The Paperwork of Whiteness: Civic Print and Performance in Thomas Dixon's "The Clansman: An American Drama"

No piece of cultural or political performance has done more than Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman: An American Drama (1905) to shape an ongoing climate of white supremacist grievance and anti-black panic. Yet, the hotly-debated... [ view full abstract ]

No piece of cultural or political performance has done more than Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman: An American Drama (1905) to shape an ongoing climate of white supremacist grievance and anti-black panic. Yet, the hotly-debated and influential play that toured the world and inspired the rebirth of the KKK is nowhere to be seen in the landscape of critical scrutiny.

In my “recovery” of Dixon’s play, I examine its conflicting manipulations of paper as a technology of white dominion. Set during the early days of Reconstruction, The Clansman choreographs numerous documents—from the ballot and Constitution to a land deed and marriage license—in an attempt to materialize racial difference, imagine the “ruin” of white womanhood, romanticize KKK para-militarism, and promote an anti-black brand of national unity. The success of this undertaking depends almost entirely on the inherited ability of Dixon’s whiteness to decide what papers count and when and for whom.

My work focuses on the ways in which Dixon uses paper to galvanize a transhistorical imaginary of past injustices to and future undoings of the “white home.” More recent print-related happenings have attempted much the same, including anti-immigrant allegations of voter fraud and the Obama “birtherism” conspiracy theory.

For Dixon, “hostile climate” is itself the most fundamental form of political and cultural performance; one aiming to justify and invigorate American hierarchies of belonging. In studying The Clansman, we should take a cue from its author: to treat his papers as if they both count and do not.