On Faulkner, Racism, and Life in (the) Ruins

The impetus, or aspirational motivation, behind the production of this special issue of The Faulkner Journal, which focuses on race, racism, and the work (or, perhaps, simply the possibility) of antiracism in William Faulkner’s oeuvre, was the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It was in the evening on a Monday in May of that year when the 911 call came in from an employee at the CUP convenience store in south Minneapolis. The store clerk alleged that an African American patron, later identified as 46-year-old George Floyd, had used a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase cigarettes. Four police officers arrived and attempted to arrest Floyd, who was distressed and who struggled. Despite his numerous and panicked cries of anxiety, discomfort, and, eventually, of being unable to breathe, Floyd was forcibly handcuffed and pinned face-down to the ground. While a fourth officer stood by to prevent horrified bystanders from intervening in the murder they were witnessing, three police officers held George Floyd on the ground. One officer, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee pressed into Floyd’s neck for approximately nine minutes—as Floyd complained of being unable to breath, as his body went limp, as he was asphyxiated to death, as paramedics arrived to attempt resuscitation. Within twenty minutes of the arrival of the police, George Floyd was dead. It is noteworthy that he was killed during those terrifying, early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The country was in lockdown. In fact, Floyd had lost his job due to pandemic layoffs. By the time of his murder, there had been nearly 100,000 Covid-related deaths, and only a week prior the World Health Organization had received reports of more cases within a 24-hour timeframe than at any point during the outbreak. It was a disastrous time in all the world. And yet people took to the streets—en masse, across the globe. Certainly, this was not the first time that Black murder had been caught on camera, nor was it the first time that Black death had gone viral. In fact, since the time of ritual lynching, Black people dying gruesomely has been coextensive with spectatorship and with technologies