Secrecy, Suspicion, Exposure: Negotiating Authority Structures in a Settler Colonial Society as Depicted in Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox-Bow Incident
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4 janvier 2021
- doi: 10.4000/ejas.16518
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info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1991-9336
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Mots-clés
secrecy suspicion settler colonial order panopticism The Ox-Bow Incident Walter van Tilburg Clark U.S. WestSujets proches
Concealment Mistrust MisgivingCiter ce document
Marek Paryż, « Secrecy, Suspicion, Exposure: Negotiating Authority Structures in a Settler Colonial Society as Depicted in Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox-Bow Incident », European journal of American studies, ID : 10.4000/ejas.16518
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Résumé
The article discusses the ways in which Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s 1940 novel The Ox-Bow Incident problematizes the issues of secrecy, suspicion, gossip and exposure as a basis for the depiction of a variety of regulatory practices in a hierarchized settler society whose structures of authority enter a phase of renegotiation. The novel can be read as a portrayal of the Far West’s transition toward a more egalitarian and modern social organization. Clark depicts a stratified society in which striving for a form of advancement is a shared necessity that powerfully influences individual mindsets, and this tendency can redefine even the entrenched hierarchies. Secrecy and suspicion exemplify the tactics through which individual interests fuel a larger process of the renegotiation of power relations within the settler collective.