Arendtian Allusiveness, Faulknerian Elusiveness: A Quotation of a Chronicle (And Vice Versa)

Abstract

This thesis examines the twentieth century political theorist Hannah Arendt’s references to the work of the twentieth century novelist William Faulkner. It does so as a way of examining the relationship between “storytelling” (or “chronicle”) and “politics.” While Arendt frequently employs literary voices and invokes matters of “story” and “word” in her discussions of politics and the political, she frequently ignores larger questions of perspective and voice that are crucial to the novels of Faulkner. However, if the forms of storytelling that Faulkner and Arendt employ differ, they converge not only literally in Arendt’s text but in a commitment to supporting the status quo (and its racism) in mid-twentieth century American politics, particularly on the question of school desegregation. In the following, I suggest that reading the two authors together and against each other opens up a more radical and just way of thinking the mechanism of “allusion” and thus, the role that the story plays in politics.