While I’ve been working through most of Faulkner’s novels — the latest was Light in August, which lacks the formal inventiveness of his most famous books but, especially in its exposition of race in the interwar South, is as good as The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying — I’ve also been reading some of the Faulkner criticism published in the last decade. Surprisingly, to me at least, the work is generally pretty vibrant. (more…)
It is a well-known fact that the worst victims of the recent exacerbation of the international division of labor are women. They are the true surplus army of labor in the current conjuncture. (more…)
(Since I’ve been reading the proprietor of Yoknapatawpha County a lot lately, I’m instituting a new feature: Tuesday Faulkner. But please, as with most things around here, don’t expect any regularity.)
Under English common law, people seeking immunity from prosecution could find refuge in a church, where they could safely stay for up to forty days, after which time they had to declare either their innocence, in which case they would face a trial, or their guilt, which earned them eternal banishment from the country. Both the sacred place of refuge and the legal process became known as sanctuary, which of course derives from the Latin word sanctus, meaning holy. Sanctuary, then, was the place and the process in which the accused were afforded a respite from the law, in which the holy entity of the church suspended the state’s juridical functioning. (more…)
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