The transnational turn, Houston Baker's new southern studies and Patrick Neate'sTwelve Bar Blues
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3852339 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martyn Bone (0000-0002-2876-0912, University of Copenhagen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 189-211 |
| Publication date | 2005-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative American Studies An International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1477-5700 • E-ISSN: 1741-2676 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477570005053907 |
| OpenAlex | W2022489560 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 14 |
This article considers Houston Baker's take on the 'new southern studies' in Turning South Again (2001) in relation to the transnational turn in American studies and Paul Gilroy's theory of the 'Black Atlantic'. The article begins by pointing out that the vision of 'the South' formulated in southern (literary) studies during and after the 1950s frequently cut against the nationalism and exceptionalism central to the development of American studies in the same period. However, southern literary critics and writers (both white and black) developed their own exceptionalist and nativist models of identity, including Donald Davidson's 'autochthonous ideal' and the 'Quentissential fallacy' – in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin Compson's claim that 'you would have to be born' in the South to understand it. A transnational turn displaces such southern exceptionalism and nativism. However, Baker's 'new southern studies' approach to African-American experience (from slavery to 'United States black modernism') proceeds through a predominantly regional-national framework and privileges 'the South' and his own native southern authority. From a transnational perspective, Baker's approach becomes problematic when it facilitates the 'Quentissential' repudiation of Gilroy's Black Atlantic. The article concludes by discussing the transnational South of Patrick Neate's novel, Twelve Bar Blues, with reference to Gilroy and songs by Billie Holiday and Eric B and Rakim
Aesthetics · American exceptionalism · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Blues · Exceptionalism · Immigration · National identity · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Psychological nativism · American and British Literature Analysis · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2010 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |