In this stimulating study, Scott Romine explores the impact of
globalization on contemporary southern culture and the South's
persistence in an age of media and what he terms "cultural
reproduction." Rather than being compromised, Romine asserts,
southern cultures are both complicated and reconfigured as they
increasingly detach from tradition in its conventional sense. In
considering Souths that might appear fake -- the Souths of the
theme restaurant, commercial television, and popular regional
magazines, for example -- Romine contends that authenticity and
reality emerge as central concepts that allow groups and
individuals to imagine and navigate social worlds.
Romine addresses a major critical problem -- "authenticity" --
in a fundamentally new manner. Less concerned with what actually
constitutes an "authentic" or "real" South than in how these
concepts are used today, The Real South explores a wide range of
southern narratives that describe and travel through virtual,
simulated, and commodified Souths. Where earlier critics have
tended to assume a real or authentic South, Romine questions such
assumptions and whether the "authentic South" ever truly
existed.
From Gone with the Wind, Civil War reenactments, and a tennis
community outside Atlanta called Tara, to the work of Josephine
Humphreys, the travel narrative of V. S. Naipaul, and the
historical fiction of Lewis Nordan, Romine examines how narratives
(and spaces) are used to fashion social solidarity and cultural
continuity in a time of fragmentation and change. Far from
deteriorating or disappearing in a global economy, Romine shows,
the South continues to be reproduced and used by diverse groups
engaged in diverse cultural projects.
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