Inadequate Compensation: Economic Agency against the Plantation System in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

In recent years, the idea of cash payments to African Americans has been seriously discussed as a feasible way to make reparations for slavery. However, Go Down, Moses (1942) suggests the inadequacy of monetary reparations by depicting the troubled relationship between former slave owners and their unacknowledged Black relatives in the Southern plantation. Reading the economic exchanges between the two races in the novel reveals not only an institutional violence that still manipulates Blacks' (physical) properties in the postbellum era, but also the agency of Black characters who struggle in the White-centered plantation system. This interpretation sheds light on multiple Black perspectives that discussions of monetary reparations often ignore. Ultimately, Faulkner's Go Down, Moses critiques the one-sidedness of modern attempts at racial reconciliation by describing an ethics that originated in Blacks' politically complicated interests.