Georgic marvel: agriculture and affect

How do humans respond, emotionally and psychologically, to georgic spaces and places? What do we think and feel when we encounter “working landscapes”—those rural places (primarily farms, but also mines and working forests) where labor produces goods that meet our material and metabolic needs? Despite increasing attention to the georgic literary tradition, these questions remain unsettled. In fact, much of the growing body of georgic scholarship disagrees about the kinds of responses generated by georgic landscapes. One task that remains, then, is to map the current scholarly terrain and synthesize, if possible, a theory of georgic affect. A related, equally important task is to ground such a theory as much as possible in the realities of soil and sun and water. Without attention to such fundamentals, the georgic mode will likely remain solely the property of academics or, equally unfortunate, become as steeped in myth and therefore as untethered from the material world as the pastoral mode. Thus, in “Georgic Marvel” I derive from scholarship and experience a nuanced but intelligible concept describing the human response to georgic places. In short, my intention is to begin to do for working landscapes what the concept of the “sublime” has done for wilderness. I argue that the experience of georgic places generates marvel and humility. At least two different kinds of catalysts initiate this reaction: encounters with either an epic past or with some kind of biotic mystery trigger marvel—a kind of negative hubris that tears down anthropocentrism by reminding us of the past and of other actors and agents. In its challenge to our self-centeredness, georgic marvel approximates the sublime, but relates to a different land use category and represents a distinct response. Whereas terror is integral to the experience of the sublime, georgic marvel creates intrigue and curiosity rather than fear. Marvel leads us deeper. The article concludes with an exploration of the ways in which a theory of georgic affect rooted in marvel would productively reorient our understanding of the human place in the world.¿Cómo responden afectiva y psicológicamente los seres humanos a los espacios geórgicos? ¿Qué se piensa y se siente cuando uno se encuentra con “entornos laborales”, esos espacios rurales (principalmente granjas, pero también minas y bosques) donde el trabajo humano produce los bienes satisfacen nuestras necesidades materiales y metabólicas? A pesar de un creciente interés por la tradición literaria geórgica, estas cuestiones siguen sin respuesta. De hecho, mucha de la investigación sobre este asunto no está de acuerdo con las respuestas humanas generadas por los paisajes geórgicos. Una tarea pendiente, entonces, es esquematizar la investigación actual y luego sintetizar, si es posible, una teoría del afecto geórgico. Otra tarea igualmente importante es fundamentar dicha teoría en las realidades de la tierra, el sol y el agua tanto como sea posible. Sin prestar atención a estos principios básicos, el modo geórgico quedará vinculado únicamente a la esfera académica o, de forma igualmente desafortunada, se volverá lleno de aspectos míticos y, por lo tanto, desconectado del mundo físico como por ejemplo el género pastoral. En este artículo exploro la investigación y la experiencia, y de ellas obtengo conceptos matizados pero inteligibles que describen la respuesta humana a los lugares geórgicos. En resumen, mi intención es empezar a hacer por los entornos laborales lo que el concepto de lo “sublime” ha hecho por los territorios salvajes. Defiendo que la experiencia de los lugares geórgicos provoca asombro tanto como humildad. Hay por lo menos dos catalizadores que inician esta reacción: un encuentro con vestigios de un pasado épico o con algún tipo de “misterio biótico” que desencadena el asombro, algo como una arrogancia negativa que destruye el antropocentrismo al recordarnos el pasado y otros actores y agentes. En este desafío a nuestro egocentrismo, el asombro geórgico se parece a lo sublime, pero se relaciona con otra categoría de uso de la tierra y representa una respuesta diferente. Mientras que el terror es fundamental en la experiencia de lo sublime, el asombro geórgico produce intriga y curiosidad más que temor. El asombro nos lleva más a lo profundo. Este artículo concluye explorando las maneras en las que una teoría del afecto geórgico basada en el asombro nos reorientaría de forma productiva hacia una nueva comprensión de nuestro lugar en el mundo

Precluded Dwelling: The Dollmaker and Under the Feet of Jesus as Georgics of Displacement

In this article, I explore displacement as a force that precludes dwelling. I do so in the context of the georgic mode, a literary tradition defined by dwelling and by the kind of agricultural endeavoring that Heidegger relates to “building.” As he explains in “Building Dwelling Thinking,” to build is not only to make or to construct, but also “to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine” (147). Thus, in addition to creation outright, Heidegger’s “building” involves husbandry. His expansive definition multiplies the kinds of human activity described by building. When humans cultivate plants, they create a situation and environment wherein the crop can flourish. The generative force is nonhuman; growth comes from the plant itself. We cannot build a vineyard as we can a structure. In addition to placing humans in a caretaking role, the three terms in Heidegger’s title further indicate that the husbandman’s “building” requires his continual attention to his place and to his work. Building, in the agricultural sense of the word, requires prolonged physical presence and much thought. Heidegger’s choice of a vineyard underscores the importance of time to dwelling: as a perennial plant that requires years of investment before bearing fruit, the vineyard functions as a site where planning and labor, observation and care unfold across the seasons and over a period of years. The full scope of Heidegger’s dwelling, then, involves prolonged (if not permanent) and productive agricultural thinking and laboring. My fundamental premise is that Heideggerian dwelling reaches a confluence with the georgic mode.

Kindred Ethics: Leopold and Badiou, Ecocriticism and Theory

“Kindred Ethics” discusses the similar objections expressed in Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic” and Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Both men oppose formulaic, procedural ethics that render thinking and consciousness unnecessary. Although the role of post-structuralist theory in ecocriticism has generated much contentious debate, the juxtaposition of these two texts—one a pillar of environmental writing and the other the work of a contemporary French theorist—demonstrates that environmental writing and theory share some common ground. Bearing the kinship of these texts in mind, this article also argues that the supposed rift between ecocriticism and theory is a fabrication: that is, both the urgent drive to “theorize ecocriticism” and the equally passionate desire to preserve its “untheorized” purity are founded upon myths that an examination of the history of the field overturns. In concluding, “Kindred Ethics” points out that in addition to being informed by post-structuralist theory from its very origins, ecocriticism should be understood as a theory in its own right—one that challenges anthropocentrism, scrutinizes setting, and utilizes narrative scholarship as an important form of archival research

“Far-Reaching Plow Lines: Jesse Stuart’s Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow”

Jesse Stuart’s characterization as a “regional” writer does him both an honor and a disservice. To praise his immortalization of W-Hollow and Greenup, Kentucky, simultaneously undercuts Stuart’s connections to national and global literary traditions. Recognizing that the “regional” label functions, at best, as a kind of back-handed compliment—to say nothing of those who deploy the word “regional” as a pejorative to deliberately strand an author’s work outside the established canon—this paper approaches Stuart’s Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow as a regional work with extra-regional implications. On the one hand, the volume dutifully attends to the local particularities of a mountain farmer’s work and surroundings, throughout the seasons. Stuart’s voice rings with the authenticity of his place. On the other hand, Stuart uses the volume to enter multiple conversations. He positions himself at the end of a long tradition of plow poetry as Robert Burns’s and Virgil’s successor. Stuart also signaled his rejection of the (now canonical) poetry of Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot. With each of these cases of interxtuality, Stuart’s MwaB-TP stands firmly in place but still reaches out well beyond his region: to embrace the Scottish Highlands and first-century BCE Rome, as well as to reject the Modernist aesthetics of Stevens and Eliot. Stuart’s work, then, anticipates our contemporary challenge in Appalachian Studies: his poetry models one way to value our culture and place without excluding “outsiders” or ignoring broader (global) realities

Appalachian Epic: John Ehle’s _The Land Breakers_ and the Diminishing Returns of Mountaineer Mythology

This paper pairs that most extreme of literary modes—the epic—and the Appalachian novels of John Ehle. I will argue that with The Land Breakers (1964), Ehle creates an epic of the Southern Highlands. Detailing settlers’ arrival to the mountains above Old Fort, North Carolina, the novel frames the work of taming the frontier using epic motifs. Like the heroes The Odyssey and Gilgamesh, Ehle’s protagonist, Mooney Wright, makes perilous journeys and is constantly in combat. In his Appalachian context, however, he most often battles the embodiments of wilderness: a primeval forest, malevolent predators, and sickness. His struggles lead Mooney to fear what he calls “the single mind” of the mountain. Though initially defeated by this supernatural allegiance between all the elements arrayed against him, Mooney refuses to abandon his home. He concludes that because “every death and loss had driven him deeper,” he “would have to stay” (401). Such a statement illustrates the way that epic formulates ideology; that is, epic provides a mythology and cements an identity, but also cultivates a mindset that directs a culture’s future course. In The Land Breakers, Mooney’s deepened commitment to a diminished place describes a possible genesis for the Mountaineer’s (in)famous “stubborn attachment to the land.” And in the balance of his Appalachian novels (several of which include Mooney or his descendants), Ehle examines how a land ethic build around loss creates a downward spiral. Thus, to conclude I explore the detrimental effect Mooney’s example has upon his biological and cultural descendants

El asombro geórgico: Agricultura y afecto

How do humans respond, emotionally and psychologically, to georgic spaces and places? What do we think and feel when we encounter “working landscapes”—those rural places (primarily farms, but also mines and working forests) where labor produces goods that meet our material and metabolic needs? Despite increasing attention to the georgic literary tradition, these questions remain unsettled. In fact, much of the growing body of georgic scholarship disagrees about the kinds of responses generated by georgic landscapes. One task that remains, then, is to map the current scholarly terrain and synthesize, if possible, a theory of georgic affect. A related, equally important task is to ground such a theory as much as possible in the realities of soil and sun and water. Without attention to such fundamentals, the georgic mode will likely remain solely the property of academics or, equally unfortunate, become as steeped in myth and therefore as untethered from the material world as the pastoral mode. Thus, in “Georgic Marvel” I derive from scholarship and experience a nuanced but intelligible concept describing the human response to georgic places. In short, my intention is to begin to do for working landscapes what the concept of the sublime has done for wilderness. I argue that the experience of georgic places generates marvel and humility. At least two different kinds of catalysts initiate this reaction: encounters with either an epic past or with some kind of biotic mystery trigger marvel—a kind of negative hubris that tears down anthropocentrism by reminding us of the past and of other actors and agents. In its challenge to our self-centeredness, georgic marvel approximates the sublime, but relates to a different land use category and represents a distinct response. Whereas terror is integral to the experience of the sublime, georgic marvel creates intrigue and curiosity rather than fear. Marvel leads us deeper. The article concludes with an exploration of the ways in which a theory of georgic affect rooted in marvel would productively reorient our understanding of the human place in the world.¿Cómo responden afectiva y psicológicamente los seres humanos a los espacios geórgicos? ¿Qué se piensa y se siente cuando uno se encuentra con “entornos laborales”, esos espacios rurales (principalmente granjas, pero también minas y bosques) donde el trabajo humano produce los bienes satisfacen nuestras necesidades materiales y metabólicas? A pesar de un creciente interés por la tradición literaria geórgica, estas cuestiones siguen sin respuesta. De hecho, mucha de la investigación sobre este asunto no está de acuerdo con las respuestas humanas generadas por los paisajes geórgicos. Una tarea pendiente, entonces, es esquematizar la investigación actual y luego sintetizar, si es posible, una teoría del afecto geórgico. Otra tarea igualmente importante es fundamentar dicha teoría en las realidades de la tierra, el sol y el agua tanto como sea posible. Sin prestar atención a estos principios básicos, el modo geórgico quedará vinculado únicamente a la esfera académica o, de forma igualmente desafortunada, se volverá lleno de aspectos míticos y, por lo tanto, desconectado del mundo físico como por ejemplo el género pastoral. En este artículo exploro la investigación y la experiencia, y de ellas obtengo conceptos matizados pero inteligibles que describen la respuesta humana a los lugares geórgicos. En resumen, mi intención es empezar a hacer por los entornos laborales lo que el concepto de lo sublime ha hecho por los territorios salvajes.  Defiendo que la experiencia de los lugares geórgicos provoca asombro tanto como humildad. Hay por lo menos dos catalizadores que inician esta reacción: un encuentro con vestigios de un pasado épico o con algún tipo de “misterio biótico” que desencadena el asombro, algo como una arrogancia negativa que destruye el antropocentrismo al recordarnos el pasado y otros actores y agentes. En este desafío a nuestro egocentrismo, el asombro geórgico se parece a lo sublime, pero se relaciona con otra categoría de uso de la tierra y representa una respuesta diferente. Mientras que el terror es fundamental en la experiencia de lo sublime, el asombro geórgico produce intriga y curiosidad más que temor. El asombro nos lleva más a lo profundo. Este artículo concluye explorando las maneras en las que una teoría del afecto geórgico basada en el asombro nos reorientaría de forma productiva hacia una nueva comprensión de nuestro lugar en el mundo

Both History and Myth: The Shelton Laurel Massacre in Fiction

The 2019 Conference gathers the ASA relatively close to the location of the Shelton Laurel massacre, which occurred in 1863 in Madison County, North Carolina (the county to the north of Buncombe, which contains Asheville). Described by historian John Alexander Williams as “the most notorious and atrocious incident of the [Civil] war,” the event remains relevant more than 150 years after it occurred. Indeed, writers from or familiar with the area have used fiction to grapple with the meaning of Shelton Laurel—what it meant at the time it occurred as well as what it means today. This paper explores two novels—Terry Roberts’s That Bright Land (2016) and Ron Rash’s The World Made Straight (2006)—that each simultaneously uses the massacre as context and presents it for re-interpretation. That is, I argue that these novels require readers to engage with Shelton Laurel as both history and myth. Instead of reducing the massacre to a kind of shorthand for the divisiveness of the Civil War or for lawlessness in the Southern mountains, in their fiction Roberts and Rash depict the Shelton Laurel massacre from multiple perspectives, and emphasize that it continues to take on meaning as time passes. As the protagonist in Rash’s novel imagines, “time didn’t so much pass as layer over things, as if under the world’s surface the past was still occurring.

Raven, Woman, Man: A/Religious Ecocritical Reading of Jim Minick’s Fire Is Your Water

In his debut novel, Fire Is Your Water, set in mid-1950s Appalachian Pennsylvania, Jim Minick introduces readers to a centuries-old healing tradition known as brauche in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, or powwowing in its English form. The novel incorporates many signature characteristics of a Christian ecocriticism, whereby tenets of the religion, such as human stewardship of creation, merge with an ecocritical valuing of, for example, the intrinsic good of that creation, independent of humans. Quite purposefully, Minick eschews traditional Western dualisms, including spirit/body, religion/nature, and human/nonhuman, further aligning his work with progressive Christian ecocritical thought, traditional Eastern religions, and Native American spiritual beliefs. Minick’s work centers on three main characters whose lives intertwine in various ways, with fire serving as a binding force. Cicero, a sassy-talking raven, speaks directly to readers, a first-bird point of view as it were. Ada Franklin, a devout Christian, possesses, but then loses, healing powwowing abilities. Lastly, Will Burk, whom both Cicero and Ada love, completes the trio and serves as religious foil