ABSTRACT
Faulkner, faced with the problematics of racial division and himself seeking figures of merging and synthesis, presents in Light in August a man both masculine and feminine, both black and white, a "tragic mulatto", an American double-being who breaks all the semiotic codes of society. A black is a certain thing; a black does certain jobs. To find these rhetorics in well-socialized speakers is one thing, but it is quite another to find them in the voice of the narrator. Reading and gossip seem to offer something new to be told, but both operations essentially involve recognizing the old in the new, hence misrecognizing what one sees. Perception seems particularly difficult between races and sexes. Joe finds the world puzzling, but the world in turn finds him indecipherable. Light in August depicts how Joe Christmas resists signification, while showing that we cannot tolerate anything that does not signify.
