Big Muddy Reviews An American Colony
Big Muddy: a Journal of the Mississippi River Valley
In his thoughtful exploration of the Midwest's cultural roots, Edward Watts offers fresh perspectives on how this "most American of all places" has actually had relatively 1ittle to say in its own imaginative construction," allowing its regional distinctiveness to be silenced, distorted, and marginalized in favor of what Fredrick Jackson Turner referred to as a "composite national identity" based on Yankee cultural superiority and Manifest Destiny.
By applying settlement post-colonial theory to the study of American expansion into the Ohio River valley in the 19th century, Watts argues that America's regions can best be understood as intentional "cultural colonies" of the metropolitan Northeast, something akin to British imperial possessions such as Australia. As such, the Old Northwest, eventually known as the Midwest after trans-Mississippi expansion, has historically acquiesced to the inevitability of this asymmetrical imperial relationship and thus, like colonies overseas, remained largely compliant in the sense of its own cultural inferiority.
Yet, according to Watts, this cultural subjugation has never been seamless and where An American Colony helps break new ground in the study of American regionalism is his examination of the complex, contested ground of cultural "entanglement," where sundry "regionalist" writers did in fact struggle to renegotiate their assigned role in the national master narrative and develop a viable and authentic "culture of our own."
The book is a sophisticated postmodern analysis of those 19th-century literary texts selected by Watts as evidence of the Midwest's ongoing post-colonial "process of disengagement" from the East's cultural hegemony. Utilizing the vernacular nature of postcolonial theory, Watts seeks to reconstitute these oppositional voices, allowing the local histories, folklore, and geographies of the region to "speak" for themselves in a meaningful way never before allowed.
Watts admits that some might critique his assertion that the Old Northwest operated as a "cultural colony" dominated largely through misrepresentation on the textual level "to fulfill Federalist imperialist fantasies." Indeed much of the formal legislative material offered in support could alternatively be read as the fledgling federal government's anxiety over its own legitimacy. His analysis of the accompanying informal cultural coercion by writers such as James Fenimore Cooper is more convincing in this regard. But Watts' greatest contribution lies in his textured study of the "1ayered narrative" of multiracial cohabitation and fusion among the frontier's diverse populations, a reality usually underappreciated in the historiography. Emphasizing writers from the indigenous Black Hawk to the "regionalists" of the Cincinnati scene such as James Hall, Watts gives voice to those who sought to articulate a mote balanced and culturally inclusive, albeit messy, Midwestern identity that was perpetually being erased by the rigid Turnerian savage/ civilized dichotomy.
Since so much of imperialist thought is pregnant with gendered imagery, a fuller treatment of this aspect of the region's multiculturalism would have been welcome, but ultimately Watts succeeds admirably in his intent to map out the "vernacular self-conceptions" of the Midwest. In doing so, An American Colony adds significantly to our understanding of a historically accurate Midwestern culture in the 19th century. Moreover, by bringing a regionalist approach to social history's power to explore the plurality of the American experience, Watts helps point the way for future regional scholarship.
In his thoughtful exploration of the Midwest's cultural roots, Edward Watts offers fresh perspectives on how this "most American of all places" has actually had relatively 1ittle to say in its own imaginative construction," allowing its regional distinctiveness to be silenced, distorted, and marginalized in favor of what Fredrick Jackson Turner referred to as a "composite national identity" based on Yankee cultural superiority and Manifest Destiny. By applying settlement post-colonial theory to the study of American expansion into the Ohio River valley in the 19th century, Watts argues that America's regions can best be understood as intentional "cultural colonies" of the metropolitan Northeast, something akin to British imperial possessions such as Australia. As such, the Old Northwest, eventually known as the Midwest after trans-Mississippi expansion, has historically acquiesced to the inevitability of this asymmetrical imperial relationship and thus, like colonies overseas, remained largely compliant in the sense of its own cultural inferiority. Yet, according to Watts, this cultural subjugation has never been seamless and where An American Colony helps break new ground in the study of American regionalism is his examination of the complex, contested ground of cultural "entanglement," where sundry "regionalist" writers did in fact struggle to renegotiate their assigned role in the national master narrative and develop a viable and authentic "culture of our own." The book is a sophisticated postmodern analysis of those 19th-century literary texts selected by Watts as evidence of the Midwest's ongoing post-colonial "process of disengagement" from the East's cultural hegemony. Utilizing the vernacular nature of postcolonial theory, Watts seeks to reconstitute these oppositional voices, allowing the local histories, folklore, and geographies of the region to "speak" for themselves in a meaningful way never before allowed. Watts admits that some might critique his assertion that the Old Northwest operated as a "cultural colony" dominated largely through misrepresentation on the textual level "to fulfill Federalist imperialist fantasies." Indeed much of the formal legislative material offered in support could alternatively be read as the fledgling federal government's anxiety over its own legitimacy. His analysis of the accompanying informal cultural coercion by writers such as James Fenimore Cooper is more convincing in this regard. But Watts' greatest contribution lies in his textured study of the "1ayered narrative" of multiracial cohabitation and fusion among the frontier's diverse populations, a reality usually underappreciated in the historiography. Emphasizing writers from the indigenous Black Hawk to the "regionalists" of the Cincinnati scene such as James Hall, Watts gives voice to those who sought to articulate a mote balanced and culturally inclusive, albeit messy, Midwestern identity that was perpetually being erased by the rigid Turnerian savage/ civilized dichotomy. Since so much of imperialist thought is pregnant with gendered imagery, a fuller treatment of this aspect of the region's multiculturalism would have been welcome, but ultimately Watts succeeds admirably in his intent to map out the "vernacular self-conceptions" of the Midwest. In doing so, An American Colony adds significantly to our understanding of a historically accurate Midwestern culture in the 19th century. Moreover, by bringing a regionalist approach to social history's power to explore the plurality of the American experience, Watts helps point the way for future regional scholarship.
Big Muddy: a Journal of the Miss. River Valley
