本文旨在藉由德希達的解構理論來解讀威廉．福克納四本小說所呈現的空間詩學與他者性的關係。透過德希達解構文本延異所開啟的空間化隙縫與生產，來解讀威廉．福克納書寫美國南方所產生的空間性疑義，進而凸顯他者性對於開展威廉．福克納充滿疑義性的美國南方書寫及其所影響的美國南方文學有無限的可能性。第一章在討論威廉．福克納充滿疑義性的美國南方書寫與德希達對語言文本解構與政治倫理關懷互為表裡的關聯性。第二章研究威廉．福克納在<<聲音與憤怒>>透過書寫過往白人貴族家族所呈現的怪誕性來解構美國南方所呈現今昔時空交錯與變異。第三章延續美國南方今昔時空交錯變異在貧窮白人家庭的研究，透過威廉．福克納在<<當我彌留之際>>所呈現的鬼魅性，解構對死者承諾在現代性與傳統交錯中背後隱藏的彌賽亞性疑義。第四章透過解構美國南方傳統與正義的疑義來討論威廉．福克納在<<聖殿>>暴力之書中所體現的倫理性。第五章則是透過威廉．福克納在<<墳墓入侵者>>來討論種族與倫理交鋒中待客之道在美國南方的可能性。第六章則是總結從德希達在文字解構中所呈現的政治倫理關懷對於開創解讀威廉．福克納充滿疑義性的美國南方書寫與美國南方文學的可能性。美國南方文學透過解構威廉．福克納疑義性的美國南方書寫超越本質論與建構論、在場與不在場、過去與現在二元對立封閉的單語之中，因為美國南方文學的完整性總是在未來，總是不斷地改變。

This dissertation means to examine Faulkner’s ethico-political engagement with the South in his writing. I read Faulkner from Derrida’s spatiality of language, which insinuates into Faulkner’s writing the South a discourse of alterity bordering on the presences of absences that keep the South always open to the radically heterogeneous rather than the concrete, the embodied, and the fully present. Given that the literature of the South always centers on the problem of what makes the South a geography of the imagination and, for that matter, one is always confronted with the limits of its own articulation, Faulkner’s writing the South slashes vertically into the South for the possibilities of “the South always to come and become” without turning to the historical and ideological consolidation in all its empiricist obviousness. Just as Derrida argues against a critical demand for outer space, so Faulkner’s writing the South keeps alive a space internal to the morphologies of textual formation through the radicalization of linguistic indeterminacy. If the deconstructive process which Derrida engages in discloses an epistemological contradiction of signification and the full presence of a center in structuralist closure, to put it another way, if the deconstructive process which Derrida engages in dislocates the difference from itself through an endless postponement of presence, Faulkner’s writing the South featuring the narrative kinesis of alterity gives the double reference both to the presence of textual altericide and to the absence of the positive conception of an ethical concern as textual practices in the context of the South.
This dissertation consists of five chapters which attempt to recast Faulkner’s spatial imaginary in light of the deconstructive process which Derrida engages in. Opening with a chapter on Faulkner’s ambivalence toward the South, I will lay the fundamental groundwork for the problematization in Faulkner’s fiction. Through delving into the problem of Faulkner’s ambivalence that imbues the politics of representation, I contend that the ethical concern in Derrida’s engagement with the politics of the real world sheds light on Faulkner’s ethico-political engagement with the South in his writing. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s conceptualization of “the uncanny” and routing it through the indecision Derrida engages with in a deconstructive process, in Chapter Two, I would like to pinpoint Faulkner’s double gesture of reflection and challenge in his family narrative against the dominant regime and to argue that Faulkner’s South involves a move from the construction of a narrative as the attempted fixing of self-understanding to southern discourses in the historical and ideological contention constantly on the move.
As for the third chapter, I will engage with how Addie Bundren’s spectral haunt through Derrida’s deconstruction of the spectrality speaks to the South in social, historical, and political registers. From Derrida’s tackling of the problem of promise as an eschatological messianism, I will conclude by re-examining Faulkner’s critical interpretation of the promise to bury the dead as the end since it shows that a messianic and emancipatory movement in the context of the transformation of the South can only ensue without a teleo-ontological determination.
Working against the straightforward illustrative and exemplary criticism of Faulkner’s Sanctuary as a violent novel, the fourth chapter will venture into the three pivotally interrelated issues of violence, justice, and otherness within Derrida’s spacing text of differance and use them to investigate how Faulkner’s Sanctuary gestures toward an ethics through staging a textual encounter with alterity. In revealing Faulkner’s ethical concern for alterity, this ethical encounter with the text will help not only to disclose the violence inherent in mystifying the victimization of the other in the construction of the southern belle, but also to tackle the problematic relationship of justice to a legal structure as a foundation that articulates violence in its construction. This foregrounding of the ethical concerns in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, which addresses the problem of violence in a deconstructive way, will address how such an understanding of violence in turn sheds light upon the structural effacement of otherness.
The fifth chapter centers on a discussion of the problem of legality and justice in Faulkner’s writing the South. Through the aporetic relations of justice with law in an ethical demand of the other advanced by Derrida, the contradiction between the legalizing force and the ethical responsibility for the other in Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust has been emphasized and brought into light. Through the other discourse in Derrida’s hospitality, the problem of the eth(n)ical encounter with law has been addressed. Finally, this thesis will conclude that Faulkner’s writing “the South always to come and become,” which helps to map the South grounded if not bounded, renders the South open while revealing his continual commitment to keeping open the relation of the self to the other and the living present to the dead past, the presences of absences that have never already been given and will never be totalized in an aprioristic calculation. Faulkner’s writing the South to come and become, through his ethico-political engagement with the South, thus foreshadows the future of a promise to southern literature.

Chapter One
Introduction: William Faulkner in the South, the South in William Faulkner 1
Chapter Two
Making a Home in Public: The Uncanny South in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury 33
Chapter Three
The Ghostly Haunt in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying: Modernity, Death, and Promise 69
Chapter Four
Ethics Embodied: Re-Thinking Violence, Justice, and Otherness in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary 102
Chapter Five
Exhuming the Truth: The Problem of the Eth(n)ical Encounter with the Law in William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust 140
Chapter Six
Conclusion: The South Always to Come and Become 175
Works Cited 179

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