Crisis and Commemoration

We had a great conversation this week about the essay by Kurt O. Berends called "Confederate Sacrifice and the 'Redemption' of the South.  His claim centered around the give-and-take, push-and-pull between religious interpretation and war rhetoric.  Most scholars (he identifies three different camps) discuss the effects of Christianity on the war (did it undermine the Confederacy, support it, etc.).  Berends suggests, though, that there was a lot happening the other way around, too--that the rhetoric surrounding the Confederacy: patriotism, notions of a "holy war," sacrifice, etc., influenced the way that people understood their faith.

Then we meandered over to the front of the Amelia Gayle Gorgas library and looked at the commemorative rock erected outside on the quad to memorialize those soldiers from UA who fought for the Confederate forces.  Here are two pictures, one I filched from google images and one I took while we stood there reading it Monday:

Hope you can read it...  Let me know if not, and I'll type it out and post.  The choices made with the language used is fascinating.  I'll give you the meaty bit: "The University of Alabama gave to the Confederacy-- [this many colonels, majors, officers, etc.].  Recognizing obedience to state, they loyally and uncomplainingly met the call of duty, in numberless instances sealing their devotion by their life blood.  And on April 3, 1865, the cadet corps, composed wholly of boys, went bravely forth to repel a veteran federal invading foe, of many times their number, in a vain effort to save their alma mater, from destruction by fire, which it met at the hands of the enemy on the day following"...

We talked about Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who thought that religion should be subservient to the state...  The memorial notes the "obedience to state" which was what ostensibly led the veterans to fight (loyally and uncomplainingly, no less!)--the distinction that began to be drawn between social/political/state matters and internal religious convictions is part of what allowed "the government to lay claim to citizens' ultimate allegiance and to demand the paramount sacrifice: their lives" (Berends 103).  What do do with words/phrases like: "boys," "life blood," "veteran federal invading foe," "enemy," devotion," "call of duty"...?  

Commemoration/Memorializing is obviously an involved process...

David Ramsay Steele; The American South as a "Third World Country"...?

As promised, here's David Ramsay Steele suggesting that the South is "a third world country."  Respond!  Think especially (if it helps) in light of what you read from Beth Barton Schweiger, who discusses 18th and 19th-century revivals as highly "modern" and inventive events.  The clip's about 8 minutes long, so pull out a bag of popcorn:

Meet the Melungeons

We've been talking about some of the ways in which we mythologize the South--the narratives privileged and excluded, the complicated notion of "a simpler time," the way nostalgia can be a reductive practice, etc.  Last week, we read an essay by Jon F. Sensbach called "Before the Bible Belt: Indians, Africans, and the New Synthesis of Eighteenth-Century Southern Religious History."  Sensbach calls our attention to the fact that an evangelical Protestant "Bible Belt" was not at all a foregone conclusion in the American South. He situates the South as a transatlantic space, subject to market forces, myriad cultural interactions/confrontations and migrations of German, African, Native American, and French populations, etc., etc., etc.

In our efforts to complicate "the South" and begin looking at "Souths" that explode a seemingly monolithic tent, I thought I'd introduce you to another group of Southerners you may not be familiar with: the Melungeons.

"Melungeons" refer to groups of Appalachians with African, European, and Native American ancestries.

They were identified by some as Indian, Portuguese, mulatto, Creole, black, or white.  Whatever the case, they were--and still often are--called a very "mysterious" people, as their race(s) and "origins" are not easily pinned down.  Most were practitioners of various stripes of Protestantism (many were Baptist).  Speculations about these populations abound (we like for people and things to have easy and unchanging names, after all).  This trailer, apart from bad background music, gives you a sense of all the different ideas on how these groups should be identified:

The convergence of races and regions here offers a nice answer to why it's more than a little tricky to talk about "the South" as a singular experience.  Before--and after--something called "the Bible Belt" began to emerge, there were--and are--communities that complicate that very category.



If you want to find out more:
http://www.melungeon.org/node/4
http://www.melungeons.com/articles/jan2003.htm
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mtnties/melungeon.html

There are lots of other sites too...have some fun with Google and Wikipedia.

Crimson White on Campus History

As promised: the article from The Crimson White on campus history and the men some buildings were named for...

Find that article, called "Building Names Reflect Different Era on Campus" here:

http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/08/29/building-names-reflect-different-era-on-campus/

The response suggests that "History is history--and news should be objective."  In fact that's it's title.  Read it here: 

http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/09/12/history-is-history-and-news-should-be-objective/

What do you think about the call for an "objective" view of "history?"  I'm wondering about the invocation of something called "the past" (when does such a thing begin and end?  at what point do we start drawing boundaries around it, etc?), and our relationship to it as people separated by time and context but with a shared region...  

Wanna go visit the Gorgas rock next class?  

Only the Conscious Counts?

A quick conversation starter...  Several posts on your own blogs and comments to this blog's posts have brought up the issue of performance.  We often rely on a distinction between "being" a certain way and "acting" a certain way...but I'm thinking that's a line that deserves some smudging.

Specifically: in comments about Trail Maids, etc., there's a running theme of what they're thinking about as they dress up, playing "dress up" in general, and whether or not they're knowingly hashing out issues of slavery.  Now, the Trail Maids and the issue of "southern womanhood" is just one example...Surely this question of consciously doing this or that can translate to all sorts of topics when discussing religion and the South.

SO, since that's the case, let me add the following (to the specific case of trail maids/femininity):

1. I would be pretty surprised if someone, as she puts on an antebellum dress, actively thinks while she picks up her parasol: "I am now choosing to be complicit in a social script steeped in the horrors of slavery."

2. I'm not sure if the fact of #1 matters though...  Or does it?  Tell me what you think.

3. Some theory for your reading/thinking pleasure (posted a shorter version of this in a comment to the trail maids, too):
In the chapter you read from McPherson's Reconstructing Dixie, McPherson suggests:
 "Central to constructions of southern femininity is a notion of masquerade or performance...In her 1929 essay 'Womanliness as a Masquerade,' [Joan] Riviere structures an equation between femininity/womanliness and masquerade, writing that 'the reader may ask how I define womanliness or where I draw the line between genuine womanliness and the masquerade...they are the same thing'.  In [Mary Ann] Doane's analysis, such a formulation of femininity renders it 'in actuality non-existent' because 'it makes femininity dependent upon masculinity for its very definition'.  For Doane, femininity as masquerade is both normal and...pathological.  Such an understanding of normal or aberrant femininity as always a masquerade, a performance, echoes my own claim that femininity is a social and discursive construction, and thus its contours are always sketched in relation to other markers of difference.  But Doane's argument that this approach makes femininity always dependent on, derivative of, masculinity...enacts an erasure of the other social relations against which femininity takes shape and is performed (21-22).

McPherson wants to add to sexual difference the differences in race and region that also mark the masquerade, so she sees herself as adding to and expanding what Doane and Riviere do in psychoanalytic contexts.  Nonetheless, the central point is still one of whether or not social actors must be CONSCIOUSLY engaged in something in order to be identified as engaging in it.

There's an interesting debate to be had here, as there's surely something to be said for personal identification (I am able to mark myself or identify as this or that no matter what scholars or peers might say to the contrary).  At the same time, don't social frameworks and interests get stacked up or dismantled by our often unconscious behaviors?

Personally, I don't find a lot of use for talking about things like "intent" or the "unconscious."  I'm not telepathic, and I don't know what swims in the gray matter of others.  I do find a lot of use in talking about behavior and action, though.  And whether these things are "conscious" or not, they seem to have material consequences in a discursive and material world.

So does it matter whether we know what we're doing if we're still doing it?

123go!

The Politics of Parody

We ran out of time before I could show you this book (I'll bring it to class Monday), so I thought I'd give a quick note about it here.  Alice Randall (writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt U...I think she's still there?  someone correct me) wrote a novel called The Wind Done Gone, which Houghton Mifflin published in 2001.

Read a review here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HST/is_3_3/ai_75121833/

The book is touted on the front cover as "A provocative literary parody that explodes the mythology perpetrated by a Southern classic."  It follows the story of Cynara (called Cindy), the daughter of a white plantation owner and the domestic worker we've known as Mammy.  Scarlett is her half-sister, and is called "Other" throughout.

Now, such a text (it explodes a mythology perpetrated by a classic, after all) is bound to have its controversies.  In fact, the estate of Margaret Mitchell (author of the "original" Gone with the Wind) sued Randall for copyright infringement.  I think that's hilarious, but anyone else want to have a go with a different reaction?  What it suggests is that Mitchell's "classic" epic is an untouchable tale, at least in literary venues, and that parodies/altered versions, etc., are laying claim to something unclaimable.  Don't screw up Scarlett.  Does this have any parallels to visions/versions of Southern nostalgia and memory in general?  Or not?  

Want to know how the suit finally settled?  Okay, I'll tell you.  The parties settled with the understanding that Houghton Mifflin would continue to print copies of the book as long as it made clear it was an "unauthorized parody" (hence the fun red stamp directly on the cover).  Mitchell's estate also asked the publisher to make a donation to Morehouse College in Atlanta (an all-male historically black college), which Houghton Mifflin did.  The book's publication/distribution was halted for a month when the suit was filed.  Both parties reserve their rights with future reproductions of the book...

Reviews of the book describe it as fiercely controversial and entirely wonderful.  I'm not sure it's either.  Nonetheless, it hit a nerve in regards to its play, its parody of something seemingly "classic" about the South.  What sorts of things does that fact suggest?