Appalachia as Trumpland: Honor, Precarity, and Affect in Literature from the Mountain South

Literary and cultural texts by southern poor whites in the hills of the Ozarks and Appalachia and southern migrants in Rustbelt Ohio explode with feelings such as hatred, desperation, and anger, resulting from the continual precaritization and marginalization of the mountain communities. In (auto)biographical texts as well as in literary fiction, the ?hillbilly? community is represented as self-segregated, proud, and independent, with special notions of honor and loyalty. Exploring the (dis)connections between the literary emotions of the people of the Mountain South and the code of southern honor that has produced and sustained them, this article argues that the anxious and angry emotions that Donald Trump taps into as a political strategy are not new, but rather have been building throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries. The first manifestations that this precarious affective structure was forming can be seen in this regional literature, illustrating the potential in explorations of literary ugly feelings (Ngai, 2005) of marginalized southerners. Thus, the article uncovers how poor whites position their precarious existences in Trump?s USA and how they employ various affective strategies to articulate their whiteness and their anxiety.

Honor and Humiliation: James Chesnut and Violent Emotions in Reconstruction South Carolina

Reconstruction has been seen as the period of redeeming lost southern honor. I argue, however, that the Reconstruction struggle was not simply about restoring pre-war honor to defeated Southerners, for the Civil War had not terminated or subdued honor. Rather, its contents, the idea of what was honorable, underwent changes. These changes were observed and lamented by James Chesnut, Jr. (1815–1885), a politician from South Carolina. Honor can be seen both as a source of emotion guidelines and as a tool used for navigating between acceptable and unacceptable emotions. By expressing acceptable emotions, an individual could claim ownership to honor and attempt to achieve life goals. During Reconstruction, the role of honor and the importance of honor-related emotional expression intensified. Because of major changes in society, individual goals changed and the necessity of forceful alteration to the understanding of honor arose. It became transformed, borrowing from violence, racism, and a more acute fear of shame. Aiming to preserve white supremacy, many white Southerners readjusted their honor ideals and emotional expression. Nonetheless, some moderate individuals, like Chesnut, found it difficult to adopt these new ideals and thus all but lost their political power.

SOUTHERN HONOR: AN ANALYSIS USING AMERICAN STUDIES THEORY

The goal of this article is to discuss Southern Honor, the work written by Brown using American Studies Approach/ theory. American Studies is an interdisciplinary discipline comprising of social science, humanities, history, art, economics, sociology, anthropology, politics, religion, and law. In American studies method, a researcher, for instance – from a discipline of historical science- in collecting data, he or she does not only use data from history but also from a literary work like novel or drama because a literary work was a mental fact of society at that time This makes American Studies different from the other disciplines. Southern Honor by Brown is an example of work written by American Studies approach using three principal theories of American Studies such as: 1. Reconciliation of Tenses (Past, Present, Future); 2. Reconciliation of Academic discipline (Anthropology, Economy, Politics, Sociology, Psychology, Literature, and History); 3. Reconciliation of Region, Nation, and World. For the theory of number 3 starting from something micro namely “Honors” in the society of southern America like “gentle”, “oath”, possession of wealth, and so on can explain more detail about America. The result of this research proves that “Honor” does not only give influence on the ethic and behavior of southern American society at that time, before civil war, but also provide influence on all aspects of life of American society as a whole up to now.