Faulkner Networked: Indigenous, Regional, Trans-Pacific
This chapter attempts to reclaim Faulkner as a “regional” writer: but regional in a new sense, embracing a new set of geographical coordinates, and a new set of historical references. What brings all of these into play is a psychology locally felt yet globally shareable, a sense of being somehow on the wrong side of history that different groups must have experienced at different points, when they have fought for something and fought in vain. It is not a good feeling, but some good might come of it nonetheless. It has the most potential for good when it is oriented outward, imagined as a principle of connectivity extending beyond Mississippi, a basis for reaching out to other localities with not much else in common. This transregional arc might turn out to be one of the most enduring aspects of Faulkner's thinking about history. This kind of regionalism is referred to a “networked” regionalism.