The Invention of Appalachia

by Allen Batteau

Appalachia has been characterized by any number of stereotypes, from moonshiners to country music stars. Although many scholars have sought to debunk the images of Snuffy Smith and Li'l Abner, none have identified the archetypes and the poetic values from which Appalachia's political reality has been constructed. Allen Batteau here provides an appreciation of the invention that created and sustained Appalachia in the American imagination for more than a hundred years.Portrayals of Appalachia have united such images as hillbillies, homespun, and hungry children. The unity of these, Batteau maintains, is contained not in their semantic values, but in a common mood of mountain sublimity, wilderness innocence, and the gothic horror of rural industrialization. Like other vivid fictional works— Uncle Tom's Cabin or The Grapes of Wrath —the documentaries of Appalachia, by virtue of their poetic force, have altered America's political landscape. Today Appalachia is marketed as a commodity in the form of handcrafts, television shows, and the Foxfire books. Yet the symbolism of Appalachia also contains such positive images as Daniel Boone, Alvin York, and the heroic miners of Harlan County. In the periods of reform during which American interest in Appalachia increases—the 1930s, the 1960s, and, Batteau suggests, the 1990s—these positive images will return, enlisted once again in a struggle for America's soul.

239 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1990

Reviews

[Vivian]

american studies in its imperial high theory mode gets a bad rap but this is an exemplary case of what it offers at its best: among the most robust research programs in the humanities, some of the finest prose in academic writing (bc the language is necessary for the argument), & a set of ideas that remain as relevant, challenging, & generative decades later. sorry to say that these are not on offer in the 'new critical modesty.'

batteau's argument--that 'appalachia' & 'appalachian identity' have been discursively invented & reinvented to serve various purposes, including the sanctification of a sacrificial premodern (feminized) 'nature,' the disambiguation of good v bad 'souths,' the identification with an authentic (ie white-settler) 'american' ancestry, the disidentification with regressive poverty, the justification of extractive industry, the mystification of class warfare, etc.--is immediately persuasive. he's a shrewd reader of both literature (murfree, fox, paul webb's comics) & journalism (the mine wars, the tva, the war on poverty). the influence of said's orientalism, mentioned at the end & an argument similarly built on early travel writings & their construction of difference, is clear. i do need to read shapiro's appalachia on our minds, which is another main line of influence, but i'm immensely grateful to have had this book help orient me to a field that seems (at times) overburdened by a quasireligious fetish for identity.

also, seemingly ignored in reviews, there is an incredible couple-page sequence (‘the crooked straight’) where batteau starts to parody the prose & tone of the appalachian-heart-of-darkness genre & it is so out of nowhere & so fucking funny & so good. so-called 'social constructionists' were right about everything btw. great book!