Seeing in "the darkness, visible": White Supremacy and Original Sin in Marilynne Robinson's Jack
To call White supremacy "America's original sin" seems, at first glance, untenably imprecise, little more than an occasionally useful figure of speech. With the character of Jack Boughton, however, Marilynne Robinson turns this apparent cliché into a rich, often unsettling meditation...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Johns Hopkins University Press
2022
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In: |
Christianity & literature
Year: 2022, Volume: 71, Issue: 2, Pages: 223-243 |
IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history KBQ North America NCD Political ethics |
Further subjects: | B
Marilynne Robinson
B White Supremacy B Original Sin B Paradise Lost B Jack B Predestination |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | To call White supremacy "America's original sin" seems, at first glance, untenably imprecise, little more than an occasionally useful figure of speech. With the character of Jack Boughton, however, Marilynne Robinson turns this apparent cliché into a rich, often unsettling meditation on the relationship between race and religion in postwar American life. Subtly in Gilead and Home, then persistently in Jack, Robinson constructs compelling if at times unreliable narrative viewpoints, limited but nonetheless illuminating perspectives that draw the uneasy consciousness of being an ambivalent beneficiary to White supremacy, on one hand, and the burdened conscience characteristic of the Christian doctrine of original sin, on the other, into each other's orbit. |
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ISSN: | 2056-5666 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Christianity & literature
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/chy.2022.0019 |