Antihumanism in Native Son and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: A Comparative Naturalistic Study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the formation of the antihumanism discourse in two key American naturalist fiction texts-Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane and Native Son by Richard Wright. The research questions the hitherto basic idea of humanist discourse and asks the question in which way the autonomy, agency and subjectivity of the humanist discourse are questioned by the naturalist. The study is designed to look at the connection of naturalism and antihumanism and investigate the role of social structure in the loss of an individual's autonomy. An analytical-critical and comparative approach is used to research, a theoretical underpinning in the works of Naturalism, Determinism, Agency theory and present-day Antihumanism understanding with special reference to Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. These results suggest that both novels show characters as creatures of racial, economic, and environmental pressures that create great limitations for autonomous action. Both texts are from different socio-historical contexts, but they share their commonness in the view that the human subject is structurally conditioned and is not self-determining. The study ends by asserting that American naturalism is not just an expression of social determinism but a literary discourse which, in an antihumanism fashion, helps to deconstruct the idea of human agency and re-define subjectivity. These findings provide support towards closing the gap between naturalist criticism and contemporary thinking of anti-humanism.