“Just One Thing More”: Absalom, Absalom! and the Creditor-Debtor Relationship

Abstract

To what extent, if any, can art provide us with a way of thinking outside of the creditor-debtor relationship? This article looks to William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936) for an answer. I demonstrate, through a reading of the novel's anonymous lawyer, the extent to which the economic logic of the ledger (as a figure for the creditor-debtor relationship) penetrates the novel and its logic of storytelling. The article then goes on to examine, via an analysis of the novel's ending, two “remainders”—two elements that cannot be integrated into this economic logic. Finally, I draw on Judith Butler's work to suggest that Absalom, Absalom! does gesture toward a form of relationality outside of the economic terms of debit and credit, seen in Miss Coldfield's initial framing of her tale and in Butler's idea of “dependency.”