This article revisits Flannery O’Connor’s racialised Christophany in her short story, ‘The Artificial N*’, in light of contemporary tensions over Confederate monuments in America. It explores her grotesque Christ (manifest in a suburban lawn jockey) that mysteriously acts as a means of grace and effects repentance and reconciliation. It teaches us how to read this racist statuary within the grotesque history of Confederate monuments in the American South. By further situating her story and this history in the matrix of art and community, materiality and memory, her work is able to provide a damning theological critique of the current debate around monument removal, without which we may be content to absent offending sculptures but leave untouched our unreconciled communities and sinful social order.

中文翻译：

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弗兰纳里奥康纳的“奇怪果实”：南方​​文学和南方历史中的诅咒纪念碑

鉴于当代对美国同盟纪念碑的紧张局势，本文重新审视了弗兰纳里·奥康纳在她的短篇小说《人造 N*》中的种族化克里斯托芬尼。它探索了她怪诞的基督（表现在郊区的草坪骑师身上），神秘地充当了恩典的手段，并实现了悔改与和解。它教我们如何在美国南部邦联纪念碑的怪诞历史中解读这个种族主义雕像。通过进一步将她的故事和这段历史置于艺术和社区、物质性和记忆的矩阵中，她的作品能够对当前围绕拆除纪念碑的辩论提供一个诅咒的神学批判，没有它，我们可能会满足于没有冒犯性的雕塑，但离开没有触及我们不和解的社区和罪恶的社会秩序。