our G---ed shoes” (Saunders 2017, 86-87, 211). into the complete opposite. Recognizing his mas- The frequent censure of words not only marks ter’s indifference to him, Elson becomes highly the inappropriate character of the Barons’ lan- agitated and aspires to take revenge: guage but also diminishes their narrative agency. The direct contrast of these vulgar expressions I regretted every moment of conciliation and smiling to Elson’s eloquent language collapses the Black- and convivial waiting, and longed with all my heart (there in the dappled tree-moonshade, that, in my final White dichotomy implied in American African- moments, became all shade) that my health might be ism by depicting the White couple as inferior in restored to me, if just for one hour, so that I might knowledge and intellect. The White characters’ correct my grand error, and enstrip myself from all engagement in the racialized discursive praxis is cowering and false-talk and preening diction, and rise thus criticized further by drawing a caricature of up even yet and stride back to those always-happy Easts and club and knife and rend and destroy them them at the levels of both story and discourse. and tear down that tent and burn down that house. In contrast to the Lieutenant, however, the (Saunders 2017, 217) Barons seem to reproduce dominant discourses unreflectingly, without being aware of the racial- ized concepts they rely on. They seem less con- When describing his own death in a romantically scious of their performance of Africanism in stylized way, the contrast between lightness and that they hold a closer relationship to the Black darkness in the metaphor “moonshade” turning characters than to the other White characters. “all shade” opens another semantic dimension. When they exit the Bardo, the color of Eddie’s The progress from ‘half-dark’ in “moonshade” to “matterlightblooming phenomenon” is “not the ‘entirely dark’ in “all shade” points to his develop- usual luminous white, but, rather, a dingy gray” ment from a Black slave who imitates and pleases (Saunders 2017, 325). Reading the individual his master into an independent and self-confident “matterlightblooming phenomenon” of a char- man. His literary language and open complaints acter as indicative of his/her identity, the color emerge in contradiction to his former behavior gray shows that Eddie is not White in the “usual, of “cowering and false-talk and preening diction.” luminous” way but is instead a mix of Black and Here, he reveals that imitating his master’s White. Already one step further than the other “preening diction” was part of his strategy to 4 White ghosts to eroding the Africanist presence rise in status, an effect of mimicry as described out of his mind, he eventually serves to represent by Bhabha (86). Thus, he is portrayed as a man an American society that still holds the prospect not just capable of emotions but also of complex to think outside of the Black-White dichotomy in and strategic thinking. This representation of the the future. These examples demonstrate how White char- 4 Bhabha describes colonial imitation as “one of the most acters identify in opposition to a dark Africanist elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and presence, representing one of the dominant dis- knowledge” (86). According to Bhabha, mimicry displays courses of the 19th century that established the the ambivalent relation between colonizer and colonized. Through the imitation of the colonizer by the colonized the marginal, inferior, and inhuman status of African division into inferior and superior is ruptured and colonial Americans as naturally given. That the novel does domination is therefore called into question: “mimicry is at not promote such a belief but rather engages in once resemblance and menace” (Bhabha 86). 10 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 African American presence in Elson subverts the his rhetoric contrasts with his hesitations at the concept of the Africanist presence promoted by beginning of the scene, exemplifying his develop- White characters. ment. Through his elaborate speech, Havens The strongest counterforce to the Africanist actively influences Lincoln and the course of presence is the development of Thomas Havens. history. The once serviceable slave has become Having been a submissive slave throughout his a revolutionary free man who shares his position life and during most of his time as a ghost in the in society with the most powerful White man in Bardo, he later transforms into a man with his America. They both fuse into one person, another own will and agency: an empowered African Ame- call by the novel to think outside of essentialist rican presence. When he enters Lincoln’s body racial categories and, simultaneously, a fantas- toward the end of the novel, he first describes tical reminder of the continuing inseparability his subordinated position to his master’s family of Blackness and Whiteness in the 21st century. as a “happy arrangement” (Saunders 2017, 311). Accordingly, the open ending states: “And we The longer he stays in Lincoln’s body, the more rode forward into the night, past the sleeping he distances himself from his internalized infe- houses of our countrymen” (Saunders 2017, 343). riority and thus from functioning as a projection Depicting Lincoln’s and Havens’s thoughts as one of an Africanist presence. Havens’s description and the same while they proceed to the White of his and Lincoln’s fusion is indicative of his House, the novel ends with the manifestation of development: “[…] we were the same size, and an African American presence as the driving force out, upon horseback and (forgive me) the thrill of a White American man. of once again riding a horse was too much, and At the level of character constellation, the I – I stayed. Therein. What a thrill it was! To be novel also conveys an impression of African doing what I wished” (Saunders 2017, 311). The Americans that is very different from the Afri- inserted apologies for acting according to his own canist presence typically characterized as iso- will as well as the hesitation “I – I stayed” show lated and emotionless. The various relationships that he still sees himself in an inferior position that the Black characters engage in, whether it to White people. However, Havens’s exclamation be with other Black characters or White ones, shortly thereafter indicates a change in attitude: function to reinforce their portrayals as attentive, The character is finally beginning to enjoy his emotional, and social human beings. Accordingly, freedom. From then on, he starts to feel more Litzie cultivates a close relationship with Mrs. comfortable not only in Lincoln’s body but also Hodge, resembling a mother-daughter relation- in his new position as a free and powerful man. ship, which disproves the Africanist belief that Realizing his new position of holding power over Black women lack the capacity for motherly love. a White man, he starts using it to persuade Lin- Litzie’s affectionate connection to Mrs. Hodge coln to end slavery. Stepping out of his inferior becomes clear when she uses the recovery of position, he recognizes White Americans as the her voice to thank Mrs. Hodge for her support all agents of the degradation of Black people and as these years (Saunders 2017, 258). Furthermore, responsible for their fate. He makes use of this toward the end of the novel, Litzie and Elson seem insight to call out to one such White American: to bond by holding each other’s hands while the secret of their death is revealed (Saunders 2017, Sir, if you are as powerful as I feel that you are, and as 313). The Black characters not only keep close inclined toward us as you seem to be, endeavor to do something for us, so that we might do something for relationships with other Black characters but also ourselves. We are ready, sir; are angry, are capable, engage in ‘interracial’ friendships. For instance, our hopes are coiled up so tight as to be deadly, or the Barons, a White couple, are friends with holy: turn loose, sir, let us at it, let us show what we Elson, a former slave. Even if they are not able can do. (Saunders 2017, 312) to escape the dominant discourses of the time, they still defend Elson and others in the Black He calls upon Lincoln to continue the Civil War community against the Lieutenant and his patrol in order to break with the social order installed (Saunders 2017, 223). This interrelation of Afri- by the slavery system. The revolutionary spirit of can American characters stands far apart from an Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 11 Africanist conception of Black people as emotion- division of the Bardo into a black pit and a white less, isolated, and inhuman and builds a sociable cemetery is an extension of the same division in African American presence in its stead. the space of the living, where the Black slaves’ mass graves border on the cemetery of White citizens, who are all buried in individual graves. 3 Negotiating Freedom and However, this sign of White privilege is challenged Darkness in the Bardo. The White inhabitants within the lim- its of the iron fence are affected by nausea when approaching it, which prevents them from cross- The scenes comprising Lincoln in the Bardo are set ing the border (Saunders 2017, 223). The Black during nighttime on a graveyard in Washington inhabitants of the Bardo, residing in a mass grave D.C. The inhabitants of the Bardo exist in a sepa- outside the limits of the iron fence, can cross it rate sphere but are nonetheless able to observe without being affected. This division of space the people in the living world. The setting casts a inverses the partition of privilege in the world of sinister atmosphere on the scenes that is domi- the living – and in the US when read allegorically nated by darkness, as Isabelle Perkins describes – where Whiteness signifies freedom of movement it in the novel: and Blackness equals confinement. The Africanist The moonlight shows the premises across the way lit- image of the Black population as an enslaved and tered far & wide with the detritus of yesterday’s great powerless presence is thus undermined by tran- storm – Mighty tree-limbs lay against crypts & across scending the color line through the repartition of graves […] [on the] yard of the Dead in the dark of freedom and power between Black and White. Fur- night. (Saunders 2017, 183) thermore, the area bordering on the ‘Black side’ of the iron fence is described as “uninhabited wilder- The personification of the dead trees with their ness” (Saunders 2017, 330), evoking the stereo- limbs lying across the graveyard emphasizes typical connection between savagery and Black- the ghostly presence of the dead. The allitera- ness. However, since the wilderness “ended in the tion “Dead in the dark” establishes a connec- dreaded iron fence” (Saunders 2017, 330) and is tion between death and darkness, reflecting the thus still located on the ‘White side’, this connec- novel’s apparent “obsession with figurations of tion is transferred from Blackness to Whiteness. death and hell” (Morrison 1992, 5) as a sign of Consequently, the characteristics of a savage and the Africanist presence. However, the darkness in wild Africanist presence are subverted through the the novel is not associated with ‘evil’ but is rup- spatial setup of the Bardo. tured through humoristic depictions, as becomes The world of the living is described by the clear, for instance, in Isabelle Perkin’s personi- ghosts in the Bardo, as well as through inserted fication of the cemetery’s statue Morty or Lin- passages from both invented and real historical coln’s obedient horse (Saunders 2017, 183). The documents (Moseley 2019, 6-8). This mixture of ghosts in the Bardo are portrayed in a humoristic fact and fiction heightens the heterogeneity of dis- manner – partly because of their unwillingness courses in the novel, emphasizing the construct- to accept their death and the resulting drama- edness of historical accounts and, per Hutcheon’s tic irony – which adds to the overall impression historiographic metafiction, the novel’s construc- of the Bardo and the graveyard as dark but far tion of itself as a historical novel. Through vari- from gruesome places. The connotative connec- ous contradictions and the multiplicity of different tion between darkn ess and ‘evil’, inherent in the points of view, the novel outlines the scope of concept of the Africanist presence, is thus rene- positions during the Civil War era, most promi- gotiated at the level of narrated space. nently pro-slavery and abolitionist positions. The In general, the narrative features three spaces: reliance on American Africanism in the world of the Bardo, the world of the living, and the afterlife. the living is displayed not only in reports of the As the main space of the narration, the Bardo is racist treatment of slaves but also in the dis- divided further by a “dreaded iron fence” (Saun- courses employed by the ‘historical’ quotes. The ders 2017, 36), redrawing an imaginary color line discourse of the Africanist presence, reflected in between Black and White only to transcend it. The some of the quoted passages that show disap- 12 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 proval of Lincoln, is opposed by voices in favor of ghosts’ progression through their ‘enlightenment’ the President. The predominance of the latter in represents the novel’s call for a return to reason these ‘documentary chapters’ weakens the reli- in order to counter ignorance. The semantic shift ability of the quotes that employ the Africanist in the connotation of the Bardo and the after- discourse. For instance, in the statement “you are life from racial division and ignorance to progress nothing but a goddamn Black nigger” (Saunders shows the novel’s critique of American African- 2017, 233), quoted from Holzer’s Dear Mr. Lincoln: ism and its demand for a similar shift outside Letters to the President (1993, 341), the speaker of fiction. This demand is strengthened further intends to insult Lincoln by pejoratively equat- through a Black character transcending the spa- ing him with the Africanist presence. Such overt tial limits as well as through the open ending, employment of the discourse of American Afri- when Havens accompanies Lincoln on his way to canism is challenged by the numerous character- the White House. izations of Lincoln as liberal minded and in search of justice (Saunders 2017, 283-285). Additionally, the quotations of the racist speaker lack punctu- 4 The African American Influence ation marks, contain misspellings, and reproduce on US American History and familiar speech containing vulgar insults, which Future reduces the speaker’s credibility (Saunders 2017, 233, 235). In comparison to the standard register With the main plot including Willie’s stay in the of the quotes in chapter LXX which do not engage Bardo and Lincoln’s nightly visits to the grave- in the Africanist discourse, the lines quoted from yard, the novel seems to focus on the fate of a Holzer appear even more inappropriate. The White American family and to marginalize African novel arranges its selected ‘historical’ quotes as a Americans to the same extent as the novels that strategic means of refuting the American African- Morrison analyzes in Playing in the Dark. The ism employed in the world of the living. instance in the novel when the Black ghosts cross The characters have departed the living the iron fence, however, represents a turning realm by dying and remain in the Bardo because of point concerning the novel’s apparent engage- their ignorance of this fact. The end of the ghosts’ ment in White supremacist discursive practices. belief in their “self-deceptive version of reality” The White characters’ overt reproduction of the (Farsi 2020, 318) – the sickness in the case of Africanist discourse while bragging narcissisti- the ghosts and the Africanist presence in the case cally about their success in life seems to trigger of White people – leads to their release into the the first appearance of Black characters in the afterlife and another stage for American society novel. Tension is intensified by the White charac- that is different from the racialized present. As ters introducing the arrival of the “darkies,” “Black an undefined space that follows the Bardo, the beasts,” and “Damnable savages” (Saunders afterlife allegorically refers to the space and time 2017, 213) as an ominous event, employing the that the US could enter if its White citizens were othering discourse of American Africanism. This to acknowledge the Africanist presence and their tension is resolved abruptly and is even ridiculed own Whiteness as imagined constructs that they through the sharp contrast between the hostile rely on. As soon as they stop denying the obvi- announcement of the Black characters as mons- ous and accept that Whiteness and Blackness are ters by the White ghosts and their subsequent cultural constructions, a possibility opens up for depiction as emotional individuals. The confron- exiting the transitory space of the Bardo – as a tation of the two images, namely that of the Afri- signifier for the present – as well as for entering a canist presence and that of the African American future that, although uncertain, is different from presence, which emerges when the White charac- the status quo. Just as the “matterlightblooming ters excessively employ the Africanist discourse, phenomenon” represents a sort of literal enlight- conveys a necessity to resist White supremacist enment of the ghosts that allows them to proceed discourse and to short-circuit its dependence on to the next stage, the realization of Black and a distorted portrayal of African Americans. The- White as constructions is portrayed as unsettling refore, the appearance of Black characters in the America’s White supremacist imagination. The novel adds a socio-political dimension to the indi- Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 13 vidual story of a grieving father. In chapter LXX, fillment as “a flim-flam,” a “chimera,” and “[m] shortly after the introduction of the Black charac- ere wishful thinking” (Saunders 2017, 263). Even ters, the tension between Black and White people though the transcultural society reveals itself to during the Civil War is for the first time discussed be idealist, and even though the union does not explicitly in the ‘historical’ sources. The inclusion achieve its goal of stopping Lincoln on his way, of Black characters is thus crucial for the unders- the moment of unity still proves decisive for the tanding of the novel and its historical context just plot. The characters’ changed views regarding as African Americans are for an understanding of their identities, as neither White nor Black, which American history and culture. was initiated by the utopian vision, finally brings The importance of Black characters for the them all closer to being released from the tran- dynamics of the plot becomes further apparent sitional state. Therefore, the novel suggests that in chapter LXXVII when Black and White char- a conception of American identity that does not acters enter Lincoln to convince him to return to rely on the construct of a Black-White dichotomy Willie’s grave. The united force that results from would prove decisive in the course of the nation’s the union of the Black and White ghosts com- development. While the transcultural union is not pels them to remember happiness in life and presented as a final solution to America’s sys- even erases the White characters’ alien physical temic racism, as it does not immediately result in features. Litzie also regains her speech and Mrs. the ghosts’ release from the Bardo, it neverthe- Hodge her hands and feet. This fantastic moment less disrupts the “parasitical” (Wilderson 2020, of transcultural fusion, where the line between 16) relation between Whiteness and anti-Black- Blackness and Whiteness is dissolved, improves ness for a moment, putting the two constructs’ the situation for all characters involved in both artificiality on display. a physical and mental sense. The momentary Whether an actual realization of the “chi- absence of the racial divide so firmly entrenched mera” will take place is left unanswered by the in American culture is thus portrayed as benefi- novel. Elson’s and Lieutenant Stone’s fight is said cial for everyone. In this scene, a utopian micro- to seem to go “on into eternity” (Saunders 2017, cosm is created where being united regardless 321), suggesting that the racial divide of Black of socially ascribed differences is presented as a and White will never be dissolved (Farsi 2020, dramatic change and an improvement of every 319). However, this Afropessimist outlook is coun- citizen’s well-being: “We found ourselves (like tered by the open ending. The effect of the union flowers from which placed rocks had just been between Black and White characters on Lincoln removed) being restored somewhat to our nat- encourages Havens to stay inside the President ural fullness” (Saunders 2017, 256). The collapse in order to influence not only the end of the novel of the racial dichotomy in this reunion impels the but also the ‘plot’ of history. The mass inhabita- partaking characters to unfold their personalities tion of Lincoln by Black and White ghosts influ- in “natural fullness,” freed from the “removed” ences his conception of the self and the other burden of the Africanist presence. The meta- (Thompson 2019, 303), therefore giving the Pres- phor of the ‘blossoming flower’ announces the ident the predisposition that leads to his main impending arrival of a ‘fresh spring’ after a ‘cold achievement: the abolition of slavery.5 Havens’s winter’ of ignorance. As soon as White and Black metaphorical description of Lincoln as an “opening Americans are no longer viewed as opposites book” (Saunders 2017, 312) with “no aversion” to but achieve a “spirit of intersubjectivity” (López him (Saunders 2017, 311) aptly demonstrates the 2005, 6), both groups may complete and enrich President’s development by the end of the novel. one another. However, the characters’ astonish- Initially a White man driven by the dominant dis- ment about their “miraculous transformations” (Saunders 2017, 259) within Lincoln underlines the utopian character of this idealist scenario and 5 According to Morse (2018, 30), the Civil War’s ending in reminds the reader that this exciting transcultural the abolition of slavery is foreshadowed in the novel itself through the Black ghosts moving beyond the iron fence, fusion is a fantasy. As the characters withdraw thus resisting their deprivation of freedom and anticipating from the fantastical realm of Lincoln’s body, they a “fundamental and unimaginable alternation of reality” characterize this moment of unity and self-ful- (Saunders 2017, 321). 14 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 courses of the time and, hence, “closed” toward marginalizing Black characters as Africanist pres- the African American population, he progresses ences, its ending remains open with an African further to become a man opening his mind to a American persona actively influencing the mind world-view beyond White supremacist thinking. of one of the most powerful White men in history. This process is accelerated through the union of the “black and white [ghosts], who had so recently mass-inhabited him” (Saunders 2017, 312), which 5 Conclusion questions the existence of an Africanist presence. The emphasis on the importance of the Black and Although Lincoln in the Bardo takes some time White characters’ unification indicates that the to develop the African American presence as a novel assumes the disruption of American Afri- counter-image to the Africanist presence during canism to be central to social progress. the course of the narrative, the second half of the Havens not only transcends his previously novel effectively articulates a strong anti-suprem- internalized Africanist thinking, but also tran- acist program. Initially, the novel cons ciously sub- scends the space of the dead by returning to scribes to the American Africanist discourse, only the living world through Lincoln (Saunders 2017, to disrupt that discourse’s continuity and expose 343). This event is the novel’s assurance that the it as an artificial construct later on. Through the Civil War and slavery will end. With its open end- embodiment of the African American presence in ing, the novel calls for a change of racial hier- concrete characters who are portrayed as pow- archies. Without forecasting some ‘post-racial’ erful and free individuals, the White characters’ future, the fusion of two characters, one marked image of Black people as alien others is under- by Blackness and the other by Whiteness, high- mined. The novel’s critique of the degradation of lights the two concepts’ continuing interdepend- African Americans by a White hegemony is further ence and directs attention toward the necessity to expressed through the empowerment of the reassess simplistic racial categories. Had Havens African American presence and the defamiliariza- not accompanied Lincoln to the White House and tion of White supremacist thought. Moreover, the instead been driven back to his grave or the after- importance of African American characters to the life, as are the other inhabitants of the Bardo, plot turns the novel into a counter-narrative to the the novel would have ended as it started: with marginalization and absence of African Americans the separation of and hierarchy between Black within dominant historical accounts. As a histori- and White. However, the novel’s ending instead ographic metafiction in form of historical fantasy, places an empowered and liberal-minded Afri- Lincoln in the Bardo not only calls these histori- can American persona in control, enabling him cal accounts into question, but also relates their to ‘come back to life’ and influence the thoughts discriminatory practices concerning African Ameri- of the President of the nation, thus deciding the cans to the 21st century, as part of “the afterlife of course of history. Such an ending clearly empha- slavery” (Hartman 2007, 6). The novel’s division of sizes the central role of African Americans in the narrated spaces redraws the imaginative color American society. In so doing, the novel favors line between Black and White in order to then dis- the development of American society, both in fic- solve the line and the binary oppositions through tion and reality, toward unsettling the US’ White the transgressions of these spaces, disc losing supremacist belief system, which can only be their artificiality. While the possibility of an ‘eternal constructed through an imagined Africanist pres- fight’ between Black and White in an Afropessimist ence. Lincoln’s mind is no longer metaphorically sense is acknowledged, the novel’s open ending occupied by an Africanist presence, but by an and fantastical fusions of characters eventually African American presence. Through its plot the demand a disruption of the pessimist paradigm novel thus portrays the development of American without proposing this disruption as the final solu- history from slavery to segregation to the pros- tion to the US’ systemic racial division. Unlike, for pect of a disruption of the racial dichotomy, while instance, Faulkner’s texts’ ambiguity concerning also highlighting African Americans’ centrality to American Africanism, the contemporary novel the development of American society. Beginning clearly renegotiates the White supremacist “grand in medias res with White characters’ perspectives narrative” (Lyotard 1984, xxiii) about a stereotyp- Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 3/2022 15 ical Africanist presence through its depiction of Kleinberg, Ethan (2007): Haunting History. In: History and Theory, 46/4, pp.113-143. JSTOR: www.jstor.org/ an empowered African American presence and its stable/4502287. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. urgent call for White America to see its self-decep- LaCapra, Dominik (2018): History, Politics, and the tive belief in White supremacy for what it is. Novel. Cornell University Press: https://doi. org/10.7591/9781501727474. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. Levine-Rasky, Cynthia (2016): Whiteness Fractured. Works Cited New York: Routledge. López, Alfred (2005): Postcolonial Whiteness. A Critical Primary Sources Reader on Race and Empire. New York: State Saunders, George (2017): Lincoln in the Bardo. New York: University of New York Press. Bloomsbury. Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984): The Postmodern Condition. Secondary Sources A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester Bhabha, Homi K. (2004): The Location of Culture. University Press. London: Routledge. Mills, Charles W. (2003): White Supremacy as Sociopo- Brown, Sterling (1937): The Negro in American Fiction. litical System. A Philosophical Perspective. In: Doane, Port Washington: Kennikat Press. Ashley W./Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (Eds.): White Out. Davis, Thadious M. (1987): From Jazz Syncopation to The Continuing Significance of Racism. New York: Blues Elegy. Faulkner’s Development of Black Charac- Routledge, pp. 35-48. terization. In: Fowler, Doreen/Abadie, Ann J. (Eds.): ---. (2007): White Ignorance. In: Sullivan, Shannon/ Faulkner and Race. Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. Tuana, Nancy (Eds.): Race and Epistemologies of Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 70-92. Ignorance. Albany: State University of New York Delgado, Richard/Stefancic, Jean (2017): Critical Race Press, pp. 13-38. Theory. An Introduction. New York: New York Morrison, Toni (1992): Playing in the Dark. Whiteness University Press. and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard Farsi, Roghayeh (2020): Reading Strategies and University Press. Impossible Worlds in Fiction. With Reference to Morse, Donald E. (2018): ‘This Undiscovered Country’ Lincoln in the Bardo. In: Zeitschrift für Anglistik in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille and George und Amerikanistik, 68/3, pp. 311-327. De Gruyter: Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo. In: Acta Universitatis https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2020-2006. Accessed Sapientiae Philologica, 10/1, pp. 25-33. ResearchGate: 24 Feb. 2022. DOI 110.2478/ausp-2018-0002. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. Frankenberg, Ruth (2001): The Mirage of an Unmarked Moseley, Merritt (2019): Lincoln in the Bardo. ‘Uh, NOT a Whiteness. In: Brander Rasmussen, Birgit/ Historical Novel’. In: Humanities, 8/2, pp. 1-10. MDPI: Klinenberg, Eric/Nexica, Irene J./Wray, Matt (Eds): DOI 10.3390/h8020096. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness. Durham: Park, Sue (2018): Dichotomies and Convergence. Lincoln Duke University Press. in the Bardo. In: CCTE Studies, 83, pp. 80-85. Foucault, Michel (1971): Orders of Discourse. In: Social Saldívar, Ramón (2011): Historical Fantasy, Speculative Science Information, 10/2, pp. 7-30. SAGE Journals: Realism, and Postrace Aesthetics in Contemporary https://doi.org/10.1177/053901847101000201 American Fiction. In: American Literary History, 23/3, . Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. pp. 574-599. Oxford Academic: DOI 10.1093/alh/ ---. (1980): Power/knowledge. Selected interviews ajr026. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. and other writings. 1972-1977. New York: ---. (2013): The Second Elevation of the Novel. Race, Pantheon. MONOSKOP: https://monoskop.org/ Form, and the Postrace Aesthetic in Contemporary File:Foucault_Michel_Power_ Knowledge_Selected_ Narrative. In: Narrative, 21/1, pp. 1-18. JSTOR: www. Interviews_and_Other_Writings_1972-1977.pdf. jstor.org/stable/23321834. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. Selejan, Corina (2019): Fragmentation(s) and Realism(s). Fowler, Doreen/Abadie, Ann J. (Eds.) (1987): Faulkner Has the Fragment Gone Mainstream? In: Anglica and Race: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. Jackson: Wratislaviensia, 57, pp. 103–112. CNS: DOI University Press of Mississippi. 10.19195/0301-7966.57.8. Accessed 31 Jul. 2021. Garner, Steve (2007): Whiteness: An Introduction. Sharpe, Christina (2016): In the Wake. On Blackness and London: Routledge. Being. Durham: Duke University Press. Hartman, Saidiya (2007): Lose Your Mother: A Journey Spaulding, Timothy A. (2005): Re-forming the Past. Along the Atlantic Slave Trade Route Terror. New History, the Fantastic, and the Postmodern Slave York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Holzer, Harold (1993): Dear Mr. Lincoln. Letters to Sundquist, Eric (1987): Faulkner, Race, and the Forms the President. Carbondale: Southern Illinois of American Fiction. In: Fowler, Doreen/Abadie, University Press. Ann J. (Eds.): Faulkner and Race. Faulkner and Hutcheon, Linda (1988): A Poetics of Postmodernism: Yoknapatawpha. Jackson: University Press of History, Theory, Function. New York: Routledge. Mississippi, pp. 1-34. 16 10.2478/kwg-2021-0050 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 3: 1–16 Thompson, Lucas (2019): Method Reading. In: New ---. (1995): The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse Literary History, 50/2, pp. 293-321. Project MUSE: and Historical Representation. Baltimore: John DOI 10.1353/nlh.2019.0016. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022. Hopkins University Press. Warren, John T. (2003): Performing Purity. Whiteness, Wilderson, Frank B., III. (2020): Afropessimism. New Pedagogy, and the Reconstitution of Power. New York: York: Liveright Publishing. Peter Lang. Wynter, Sylvia. (1994): ’No Humans Involved’: An Open Welsch, Wolfgang (1999): Transculturality. The Puzzling Letter to My Colleagues. In: Forum N.H.I. Knowledge Form of Cultures Today. In: Featherstone, Mike/ Lash, for the 21st Century - Knowledge on Trial, 1/1, pp. Scott. (Eds.): Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World. 42-73. London: Sage, pp. 194-213. Yancy, George. (2004): Fragments of a Social Ontology White, Hayden V. (2014): Metahistory.Baltimore: John of Whiteness. In: Yancy, George (Ed.): What White Hopkins University Press. Looks Like. African-American Philosophers on the White Question. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-24.