Ritual Architectures: Doorless and Makeshift Boundaries in Faulkner’s Slave Quarters

Abstract

Throughout his writings, Faulkner describes slave quarters as doorless or as having makeshift doors in contrast to the ornamented and ritualistic enclosed facades of white American-European architectures. His depictions of doorlessness in slave architectures mirror the historical and personal accounts written by his contemporaries. In Go Down, Moses, the McCaslin brothers’ tacit allowance of slave mobility through doorless slave quarters demonstrates how Faulkner’s spatial representations operate outside of previously imagined constructs for slave movement and dwelling. In conversation with the critical theory of W.E.B. Du Bois on African architecture and civilization, contributor Amy A. Foley shows the continuity of African communal living in Faulkner’s transatlantic structures. Faulkner rejects the boundaries and ornamentation essential to imperial architectures, thereby refusing an inherited European concept of civilization.