ABSTRACT

Narratives of suspicion and mistrust have escaped the boundaries of specific sites of discourse to constitue a metanarrative that pervades American culture. Through close reading of texts ranging from novels (Pynchon's Vineland, Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Pierce's The Turner Diaries) to prison literature, this book examines the ways in which narratives of suspicion are both constitutive--and symptomatic--of a metanarrative that pervades American culture.

chapter |15 pages

Introduction

chapter |26 pages

Chapter One Crucifying the White Man

Douglass Durham's Reinvention of the American Indian Movement

chapter |19 pages

Chapter Two Lynching the White Woman

William Pierce's ‘Day of the Rope'

chapter |25 pages

Chapter Three Women's Work?

Child Sexual Abuse Prosecution in the 1980s

chapter |14 pages

Chapter Four Motherhood and Treason

Pynchon's Vineland and the New Left

chapter |15 pages

Chapter Five Motherhood and Terror

Silko's Almanac of the Dead

chapter |14 pages

Chapter Six Beyond the Foucauldian Complex

Inscriptions and Reinscriptions of the Power Paradigm by American Prison Writers

chapter |5 pages

Epilogue