{"id":116478,"date":"2021-01-11T10:34:23","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T16:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=116478"},"modified":"2021-01-11T10:34:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T16:34:23","slug":"divergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/divergence\/","title":{"rendered":"Divergence"},"content":{"rendered":"

O’Connor versus Hemingway<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The fact that our gal Flannery is repeatedly castigated and critiqued for \u201cracism\u201d when\u2026.hoo boy \u2026.have you read Hemingway lately?<\/i><\/p>\n

Let me put it this way. I would have no problem<\/i> teaching any work of O\u2019Connor \u2013 even a story with a title like \u201cThe Artificial Nigger\u201d to any group of students, while I would give serious pause to teaching something like The Killers<\/i> or The Battler<\/i>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the difference? Well, if you are agonizing over whether or not O\u2019Connor was racist, you should take a look at those two stories, compare and contrast. In Hemingway, his narrators regularly describe and characterize Black characters by the n-word, and describe their characteristics in those terms \u2013 as qualities or quirks specific to Black people \u2013 but not called Black. In O\u2019Connor, her characters may think racist thoughts and treat Black people poorly\u2026because that\u2019s what those characters would do. And racist characters are there, not just because they were in her world and she was committed to accuracy, but because they are, and are ultimately understood as, one more specimen of that thing called Pride.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t make it super-easy to have students encounter these words and descriptions and views, but at least in O\u2019Connor they are presented as expressions of specific characters living in a specific place. Hemingway, being a bit more abstracted from time and place in many of his stories, has his mostly objective narrators describe Black characters in racist, stereotypical terms.<\/p>\n

In O\u2019Connor\u2019s world, racism exists in the world, but it is obviously a damaged part of a fallen world. In Hemingway, racist attitudes are just The Way It Is, no problem, no argument, no tension.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

O’Connor versus Hemingway: The fact that our gal Flannery is repeatedly castigated and critiqued for \u201cracism\u201d when\u2026.hoo boy \u2026.have you read Hemingway lately? Let me put it this way. I would have no problem teaching any work of O\u2019Connor \u2013 even a story with a title like \u201cThe Artificial Nigger\u201d to any group of students, … Continue reading “Divergence”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism","category-culture-and-anti-culture","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-uiG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116479,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116478\/revisions\/116479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}