Coming to Accounts: Fraud and Muckraking in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition

This article traces the rhetoric of accounting in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century racial discourse, from its initial use by slave traders, to its reinscription (or re-metaphorization) as “fraud” by abolitionists, and finally to its turn-of-the-century valence in exposing the linguisti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of American studies 2013-11, Vol.8 (1)
Main Author: Kaufman, Mark David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Abolition of slavery
Abolitionists
accounting
Chesnutt, Charles Waddell (1858-1932)
Commodification
Commodities
Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)
Emancipation of slaves
Fiction
Fraud
Frederick Douglass
Ideology
muckraking
Race relations
Racism
Rhetoric
Slave trade
slavery
Traditions
Violence
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Summary:This article traces the rhetoric of accounting in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century racial discourse, from its initial use by slave traders, to its reinscription (or re-metaphorization) as “fraud” by abolitionists, and finally to its turn-of-the-century valence in exposing the linguistic double-dealing and metonymic substitution that informed—and continues to inform—racist ideology.With its emphasis on bodysnatching, doubling, and displacement of “figures,” Charles W. Chesnutt’s 1901 novel The Marrow of Tradition exposes the fallacious logic, the traces of the trade, which persisted in the figuration of racial relations in post-Reconstruction America. In doing so, Chesnutt’s novel participates in, or prefigures, a method of journalistic “muckraking” that was soon to characterize the first decade of the twentieth century.  
ISSN:1991-9336
1991-9336
DOI:10.4000/ejas.10148