Hannah Arendt as a reader of William Faulkner - Guest Lecture, Dr Daniel Brennan (Bond)

The paper considers the possible influence of William Faulkner's literary style on Hannah Arendt's understanding of American race politics. Knowing that Arendt gave lengthy talks on Faulkner, wrote letters to Europe recommending his works, and that she quotes his fiction (albiet sparsely) across many works, is a pause for a consideration of just what she took from his modernist stylings. Working with the claim made by Richard King, in Arendt in America, that Arendt used Faulkner's fiction to sharpen her political thinking, the paper considers the extent to which Faulkner influenced Arendt's views on civil rights activism in America. Specifically looking at Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, which Arendt quotes in The Origins of Totlitarianism, the paper asks to what extent did literature close off Arendt's thinking (which is at odds of her stated celebration of literature as an opening to thinking). Ultimately the paper argues that Faulkner's literary style acted as a ruse to Arendt's thought, giving the sense of the depiction of pluralism and the possibility of action, while in effect being closed off to both.