Regionalizing Premises

I should point out a few of my critical heroes.

1. Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse. These two women have done a lot for me as a reader and thinker. I really admire their critical project as embodied in Writing Out of Place and American Women Regionalists, the anthology of works that fit the project laid out in the scholarly volume. I'm going to need to spend some time on them at some point, but for now let's just briefly outline their claims. They establish a distinction between "regionalism" and "local color," and they emphasize that regionalism, according to this distinction, happened to be exclusively written by women. They establish a rough time period - about the 1850's to around World War I - and then outline a series of traits. The basic premises focus both on form and content. Regionalism usually involves "sketches," plotless literary work that describes character without simple, linear narrative. And it manages to represent alternative lifestyles, where women are given or are shown to have power without the intervention of men. Local color usually has strong or clear plot, and subjugates or limits the other. Local color is colonizing or circumscribing the out-of-the-way place. To illustrate this more clearly: a regionalist might depict the life in a country town as meaningful and fulfilling (as in The Country of the Pointed Firs), while a local colorist might want to show how life in the country is quaint or backward (as in "Gander Pulling" or anything by Thomas Nelson Page). This distinction becomes interesting in two ways for me: first, when regionalism becomes an influence and an avenue to publishing for minority writers and minority subjects, as in Charles Chesnutt; and, second, when certain writers appropriate the local color tradition for racist or nationalist purposes, as in Thomas Dixon. I suppose the other interesting question, for me, comes from the ways that Fetterley and Pryse connect this distinction to literary form. It isn't possible, they say, to write a regionalist novel, in the strict sense. Cather comes close, they say, especially in The Song of the Lark, but there are no regionalist novels, in their view. The novel, because of something that Fetterley and Pryse call the "ideology of form," cannot be used for regionalist purposes.

2. Raymond Williams. This guy just rocks. Dizzying erudition, incredibly incisive analysis, clear and careful writing. A critic's critic. I've been trying to read everything he's written, and that hasn't been easy. His book, The Country and the City, is vastly important to my study of regionalism, and worth reading again.

3. Edward Said. I'm not really sure too much about this guy. I mean, it's not all that obvious why he's important to me. He's not fashionable anymore. I've never really had a professor - with one exception, and she wasn't all that crucial to my studies or my development - recommend or praise him. I suppose he's so mainstream that it's not saying anything to admit to this. But he's still important to me.

4. Anna Tsing. I had to read a book of hers for a class. It made a significant impression on me, and I think that it helped me with regionalism. She's an anthropologist, and she studied with James Clifford. She's done a lot of work in Indonesia, and I like the way that she situates the discussion of out-of-the-way places.

5. Michel Foucault. I worked pretty hard to make sense out of this guy in graduate school. As a result, I feel like I have a good grasp of most of his claims, and his work has become an integral part of my understanding of the field. It's hard for me to notice his influence sometimes because it is so pervasive.

6. Stuart Hall. I've read a few articles, and I continue to learn a lot from him. He's been important since my prelim.

7. Fredric Jameson. He's an important part of my understanding of extrinsic criticism. I've read a lot of his early stuff, and it's pretty central to my understanding of literary criticism.

I'll update later. There are a few more that are important.