Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 364

January 4-5, 2013: Ani DiFranco and Slavery

[A special post in response to a complex and crucial recent American non-event.]

On two historical contexts for a very 21st century controversy.In mid-December, singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco announced that she would be running (along with some songwriter friends and colleagues) a writers’ retreat and workshop in June 2014 at Louisiana’s Nottoway Plantation and Resort. Because Nottoway is a former antebellum slave plantation turned tourist resort and “educational” site (not so much about slavery itself, it seems, as about life for antebellum Southern whites), DiFranco’s choice of setting led to a significant and growing backlash, particularly on social media and in other online communities. [I should note that the site seems to have been chosen by an event planning company, although since the retreat is DiFranco’s the ultimate responsibility nonetheless resides with her.]  As a result, in late December DiFranco cancelled the retreat, writing an extended apology-but-also-defense-that’s-a-non-apologythat is likely to become a classic in that ubiquitous contemporary genre. While I’m happy to critique DiFranco’s specific choices and tone deafness, however, there are also broader American historical and cultural contexts to which we can and should connect this controversy.For one thing, I would connect Nottoway to “The Southern Restaurant,” one of the most popular culinary attractions at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As I highlighted in the Introduction to my first book, the overtly representative Southern Restaurant (also known in some promotional materials by the even more defining name “The South”) promised “to recreate the feel of an antebellum plantation, down to the ‘band of old-time plantation ‘darkies’’ which performed at all times.” While such details reveal the inescapable presence of racist narratives in these nostalgic images of the South, the restaurant overall signaled an interconnected but even broader late 19th century national trend—toward the kinds of curiosity for and attraction to the luxuries and excesses of the plantation world that would reach their apotheosis a few decades later in the immense popularity of both the literary and cinematic portrayals of Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara. This embrace of the plantation South often required, to my mind, not overt racism so much as a willful elision of race and slavery from the picture at all—an elision that, to be clear, is at least as destructive as overt racism, and that might well be echoed in DiFranco’s tone deaf choice and then defense of Nottoway as the setting of her writers’ retreat.DiFranco did acknowledge those histories of race and slavery in her pseudo-apology, but did so in a frustratingly condescending way, suggesting that she has a better sense of such histories and how to engage with them than do her critics (many of them African American). An interesting historical and cultural context for that attitude would be William Faulkner’s 1956 telegram to W.E.B. Du Bois: Du Bois had challenged Faulkner, an opponent of the era’s post-Brown federal integration policies, to a debate in the aftermath of the Emmett Till lynching and the acquittal of his accused killers; Faulkner responded by telegram, writing, “I do not believe there is a debatable point between us. We both agree in advance that the position you will take is right morally, legally, and ethically. …  If it is not evident to you that the position I take in asking for moderation and patience is right practically then we will both waste our breath in debate.” Like DiFranco, Faulkner was an immensely talented artist, and one profoundly sympathetic to the complexities and even horrors of American history and identity; but like DiFranco’s apology, Faulkner’s telegram to Du Bois suggests an unwillingness to step back and learn from those whose perspectives on and understandings of our histories would have had a great deal to add to his own. But DiFranco’s story isn’t over, and I hope her pseudo-apology won’t be the last word on this complex and important subject.                                                                              Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

January 3, 2014: 2013 in Review: Aaron Hernandez

[Before we leave 2013 behind, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to a few big stories I didn’t cover in this space. Add your thoughts, on these stories and any others from the year that was!]

On the allure and the illusion of gangsters.From Jesse James to Al Capone, Scarface to, well, Scarface, Bonnie and Clyde to Mickey and Mallory, there’s certainly nothing new about our American love affair with outlaws and gangsters, with those who make the wrong side of the law seem like the right response to our crazy country and world. In fact, you could say that self-made criminals have been idealized in our narratives for about as long as the self-made man has. So anybody who critiques one of the more recent cultural representations of that fascination, gangsta rap, as something particularly new or disturbing is either unaware of these longstanding histories and narratives or (more likely, to my mind) trying to mask racial or cultural attitudes toward that particular genre behind these more general, moralizing critiques.But on the other hand, just because gangsta rap isn’t new doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to critique it, or at least its most excessive versions; and recently I’ve experienced a striking contrast that has led me to one such critique. I’ve been re-watching all five seasons of The Wireand have come to my favorite, Season 4, with its focus on the four middle school boys struggling with childhood and adult realities in West Baltimore. Each of the four is, in his own catastrophic way, directly impacted by the culture of the corners, of the drug trade—a culture that traffics (pun intended) heavily in the gangster mythos (it’s no accident that the killer Snoop wears a Scarface shirt in one episode). And while I’ve watched these four young men (fictional characters, but no less real because of it) experience the darkest realities of those myths, I’ve happened to hear numerous gangsta rap tracks on the local rap and hip hop radio station, including (to cite only one example) Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” in which he raps “Oh you got a gun so now you wanna pop back?/AK47 now nigga, stop that!/Cement shoes, now I’m on the move/Your family’s crying, now you on the news.”Again, the gap between the image and the reality of gangsters has been part of our narratives for centuries—but I can’t help but feel that the gap is particularly destructive when it impacts young men for whom gangster life is a very real possibility, rather than simply the briefly attractive fantasy it offers so many of us. One young man for whom it seems to have been an all-too-real possibility is Aaron Hernandez, the professional football player currently awaiting a murder trial here in the Boston area; another was Odin Lloyd, the local man Hernandez is accused of murdering. Whatever precisely happened on the June night that was Lloyd’s last, it seems clear (to me, at least) that both Lloyd and Hernandez were caught up in the pursuit of a gangster life, of the guns and the crew and the respect and all the myths that come with it. And when the realities caught up with the myths, their American stories—like all those I’ve mentioned in this post—ended tragically.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2013 events you’d remember?

January 2, 2014: 2013 in Review: Iran

[Before we leave 2013 behind, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to a few big stories I didn’t cover in this space. Add your thoughts, on these stories and any others from the year that was!]

On why remembering history and recognizing reality are intricately intertwined.In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s death, I wrote a post about what it would mean for us to better remember the complex and even disturbing histories of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and the United States—and why, whatever it might mean, it’s vitally important for us to try to do so. And that’s not just because it’s always better to remember the past as fully and with as much accuracy and nuance as possible (although that is one of this blog’s slogans); it’s also because our too often over-simplified and even mythologized narratives in the present depend precisely on the absence of such historical knowledge and perspective. I don’t intend to suggest that Bin Laden was ever in the same category as Nelson Mandela; but on the other hand, as I wrote in Tuesday’s post, in one very definite way he was: both were defined as terrorists on the US Watch List. And of course, at a certain point in their histories, both were supported by the US in their fights against oppressive powers.To paraphrase my favorite film psychotherapist, a little advice about history, kiddo: don’t expect it always to tickle. When it comes to the history of the American relationship with Iran, laughs are in similarly short supply. That history goes back well into the 19thcentury, but the modern version really began with the CIA-orchestrated 1953 coup d’etat that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and replaced him with the dictatorial Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah’s brutal quarter-century rule of Iran was thus, in a very significant way, directly caused by the US; and our government consistently supported his regime through those years. Thus, while the 1979 revolution that replaced the Shah with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini was indeed itself violent and repressive, it represented a change in only one truly striking way: from a pro-American to an anti-American Iranian government. All complex histories that need far more depth and analysis, of course—but even a preliminary engagement with them offers a very different lens on the Iranian hostage crisis, the US alliance with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, and, most saliently, our current and ongoing negotiations with the Iranian government.As with any shift in our historical understanding, better remembering these histories wouldn’t necessarily lead to any one position on that current issue and debate. But at the very least, it would help—indeed, force—us to see Iran not as a caricatured evil empire or adversary but as a nation with a history as long, multi-part, and complex as our own;  and as, moreover, one with whose histories we have long been intertwined, and vice versa. In addition, recognizing those realities would likewise force us to recognize the nation’s current size and diversity, its breadth of communities and identities, the ways in which it can no more be reduced to the Ayatollah or any single figure or attitude than the US could to our president or our extremists. Would recognizing these historical and contemporary realities make it more difficult for many American leaders and pundits to argue for aggressive sanctions and/or military action against Iran? Given how much war and its arguments depend on simplified and mythologized narratives, past and present, I can’t help but think that it would.Final 2013 event tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2013 events you’d remember?

January 1, 2014: 2013 in Review: The Pope

[Before we leave 2013 behind, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to a few big stories I didn’t cover in this space. Add your thoughts, on these stories and any others from the year that was!]

On three Christian Socialists with whose lives and works the striking new pontiff resonates.One of the most unexpected stories of 2013 was the series of increasingly interesting and radical statements made by Francis, the newly elected Pope. While his strikingly tolerant (at least by the standards of the Vatican) attitudes 2)      Dorothy Day, the writer, activist, and co-founder of the Catholic Workermovement, whose socialism and anarchism were deeply tied to her religious beliefs;
3)      And Martin Luther King, Jr., who similarly linked his arguments for racial and economic equality to his profound knowledge of and engagement with Scripture, Christianity, and faith. Can’t say I ever expected to put a Pope in the same category as those three complex and great Americans. But so far, Francis deserves to be there.Next 2013 event tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2013 events you’d remember?

December 31, 2013: 2013 in Review: Nelson Mandela

[Before we leave 2013 behind, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to a few big stories I didn’t cover in this space. Add your thoughts, on these stories and any others from the year that was!]

On a couple less prominent ways to AmericanStudy an inspiring icon.In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, numerous commentators—including this AmericanStudier—expressed the importance of remembering a series of dark American connections to the legendary leader: the ways in which the Reagan administration had supported the South African Apartheid regime; and the concurrent ways in which numerous American politicians and pundits defined Mandela as a terrorist, as belonging in jail, and so on. Given the widespread rush to forget these histories and pretend that Mandela had always been praised by all of us, I certainly believe that we must indeed remind ourselves of just how many significant American voices and leaders were on the wrong side of history in this case, and through such reminders to consider what lessons we might learn from that reality.But there are other, less widely expressed but just as salient AmericanStudies lessons we can take away from Mandela’s life and death. For one thing—and I’m echoing the great Ta-Nehisi Coates on this note—many of the posthumous tributes to Mandela have paralleled quite directly what I wrote in this post about Martin Luther King Jr.: focusing entirely on Mandela’s late-life embrace of nonviolence and forgiveness and unity, and ignoring his earlier and just as strongly held beliefs in utilizing, when necessary, far more angry and even violent rhetoric and action in order to fight injustice. Moreover, these aren’t just two distinct stages; just as the optimistic conclusion of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech must be contextualized in relationship to the angry criticisms voiced in the speech’s first half, so too must we understand Mandela’s appeals to nonviolence and unity in conversation with his deep-seated understanding of the limits of those strategies and goals (and, for that matter, of any strategies and goals if they’re pursued myopically or without the abilty to adjust and respond to changing circumstances).It’s also worth noting—as a few commentators did in response to Mandela’s death—that Mandela and his African National Congress were on the US Terrorist Watch List as recently as 2008. Partly that fact reflects the kinds of specific attitudes toward Mandela and his movement (and Apartheid) that I highlighted in my first paragraph. But partly it helps us recognize something that we tend, nationally, to be quite bad at considering: how much the concept of “terrorism” represents not a category of identity or action so much as a linguistic choice; and yet how much that choice, to call (for example) Mandela a terrorist rather than an activist or freedom fighter or even militant, impacts so many other conversations and realities for all concerned. That’s not to say that there aren’t people or organizations or actions that we could accurately define as “terrorist”—but because the term does not have a set of legal standards and definitions (such as, say, “murderer”), it will always remain, even in what seem to be the most clear or salient cases, a linguistic and semantic choice, and thus one that we must always analyze and question even (especially) when it feels most obvious. Next 2013 event tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2013 events you’d remember?

December 30, 2013: 2013 in Review: The Marathon Bombing

[Before we leave 2013 behind, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to a few big stories I didn’t cover in this space. Add your thoughts, on these stories and any others from the year that was!]

On a couple ways to AmericanStudy an event that’s still understandably raw and delicate.A former Fitchburg State University student was good friends with one of the four people killed in April’s bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line (both were Chinese exchange students). One of my FSU colleagues was near the finish line with her young son and was profoundly impacted by the experience.  And as a resident of Waltham, I was required to stay in my home throughout the lockdown later that week, as police searched neighboring Watertown for the surviving second bomber and brother.  All of which is to say, I know full well how much the bombing and its aftermaths affected our local communities (as well as the nation and world), and I’m well aware that even eight months later it might feel too soon to analyze and AmericanStudy the event.But on the other hand, I’d say that’s part—if a delicate and challenging part—of the job of a public AmericanStudies scholar, to try to provide contexts and frames for even our most raw and painful moments. One such context that has interested me ever since that fateful day in April has been the question of how we remember such events, and more exactly of why we remember some tragedies far more than others. For example, two days after the Marathon bombing, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded, killing 15 people and seriously injuring more than 160 others (totals higher than the bombing’s effects). Yet while the explosion received some attention in its immediate moment, it has gone virtually unremembered on the national level since, and certainly has not occupied the continual place in our conversations that the bombing has. Of course, the bombing was a premeditated and violent act, not an accident—but the Texas explosion has its own complex and controversial histories and contexts. So why do we remember murder or terrorism so much more strongly than other tragedies? A complicated, but important, AmericanStudies question for sure.Even more complicated and delicate, but just as important, are questions about the narratives we have constructed and continue to construct of the young bombers. I’m not looking to wade into Rolling Stone territory here —that’s been done, and done, and done. But here’s a moment that stood out to me, as I followed the media coverage during my locked-down day: George Stephanopoulos was interviewing a high school class of the surviving bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and he asked her the following pair of questions: “Did he speak with an accident? Or was he Americanized?”  I’ve written before about the equation of “American” with “English-speaking,” but this moment took that equation one step further, defining an accident (a foreign one, presumably—not a Southern or Boston accent, to be sure!) as similarly outside of the definition of “Americanized.” There would be many, many ways to push back on such a narrative—which might be relatively rare in our national community, but also might not be—but perhaps the simplest would be this: it’s quite likely that most, if not all, of the Founding Fathers spoke with a British accent. So however we define “American,” accents seem utterly inseparable from it.Next 2013 event tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 2013 events you’d remember?

December 28-29, 2013: December 2013 Recap

[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

December 2: Harrisburg Histories: The Veterans Parade: A series on Pennsylvania’s capitol city begins with the post-Civil War event that represents a low and a high in our histories.December 3: Harrisburg Histories: Preserving Front Street: The series continues with the beauties and the limitations of maintaining an architectural legacy.December 4: Harrisburg Histories: The Capitol Building: The lavish building that embodies a city’s contradictions, and what to do about it, as the series rolls on.December 5: Harrisburg Histories: Communal Activism, Then and Now: One of the best parts of a city’s history, and its echo in a contemporary moment.December 6: Harrisburg Histories: Whither American Cities?: The series concludes with some thoughts on the biggest questions about our cities. December 7-8: Remembering Pearl Harbor: In honor of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, a post on how we remember such infamous days.December 9: Semester Recaps: Du Bois: A series on fall 2014 recaps starts with my special author course on W.E.B. Du Bois.December 10: Semester Recaps: Early American Lit: The series continues with a pairing that exemplifies the best of what an American Lit survey can do.December 11: Semester Recaps: Short Stories, Then and Now: Some of the interesting 19th and 21stcentury pairings in my adult learning class, as the series continues.December 12: Semester Recaps: Approaching Theory: On what literary theory doesn’t do very well, and what it does, as reinforced by my intro to theory course.December 13: Semester Recaps: Historical Fiction: The series concludes with three works from my favorite grad class, and what they can help us remember.December 14-15: Semester Recaps: Book Talks: A special post following up my most recent book talks, and thinking about what the semester of talks has meant.December 16: Representing Slavery: Uncle Remus: A series inspired by the film 12 Years a Slave starts with one of the foundational post-bellum representations of slavery.December 17: Representing Slavery: Hattie McDaniel: The series continues with the power, limits, and possibilities of performance.December 18: Representing Slavery: The Middle Passage: Three different ways to represent one of the most horrific American histories, as the series rolls on.December 19: Representing Slavery: Django: Anachronism, accuracy, and what we owe to the past.December 20: Representing Slavery: 12 Years a Slave: The series concludes with a couple takes on the opening moments of a wonderful recent film.December 21-22: Representing Slavery: Joe Moser’s Guest Post: But it’s not done yet—a special guest post on 12 Years and its director!December 23: AmericanStudies Wishes: A Site for the CEM: My annual holiday wishlist kicks off with the historic site I’d love to help make happen.December 24: AmericanStudies Wishes: Reform Now!: The wishes continues with the very American reasons why we need immigration reform.December 25: AmericanStudies Wishes: Peace on Earth: A recent controversy, a neverending story, and a Christmas wish.December 26: AmericanStudies Wishes: My Favorite Writer: My wishes for a writer you should definitely check out in the new year.December 27: AmericanStudies Wishes: A Great Next Step: The wishlist concludes with my hopes for th next stage in an inspiring American life.New Year’s series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see on the blog next month or in the new year? Guest posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

December 27, 2013: AmericanStudies Wishes: A Great Next Step

[Each of the last couple years, I’ve expressed some holiday-season wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. I’ve still got plenty on my list, so this year I’ll share five more wishes. Add your own in comments, please! And happy holidays!]

On my hopes for the next stage in an inspiring American life.The oft-quoted, and perhaps misquoted, F. Scott Fitzgerald line that “there are no second acts in American lives” is totally, utterly inaccurate. Many of the inspiring Americans I’ve written about in this space had multi-act lives, full of distinct and equally meaningful stages. And high on that list would be my Mom, Ilene Railton, whose multi-act American life has included, among many other stages: a childhood in Malden, Mass. as the daughter of second-generation Jewish American immigrants; an undergraduate major in Anthropology at Barnard College; a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College of Education; numerous jobs in the field as a preschool teacher, day care center director, child care resource and referral officer, and more; marriage and motherhood and grandmotherhood; and, most recently, a decade of work with Virginia’s Bright Stars program.Last week my Mom retired from that job with Bright Stars, her last full-time gig in that forty-year career in early childhood education. It’s been, as she’s said many times, a perfect last job, incredibly exhausting and incredibly rewarding, tied to all her prior jobs and experiences in the field but also linked to numerous new and evolving American communities, issues, and pressing questions. I know for a fact that she has impacted hundreds (at least) of young children and their families, and that they have all likewise impacted her. And I know that she won’t ever entirely disconnect from this kind of work and these communities and issues, that she will always find ways to volunteer, to offer her time and energy, to make a difference in the lives of the families and kids for whom she has worked so consistently throughout these four decades.But on the other hand, it’s time for what’s next! So, AmericanStudies Elves, my final wish for this holiday season is that my Mom find next stages and steps that challenge her, enrich her, give her new horizons and opportunities and possibilities. She’s already signed up for a writing class in the spring, and I can’t wait to read more of her work, and to get to share it in this space when it makes its way out into the world. But whatever her next act holds, I wish it be everything she deserves, and I know it’ll be as inspiring as all that’s come before. December Recap this weekend,BenPS. Wishes you’d share?

December 26, 2013: AmericanStudies Wishes: My Favorite Writer

[Each of the last couple years, I’ve expressed some holiday-season wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. I’ve still got plenty on my list, so this year I’ll share five more wishes. Add your own in comments, please! And happy holidays!]

On the contemporary writer whom you should definitely check out in the new year—and yeah, I’m biased, but it’s still true.One of this blog’s central goals, from its earliest posts into this now fourth year of existence, has been to highlight American writers with whom we should all be a lot more familiar. Charles Chesnutt. Sarah Piatt. Carlos Bulosan. Sui Sin Far. Catherine Maria Sedgwick. William Apess. I could go on—oh, could I go on—but you get the idea: American literary history is full of incredibly talented and important voices with whom we barely engage at all, even into this multicultural, canon-broadening 21stcentury moment. And while there are many valuable communal and social and historical reasons we should read these folks, the strongest argument is also the simplest: they’re great, and well worth your time on their own terms even if you don’t care about any of those contexts or connections.I say that to say this: there are certainly contexts and connections for the writer I’m sharing in today’s post that it’s important for me to note. For one thing, she’s my girlfriend. For another, related thing, I happen to know that she manages to find the time and space to write in a life full of other impressive responsibilities and interests: as a single mother to two young kids, while working full-time in marketing and promotions at a major transporation company, and while making her own jewelry to sell at craft shows, to name only three of those other pulls on her time and energy. But while knowing all those contexts and connections makes me that much more impressed that in the last year Jessica Afshar has started a writing blog, gotten multiple poems and short stories published, and gotten well into the work on her first novel, the truth is this: her talent, like that of the folks I highlighted above, speaks for itself.So AmericanStudies Elves, my wish for today is two-part: that Jess keeps finding the time and space to write (with some help from her friends); and that she can find audiences with whom to share her talents and work. She deserves it!Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Wishes you’d share?

December 25, 2013: AmericanStudies Wishes: Peace on Earth

[Each of the last couple years, I’ve expressed some holiday-season wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves. I’ve still got plenty on my list, so this year I’ll share five more wishes. Add your own in comments, please! And happy holidays!]

On the situation that seems irresolvable, and my wish for it nonetheless.Earlier this month, I signed my name to a letter opposing the American Studies Association’s proposed boycott of Israeli universities and academic institutions. By the time this piece posts, the ASA general membership’s vote on the boycott will have been completed (INSIDE BASEBALL SEE HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE BLOG SPOILER ALERT: I’m writing this on December 11th, the vote closes on December 15th, and I’ll add the result as a PPS to this post so it can at least be part of any continuing conversation), and so my stance on it will be a relatively moot point; for that reason, and because it’s not the principal thrust of this post (nor exactly in the holiday spirit), I’m not going to get into why I oppose the boycott here (although of course I’d be happy to discuss it further, whether in comments, by email, or in any other way).Whatever the results of the ASA vote, it doesn’t seem likely to me that this action—nor, to be honest, any action or inaction an organization like this could take—would have any effect on the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. One of the more striking moments from a childhood watching classic films with my Mom was when we watched the filmbased on Leon Uris’ novel Exodus (1958); I’m sure it wasn’t the only nor even a particularly intended effect, but what stood out to me was the stark realization that conflict and violence have been integral to Israel’s existence since even before the nation was founded, and I’ll admit that it’s very difficult for even this optimist to imagine a future for the nation and region that isn’t similarly war-torn. To quote the best song I know about that conflict, Steve Earle’s “Jerusalem”: “I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good/Death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood/And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way/And there was nothin' anyone could do or say.”Yet Earle’s next lines push back on that version of history, and the speaker instead “look[s] into my heart to find/That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham/Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem.” So AmericanStudies Elves, on this holiday that has for so long been associated with peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, I wish that Earle’s belief will come to be, and that even the most deeply rooted of human conflicts can move toward a different and better future. Merry Christmas if you celebrate, happy holidays if you don’t, and peace be with you in any case.Next wish tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this wish? Wishes you’d share?

PPS. Per a December 16th update, the boycott resolution passed, with about 2/3rds of the 1250 voters voting in favor of it.