A Study Of Southern Identity
In considering the American South, most people tend to view it as distinctive and different from the remainder of the United States. The South is thought to have an "identity" of its own -- and historians frequently view their task as determining the nature of the uniquely Southern identity. In his book "Away Down South: A Study of Southern Identity" (2005), Professor James C. Cobb studies Southern history, the nature of Southern identity over time, and the concept of identity itself. Cobb his written a challenging book. Cobb is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He has written extensively on Southern history.
Cobb examines Southern history and the distinctiveness of the South. He begins in the colonial period and continues through the "Old South" of the pre-Civil War Era. Cobb discusses the perceived "distinctiveness" of the South. Southern distinctiveness was generally seen as based upon plantation slavery. The South was frequently viewed as backward and barbaric with its "peculiar institution", but its defenders saw the South romantically as a land of cavaliers. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, a "New South" developed based upon Jim Crow, and upon an attempt to build an industrial base upon small textile mills, keeping many people, white and black, impoverished. Cobb shows how the development of the "New South" was based upon the "Lost Cause" view that many Southerners developed to explain the loss of the Civil War and upon a romantic and highly exaggerated picture of the virtues of the Old South.
But Cobb's book gains in depth when he turns from a consideration of early Southern history to the manner in which that history was reflected in Southern history and literature. Cobb writes insightfully about white authors such as William Faulkner and Ellen Glasgow as they struggled with understanding the South as well as about African American authors, such as Zora Neal Hurston and Sterling Brown as they approached Southern history from an African American standpoint. Cobb's study focuses on a famous book by historian W.J. Cash, "The Mind of the South" (1941) which becomes, in Cobb's account, emblematic of the deeply ambivalent attitude Southerners adopted towards their region and towards its history.
Cobb discusses whether the contemporary South remains a region set apart and distinctive from the rest of the United States. I found that Cobb had perceptive things to say about Southern identity and of the way in which "identity" should be used in approaching history -- and one's own life. Late in his book, Cobb argues that while identity has most often been viewed in terms of "distinctiveness" -- what makes the South "different" from everywhere else -- that may not be the only or the most useful way to think about the nature of identity. "Identity" can change over time. Furthermore, Cobb points out, identity can be considered not as focusing on "how the South is different" from some other region or from the United States as a whole, but rather on "what the South is" for itself. In other words, Cobb suggests focusing on what the South is, and on how people view what it may be at its best, without juxtaposing it or considering it in opposition to another region or to the rest of the United States. He suggests, and well so, how this approach to thinking about the identity or uniqueness of a region might be used to consider painful questions of regional, national, and religious identity that plague much of the world today. Cobb also suggests, that individuals, in trying to understand themselves, might well consider their identities as changing rather than static. They might consider their personalities and attributes valuable for what they are without envy of or criticism of others -- that is, irrespective of comparing their identity with the identity of some other person or group. People tend to have a multitude of identities, not just one. Cobb approvingly quotes Faulkner's observation that "it is himself that every Southerner writes about."
I think Cobb has done several things in this book. First he has given an overview of Southern history. Second. he has offered an excellent discussion of literature and history written about the South. There is much worthwhile material to explore here, and Cobb's book may serve as a guide to it. Third, and most importantly, Cobb has written eloquently on Southern identity. He offers wise suggestions on how the concept of identity may be modified in considering both the history of a region and the life of an individual.
Robin Friedman
