SOURCE: Bercovitch, Sacvan. “Culture in a Faulknerian Context.” In Faulkner in Cultural Context, edited by Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie, pp. 284-310. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.

In the following essay, Bercovitch takes what he calls a “counterdisciplinary” approach to Faulkner's works.

By “Faulknerian Context” I mean to suggest a reversal of tradition. As a rule, interdisciplinary study places literature in the context of another discipline: once mainly theology; now mainly the disciplines associated with cultural studies: anthropology, psychology, sociology, and so forth. And now as then, the result has been disciplinary colonization: literature anthropologized, psychologized, sociologized—literature as an exemplum for something else. The reason for this is not far to seek. Disciplines are systems of knowledge. They provide solutions, however tentative, and solutions are the stuff that professional careers are made of: monographs, essays, public lectures. And there's no ready alternative. Disciplines are artificial...