000163705 001__ 163705 000163705 005__ 20251030150826.0 000163705 0248_ $$2sideral$$a110603 000163705 037__ $$aART-1999-110603 000163705 041__ $$aeng 000163705 100__ $$0(orcid)0000-0001-6950-9153$$aNeumann, Claus-Peter$$uUniversidad de Zaragoza 000163705 245__ $$aKnowledge and Control in William Faulkner’s Light in August 000163705 260__ $$c1999 000163705 5060_ $$aAccess copy available to the general public$$fUnrestricted 000163705 5203_ $$aThe community portrayed in Light in August shares more or less rigid social convictions that are to a great extent determined by religious beliefs. The dominant denomination in Yoknapatawpha County is Presbyterianism, a Calvinist branch of the Christian church, one of its tenets being that man take control over the earth and exploit its resources. By sexist and racist implications this tenet is extended to women and non-white people, subjecting them to white male control, which makes the society in question a white supremacist patriarchy. In analyzing the power relations in the novel against this background, this paper demonstrates how knowledge is a vital tool to achieve and maintain control. Throughout the novel most of the major characters betray an almost obsessive urge to know or an equally strong impulse to obscure knowledge in order to establish control or escape that of others. However, in Faulkner's novel knowledge is an ambiguous concept. Applying the theories of Hélènene Cixous, Jacques Lacan, and Louis Althusser to the text, various kinds of knowledge are discerned: the awareness of factual circumstances, fixed categories imposed on reality, and ostensible truth as defined by ideology. The discrepancy between these versions (together with the basic religious tenets) is proven to determine the major conflicts between and within the principal characters. 000163705 540__ $$9info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess$$aby-sa$$uhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.es 000163705 655_4 $$ainfo:eu-repo/semantics/article$$vinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion 000163705 7102_ $$13004$$2345$$aUniversidad de Zaragoza$$bDpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.$$cÁrea Filología Inglesa 000163705 773__ $$g24, 1 (1999), 53-75$$pAAA, Arb. Angl. Am.$$tAAA. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik$$x0171-5410 000163705 8564_ $$s1446725$$uhttps://zaguan.unizar.es/record/163705/files/texto_completo.pdf$$yVersión publicada 000163705 8564_ $$s1547957$$uhttps://zaguan.unizar.es/record/163705/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon$$xicon$$yVersión publicada 000163705 909CO $$ooai:zaguan.unizar.es:163705$$particulos$$pdriver 000163705 951__ $$a2025-10-30-14:39:20 000163705 980__ $$aARTICLE