Black Faith, White Ideologies: White Supremacy as Trauma Causing Cognitive Dissonance and Isolation in The Works of James Baldwin, Charles Chesnutt, And Langston Hughes

Keith, Ravon D., Clark Atlanta University

2021-12

2020-2029

This dissertation examines fictional representations of white supremacy as trauma as reflected in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition and "The Bouquet," and Langston Hughes's "Salvation." By utilizing the theoretical frameworks of new historicism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, the systematic calamity of white supremacy is illustrated. The framework also helps to underscore the severity of trauma in the works which creates various forms of anguish in the individual and the collective. The unspoken atrocities as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, and the terror of rape and lynching in the works of Baldwin, Chesnutt, and Hughes suggest there is a correlation and relationship of trauma sustained by white supremacy in the lives of African Americans. The particular traumas depicted in Baldwin's Go Tell It, Chesnutt's Marrow and "The Bouquet," and Hughes' "Salvation," disrupt agency causing cognitive dissonance and isolation in the individual. The scope of this examination is limited to the novels, Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Marrow of Tradition and "The Bouquet." and "Salvation" as they best illustrate white supremacy as trauma in Baldwin's, Chesnutt's, and Hughes's characters and the damage that the pathology causes to self-actualization leading to cognitive dissonance and isolation in general.

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Atlanta University and Clark Atlanta University Theses and Dissertations

2021-12

dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Clark Atlanta University

Department of Humanities

Patterson, Charmayne

Clark Atlanta University

Georgia--Atlanta

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/cau.td:2021_keith_ravon_d

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/