چكيده
“Negrophobia” implies the fear of the “Negro”. And Faulkner’s Light in August (1932) stands as an outstanding novel regarding the destroying effects of “negrophobia” on black people. The agony of Faulkner’s protagonist, Joe Christmas, over his true race puts his soul on fire and deprives him of his individuality and mental peace in his confrontation with the purely white race in a society of white domination. Psychic as Joe’s problem is, it arises from the un-acknowledgement of his hybridity – born from a white mother and a Mexican father who apparently had black blood – and his exposure to “negrophobia” internally and externally. Joe’s identity crisis, intensified by racism against the black and mixed races, finds its outlet in a love-hate affair with a white woman, who stands as the weak target of the white society in danger of attack by racially mixed and black men. Consequently, Joe’s developing neurosis against his race leads to the destruction of both himself and the white society, symbolized by the murder of the white woman by a non-white man. Joe’s identity crisis is thus due to the white gaze against him. Joe’s wandering in the course of the novel, his love-hate affair with a white woman, and his death by the white man symbolize the process through which the white gaze makes an evil of an originally innocent non-white individual. Joe’s life thus represents an identity crisis due to “negrophobia”, a key term in Frantz Fanon’s writings, especially Black Skin, White Masks (1952), about the psychic problems befalling the black in societies mainly dominated by the white. Joe’s life thus provides us with a literary representation of such issues in Faulkner’s hands, himself not indifferent to racism in his contemporary USA. This study thus reads Faulkner’s novel in the light of Fanon’s.
