Editorial Statement—Racial Quoting

Abstract

Editorial Statement—Racial Quoting Peter Lurie, Editor Like the editors and authors of other journals, those of us who contribute to the Faulkner Journal regularly encounter the racial epithet for Black characters. In light of recent expressions of concern about the impact of this word's use in public discourse, the journal's Advisory Board has discussed a recommendation for authors and citing such passages. We encourage authors to avoid use of the term in question. If, however, one finds that a particular instance is important to an argument about that passage, character, or circumstance, it is in our readers' interests to encounter that usage in the form Faulkner wrote it. Avoiding all use of the word does not alter its appearance in Faulkner's texts or in the world about which he wrote. Not citing it, by contrast, prevents engaging with the historical situation that produced its use as a term of derision, subjugation, and hate. Our work as scholars is to understand and question that world. As Barbara Ladd of the journal's Advisory Board put it: "I would suggest that it's worth thinking through whether eliminating offensive language or substituting inoffensive words for the words an author wrote in a work of scholarship is truly an antiracist move, or whether antiracism comes in the act of facing the words we use and examining the worlds from which they arose." As an editorial colleague at another journal put it – Nathan Grant at African American Review – "[W]hat Faulkner, Morrison, Trethewey, and other writers are trying to achieve is the exposure of the many toxicities hurtful words ordinarily have to offer—less to normalize them than to show that racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., are the warp and weft of the country's fabric, each of which contributes to an ugly design and a poor fit for its wearers." This "poor fit," "ugly design," and the active examination of their role in the American social fabric is work to which the Faulkner Journal has been and remains committed. We understand there are differences in the ways the word in question appears in Faulkner's texts. Therefore, we will not alter his language (using a substitute word or asterisks). If the term appears in a manner that remains clear despite its omission or through its contextualizing, and its appearance is not central to an interpretive or rhetorical emphasis, we ask that you not cite it directly. It is authors' individual decision about where that emphasis lies. With thanks for your continued attention to the importance of Faulkner's writing in literary studies and to our time. [End Page 193] Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press