Blockchain Papers

Eli Ingraham

This article explores the cultural, economic, and ecological challenges of the Die Bevryde Grond Trust and communities of the larger Valley of Grace in the Breede River Basin of South Africa. It examines how ‘Deep Forgiveness’ inspires acts of practical love through reconciliation, restoration, and regeneration. This is the story of Aletta Venter, a South African farmer and descendent of European colonials, who created the Die Bevryde Grond Trust, or Freed Land Trust, to prioritize land stewardship over land ownership. It chronicles Venter’s pursuit of emerging technologies (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, blockchain, tokenization, and community currencies) as the new plows and seeders to actualize her bold dream to free the land. Venter’s story touches on all four cornerstones of Riane Eisler’s Partnership Framework: Gender, Family/Childhood, Economics, and Language/Narrative. Eisler urges that clarity of vision is required for new ideas to be translated into new realities. Venter embodies this vision by partnering with Indigenous farmers, technologists, and social scientists, to forge a new narrative of our enduring relationship with The Land.

Kirk Curnutt

Scott Donaldson, writes James L. W. West III in his short but precise preface to Fitzgerald and the War Between the Sexes, a posthumous collection of essays by the late literary biographer (1928–2020) who was a mainstay of Fitzgerald studies for a half-century, “was an excellent scholar and a good man, generous with his time and knowledge. . . . He brought a newspaperman’s curiosity to his work and an open, accessible style to his writing” (West, “Preface” viii). From the beginning of his career, the prolific Donaldson was also a master of repurposing his wide-ranging contributions to American literary history and its development. Whereas most scholars are content to see an essay or chapter into print in one venue and move on, the author, perhaps most notably of The Impossible Craft: Literary Biography (2015), found inventive ways of repackaging and reconfiguring entries on his vita, sometimes decades after the fact. Twenty years ago, just before the dawn of the e-reader era, such long-out-of-print early efforts as his The Suburban Myth (1968) and Poet in America: Winfield Townley Scott (1972) reappeared under the aegis of the print-on-demand publisher iUniverse, making available in affordable softcover editions valuable studies that remained sequestered in university stacks, unavailable to most readers. This foray into self-(re)publishing soon led to a valuable relationship with Open Road Media, which produced digital versions of his controversy-scarred John Cheever: A Biography (1988) and the unjustly overlooked Archibald MacLeish: An American Life (1992).1 Thanks to the encouragement of the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota Press also brought his much-admired Fitzgerald biography, Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1983), back to life for a new generation of scholars and fans.Perhaps most impressively, Donaldson himself rewrote nearly two dozen previously published journal articles to create the essential collection Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days (2009). It is hard to think of another omnibus of a commentator’s lifework whose contents fit together so seamlessly. By updating each essay’s secondary sources and revising for overall unity and cohesion of voice, Donaldson pulled off the rare feat of compiling a “greatest hits” collection that never sounds dated, whose analyses feel fresh and insightful rather than like time capsules from, say, 1973 (when the well-known essay “Scott Fitzgerald’s Romance with the South” first appeared in the Southern Literary Journal) or 1982 (when the oft-republished “Money and Marriage in Fitzgerald’s Stories” was featured in Jackson R. Bryer’s collection The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Approaches in Criticism).Fitzgerald and the War Between the Sexes is not, as its title may imply, a focused dissection of a specific theme across an array of Fitzgerald efforts. Rather, it is a gathering of five late efforts either unpublished or uncollected at the time of their author’s death. One main selling point of the book is its compact size and affordability: at a brisk 132 pages and a $15.95 paperback list price, the collection represents an initiative on the part of West and Penn State University Press to produce critical studies of Fitzgerald for the general reader. (West’s own Business Is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Writer, coming in 2023, will be the second book in the series.) The centerpiece here is a sixty-three-page excursion into the gender dynamics of Tender Is the Night, “Tender Is the Night: The War Between the Sexes” (1–63), which West calls “the best close reading of the novel that I have seen” (“Preface” vii). I would agree with this assessment; its core appeal is its neutrality. Ever the journalist, Donaldson declines to take a position on the contentious gender politics in the novel that can make Fitzgerald seem at best an essentialist when it comes to sexual difference and at worst a misogynist in his insistence that modernity eroded the fundamental strengths of manhood.Another of the great pleasures that accounts for the essay’s readability is that Donaldson does not harp on his thesis. Rather, he lets his discussions of key moments in Fitzgerald’s fourth novel flow with a spontaneity that arises in part from his nonchronological analysis. His discussion begins in media res, focusing on the moment in book 2, chapter 14, when Dick Diver treats (not very effectively or with much sympathy) the eczemic “woman in room twenty.” As Donaldson argues, the patient’s inflamed skin is Fitzgerald’s most autobiographical nod to the torments suffered by his wife during the initial months of her protracted hospitalization at Dr. Oscar Forel’s Les Rives de Prangins Clinic in Nyon, Switzerland, a that the to the Dick that is the of the of time who to the and that Fitzgerald his and her in the her novel the and her to and in the that this is as and as the that in gender is Donaldson is the who the the Tender Is the the From the essay on the ways in which the of “the of to Dick Diver by The from the Diver and to a that and the wife and of who as a by a and whose with Fitzgerald’s the to his Donaldson for A on and essential and to Fitzgerald’s 2, chapter a that to on her in the the of Dick and as for the that to by to as the of a as which to Dick to Donaldson not in the have the of his as a for his her own to such as to I to as a from to a from to of the than the during their than a in American Donaldson as part of his the essay also the of which Dick and As Donaldson Fitzgerald’s of the of in the relationship and may have to the the of the of and in that Tender Is the be for in the of the and the of remained a rather for the was the of a a into a a Fitzgerald best his for in which he previously in his first two This of and The and As Donaldson argues, the for of whose for and and from the of which the the in to to and Literary the own in his of his of and the and his to for his from the can the novel and the of the to A on of his “the of his and his into the of politics by a New of of of of his in the in the dissection of the of or is in Donaldson calls the and that can have on of its like who may in the feel to by the of the perhaps the of to have than as the of by and the Diver and the to the for the that one that to the very that that the very as his was in a that Dick is in the the and are to the that into its It may be that the a and is to the but on from for “the of his and and are the main as in a A discussion of book chapter at the that the to an on the that of her in the As Donaldson on de a a at her de in the an their and and A and a after their de was a in a second when her the of was to at a and the of studies that the in the of the to Tender is not and de in their to the novel is not A second to the that a of R. a to in of the to the of the late the of and in Tender was from a also the and the during the two years in which the was to his of is the he that is Fitzgerald’s at than it his in he and in a for that one of this the Donaldson as to the is that Fitzgerald this Donaldson “the that was of it on to his The very on the to which the of and Fitzgerald’s as the essay that Tender Is the is a novel that does not have to take in an to the War Between the Sexes” is such a de that one can it the essays that can but its rather and the American is a of Fitzgerald’s most novel that its general as the at the and Literary in New in an when that was the for book in the the essay a and specific who may not have or to its and pleasures the it can as a American of the novel as “the first that American in Donaldson Fitzgerald to James as a who the and the for and the As he and to the than most who are off by her and that his Donaldson together a of and and an of and is his discussion of as to is for the of As he are at and like the in a that the of the of is the one with which are This of of the the of a literary and her previously appeared as a core chapter in The Impossible that that on literary for for an after nearly years it was first I West to it to make it This is a good for the key of and is a master in the and that into literary From The of Fitzgerald: An American Life Donaldson have and to their of as the of the with was The to the essay is the that the to into his of The and the that an American the of found in is and Scott Fitzgerald, A Marriage by with the and her in of is so in its of that one scholars would its on such say, Fitzgerald’s with Fitzgerald is a of the in the not just his but efforts such as and his The appeared in the of The Fitzgerald in and as the for not one but two in Works and and of The The have from one a into the that is a . . . that articles have published that will be in a book by James L. 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Rickie-Ann Legleitner

In Kendall Taylor's The Gatsby Affair, we find a biography that more carefully explores the life of Edouard Jozan, the French pilot who infamously had an “affair” of some sort with Zelda Fitzgerald in the summer of 1924 as her husband raced to complete The Great Gatsby, and who inspired numerous creative works from both Fitzgeralds while considerably impacting their marriage. Deborah Pike's The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald provides a serious treatment of Zelda's extensive writing and visual art, asserting her role as a legitimate modernist artist.Taylor's biography provides a detailed account of the lives of both Fitzgeralds and of Jozan, opening with a timeline that runs from 1896 to 2006, showing the progression of each individual's life—a helpful visual that traces when their lives met, overlapped, and diverged. Each dense chapter offers critical insights into the historical moment as well as compelling details about the lives of individuals who existed on the periphery of the famous duo, such as Jozan's friends Rene Silvy and Bobbe Croirer. Although every Fitzgerald biography offers its own interpretation of the minutiae of the Fitzgeralds' lives and complicated relationship, Taylor interviewed and carefully researched the family and friends of the Fitzgeralds and of Jozan, creating a more complete picture of the “affair” and its aftermath. As Taylor points out, “Although Edouard has always interested Fitzgerald followers, there has been little agreement about his impact on their lives, and in an otherwise well-researched case history, the pilot has remained a mystery” (xi). This book effectively fills that gap.Of course, in any discussion of the summer of 1924, one must put quotation marks around the word “affair” for the simple reason that available evidence neither confirms nor denies an actual physical relationship between the aviator and the 23-year-old wife who was bored and restless while her husband wrote. Were Zelda and Jozan lovers or was their five-week Riviera encounter a flirtation that trespassed into emotional adultery? Biographers typically take a stand at one extreme or the other and read texts such as The Great Gatsby and Save Me the Waltz for corroboration. To a certain extent Taylor sidesteps the ambiguity of the evidence and simply asserts that the summer romance was indeed a “petite aventure, a brief affair with a willing partner” that left Scott “the proverbial mari trompé, or cuckolded husband” (71). Readers expecting a case to be made and a position staked against claims in previous Fitzgerald biographies may be thrown for a bit of a loop; for a measured assessment of clues and presumed proof (or the lack of it), one must turn to Scott Donaldson's chapter “Summer of '24: Zelda's Affair” (172–86) in his The Impossible Craft: Literary Biography (2015).Refreshingly, Taylor does not come across as biased toward either of the Fitzgeralds, but instead offers an assessment that is critical and validating of both individuals' flaws, talents, aspirations, and misadventures. Following the contemporary trend, Taylor gives careful attention to Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's upbringing in Alabama as well as to her time in various mental institutions at the end of her life, showing how her experiences run parallel to her husband's own pitiable downfall. She is not portrayed as secondary to her husband, and Jozan is also given substantial attention beyond his role in the couple's marital woes.Indeed, the major contribution of this book is its robust understanding of Jozan, including insights into his upbringing, disposition, romantic motivations, and career and marital aspirations. For this background, Taylor is deeply indebted to Jozan's daughter, Martine Jozan Work, who contacted the author shortly after the publication of her 2003 biography of Zelda, Sometimes Madness is Wisdom: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald: A Marriage, offering insights about her father, who died in 1981. Additionally, Taylor provides a clear discernment of the cultural context, a large contributor to the drama that ensued: “It was accepted that a young officer, unprepared to wed, would take a mistress. Wives held particular appeal, rivaling single women, by offering pleasure without responsibility” (71). Taylor provides a reasonable and insightful assessment of what Jozan's intentions were in his brief pursuit of Zelda, why the relationship inevitably had to end, and why the Fitzgeralds were never able to recover.For Fitzgerald, Taylor sees this event as opening old wounds, as “He had not forgotten Zelda's reluctance to marry and her involvement with the aviator replicated Ginevra King's selection of a naval pilot over him” (79). Taylor astutely assesses the motivations and reactions of the Fitzgeralds, substantially building on her previous Fitzgerald scholarship in Sometimes Madness is Wisdom. She also provides closure to the narrative by investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding Zelda's tragic death, and by exploring the misfortunes and deaths of the Fitzgeralds' family and friends. She recounts the much later passing of Jozan, a life that after Nancy Milford publicly identified him as Zelda's elusive French aviator in Zelda: A Biography (1970) was continually overshadowed by his brief involvement with the Fitzgeralds: “Instead of being celebrated for his own impressive accomplishments, Edouard and his fame became linked to the Fitzgeralds in the literary cosmos” (205).The one weakness in The Gatsby Affair is its secondary focus on the supposed sexual assault of Zelda Sayre during her teens in Montgomery, Alabama; while other critics have acknowledged this possible attack, Taylor goes further to suggest that this trauma resurfaced after Edouard's rejection, thereby causing her mental breakdown: “Trauma can generate psychoses, sometimes the brain's way of coping, and in this instance calamitous forces were released, a Greek tragedy—French style—triggering profound depression that culminated in Zelda's first suicide attempt” (xiii). She provides support for these claims by offering a close reading of Zelda's often autobiographical writing and by identifying similar events in the lives of her adolescent friends John Sellers and Peyton Mathis (the possible assailants). But it is difficult to prove any causal chain, especially one tied to a precipitous mental break. Taylor goes on to examine the repeated misdiagnoses and mistreatment that Zelda faced while in various mental institutions: “Asylums dismantle people, rarely reassemble them, and Zelda's internment only worsened preexisting conditions, leaving deep psychic scars” (137). This investigation is an honest assessment of the shortcomings of the mental health system at this time as well as the damage it did to Zelda's life and art. However, it seems contradictory to assert the cause for a mental collapse and then to critique a system that offers rushed, generalized, and improper diagnoses.Overall, this biography is well worth reading for any seasoned Fitzgerald scholar or new enthusiast. It is carefully researched, and it delivers original considerations of the role Jozan played in the lives and art of both Fitzgeralds, while also acknowledging how his brief encounter with the couple would come to overshadow his many achievements. It establishes the affair as a pivotal moment that would markedly influence the lives and art of both Fitzgeralds, supplying new insight into a complex and often misunderstood relationship. As Pike claims, “Distinguishing fact from fiction is no easy task” (15), and Taylor provides a well-crafted biographical narrative.Pike's monograph offers a fresh and thorough interpretation of the life and works of Zelda Fitzgerald both in relation to her husband and as an artist in her own right. She contends that, “A serious artist on her own terms, rather than solely her husband's muse, she merits a place in literary modernism” (4). Pike's research is thorough, as is her knowledge of biographical, historical, and literary scholarship on both Fitzgeralds, making for a well-informed and nuanced analysis of Zelda's life, her published and unpublished writings, and her visual art.Pike employs Deleuze and Guattari's theory of minor language and literature to support her claim that Zelda's writing from the margins, be that from her husband's shadow, from her position as a Southern wife and mother, or from her time in mental institutions, enables her to speak in a unique voice that breaks with the conventions of major literature—or to create work that truly encapsulates the modernist ideal to “make it new.” As Pike states, “I see her work as violently alive, experimentally modernist, and offering a new mode of experience” (31). In her overview of scholarship on Zelda, she singles out the lack of serious studies of much of her work and the tendency to look at her writing only in comparison with that of her husband. She additionally utilizes Hélène Cixous's theory of uniquely feminine writing and Julia Kristeva's conceptions of madness in her feminist and psychoanalytic analyses, as well as many cultural, historical, and literary critics to support and complicate her arguments. Her book offers a sophisticated and serious look at the complete range of Zelda Fitzgerald's work.In her examination of Zelda's texts as reactions to her position in her marriage and in society, Pike dissects a transcript of the famous May 28, 1933, meeting between the Fitzgeralds and Dr. Thomas A. C. Rennie to address “the issue of Zelda's writing and its effect on their marriage” (121). This transcript is alluded to in Taylor's biography and elsewhere, but Pike offers numerous block quotations to show Fitzgerald's and Dr. Rennie's debasing of Zelda's art, especially for its lack of exchange value in a patriarchal, capitalistic society. She further uses this transcript to analyze the different depictions of madness in Tender Is the Night (glamorous) and Save Me the Waltz (experiential), affirming Zelda's writing in a minor language to validate her own experiences and assert her identity. Similarly, she frames Zelda's early letters and magazine publications in relation to modern capitalism and advertising, offering a close reading that boasts that “F. Scott Fitzgerald may have documented the Jazz Age, but it was Zelda Fitzgerald who defined the flapper through her keen journalistic observations” (60). Pike acknowledges Scott's contributions to major literature, but she also asserts Zelda's voice as a minor modernist.In her effort to position Zelda as an artist, Pike offers readings of many texts that have been critically neglected, markedly expanding Zelda's oeuvre. In Zelda's asylum letters, Pike finds that her “writing is subversive; it does not imitate current patterns but makes up a different language” (31); this language is uniquely her own, and through it “she reinscribes an authenticity into her being” (99). Pike examines Zelda's unfinished novel Caesar's Things as a surrealist autobiography that shares striking similarities to the autobiographies of Leonora Carrington and Unica Zurn in its unstructured depiction of madness, claiming that the text “shares the revolutionary potential of female surrealist writings” (152). She admits to the problem of Zelda not being a surrealist or her using methods of automatic writing, but her framework opens up new modes of analysis, and affirms that Caesar's Things has a critical place in Zelda's collected works. Pike identifies Zelda's artwork as “conservative American modernism” (183), and offers a fresh study of her drawings and paintings, which are provided as illustrations. In her examination of Zelda's diary from the last years of her life, Pike refuses to dismiss her religiosity as symptomatic of her madness, and contends that the diary is a mystic's “journey toward enlightenment, toward artistic and spiritual self-consciousness” (214). Pike is innovative in her approach to each of Zelda's texts, and while her readings are theoretically driven, they are also clear and compelling.Admittedly, some of the analyses in The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald become more difficult to follow as Pike focuses on works such as the unfinished novel and diary that are challenging to read and only available in the Princeton University archive. But her investigation provides a strong argument as to why these materials should be digitized or otherwise published for wider readership and additional scholarship. Moreover, her bibliography delivers a comprehensive list of valuable resources for Zelda scholars working across disciplines—including literature, women's studies, history, art, psychology, and linguistics. This monograph is a significant work that further legitimizes Zelda Fitzgerald as an artist and a modernist.

Meghan Rosatelli

Reviewed by: Burdens of Proof: Faith, Doubt, and Identity in Autobiography Meghan Rosatelli (bio) Susanna Egan. Burdens of Proof: Faith, Doubt, and Identity in Autobiography. Waterloo, ONT: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2011. 210 pp. ISBN 978-1554583331, $34.95. Readers love a true story, especially if it’s a good one, because good true stories allow in that extra bit of fantasy to our everyday realities. Amidst true stories that are often, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction, the fiction sometimes overwhelms the truth and shrinks our penchant for fantasy. Whether stories that impose more fiction than fact anger, sadden, hurt, or humor us, they often trump the ruse that readers were led to believe, as they devolve into scandal and highlight a culture so enamored with stories in the first place. Susanna Egan plants her flag in this dizzying landscape of imposture in autobiography, and asks what we, as readers, can learn from the love, betrayal, and occasional acceptance of phony lives on paper. In her third book on the subject of autobiography, Burdens of Proof: Faith, Doubt, and Identity in Autobiography, Egan explores histories of faith and doubt in autobiography while focusing on acts of imposture that question our cultural tolerance for literary masquerade. What Egan finds, and what is perhaps most interesting, is that the many stories of imposture she cites all lie on a moral spectrum that is not just culturally specific, but subject-specific as well. She acknowledges the role of culture in autobiographical imposture, but perhaps ignores the diverse readership involved. Nonetheless, Burdens of Proof takes the reader on a journey of imposture that ranges from biblical texts to the infamous televised collapse of James Frey’s Million Little Pieces. Within this range, Egan argues that autobiographical imposture is both historical and political, and creates a basis of understanding for faith and doubt in specific communities. Egan situates her analysis in the genre of the study of autobiography, rather than the study of imposture on a broader scale. While relatively recent works such as The American Counterfeit by Mary McAleer Balkin, Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture by Tina Chen, or Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identity by Laura Browder focus on acts of imposture that bleed more profusely into lived impersonation, Egan’s strict autobiographical approach questions textual identity and the moral code associated with it in particular cultures. In short, she is more interested in the Wizard’s effect on Oz than in the Wizard himself. Consequently, the texts discussed are scattered upon the moral spectrum she institutes to ground the analysis, yet focused with a Canadian eye on Western acts of impersonation. Egan begins with acts of imposture in the Bible, and briefly traces the variable concept of textual identity in autobiography through the eighteenth century. With the authority of print laying a foundation of faith in [End Page 822] autobiographical texts, Egan then delves into a modern network of mass media and sensational identities to analyze James Frey and instances of Muslim imposture in the West (these stories are, interestingly, not placed in the following chapter on ethnic imposture). The case of Grey Owl, a veritable lifetime of ethnic imposture, seems to enact the range of the moral scale of autobiographical imposture in Egan’s argument—Canadian folk hero, perhaps? Loveable phony? Grey Owl gets a pass. The book ends with troubling cases of Holocaust imposture that ground the political aspects of Egan’s argument. The final chapter clarifies what is at stake when autobiographical imposture disrupts our sense of empathy and moral vigilance. On the one hand, instances of imposture in the context of Holocaust survivors remind us of the critical role of autobiography when reconstructing “difficult knowledge.” On the other hand, as Egan so poignantly explains, imposture in these contexts goes beyond holding a hand mirror to current culture or rounding out horrific histories; it hurts the victims of such atrocities. Here, imposture is not simply taboo, but dangerous. It is in these areas of autobiography where Egan’s expertise in the field is apparent—discussing how imposture serves as a political weapon, and ultimately revealing the context from which it arises...

Matthew J. Ferrence

When Natalie Maines spoke into her microphone in the spring of 2003, the crowd at London's Shepherds Bush Theatre responded with cheers. Said Maines: “Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas” (“Shut up and Sing”). The result—perhaps inevitable in the build-up to the Iraq War and its concurrent patriotic swell—struck Maines's group, the Dixie Chicks, from the top of the country music charts, drove them from the good graces of country music fans across the United States, and lingered for years in the form of reduced attendance and weaker album sales. Opponents were incensed that Maines—and by extension, the full trio of the Dixie Chicks—would openly criticize a wartime president and saw the comment as nearly an act of treason, particularly since the words were uttered abroad to an audience who likely needed little encouragement to disagree with the policies of George W. Bush. Within the dominant conservative element of country music, such a stance lay in stark contrast to the implied common values of that culture, and the Dixie Chicks were villainized for failing to adhere to those standards. At stake, for the vocal opponents who effectively barred the Dixie Chicks from country music radio and who discarded or destroyed old albums en masse, was the nation itself. This chink in the thematic armor of patriotic country music suggested a weakness within the resolve of the citizenry that demanded immediate and sure response. Thus, the Dixie Chicks were figuratively cast out of the nation of country music, were stripped of their citizenship and recast as dangerous outlaws—but not the good kind that popularized country music in the ‘70s. In fact, though the Dixie Chicks recently swept the Grammy Awards in 2007—winning in five categories, including Album of the Year and Best Country Album—it is notable that their success did not come within their “home” community of the Country Music Awards. The outlaw Chicks were not with the president, and were therefore against America; worse, they were not with country music, and were therefore against a culture that has increasingly become an insistent site of American identity in contemporary America. Call it Redneck America, a version of the United States that defines itself through self-identification as rural, country, working class, simple, true, patriotic. It is through this identification that a large portion of the U.S. sees itself or, more importantly, how the U.S. can define itself in the face of a globalizing force that threatens to undermine the previously unchallenged dominance of an America predicated on “traditional” values of home, hearth, heterosexuality, whiteness, and patriarchy. Country music, then, becomes an anthem for this America, as the form celebrates and shares these common ideals. There are scripts to country music, which the Dixie Chicks failed to follow, just as there are scripts for this idealized Redneck America. It is by following these scripts that individuals enact citizenship and prove their fidelity to the nation, and it is through these scripts that the U.S. sees itself, or perhaps how the U.S. can separate its citizenry into categories of proper and suspect. Under this system of classification the Dixie Chicks, of course, are suspect. The division inherent within this Redneck Nation is more than mere classification, as it serves to establish a baseline of normalcy for the broader American culture. That is to say, in the Redneck Nation model I'm employing, “Redneck” ceases to be a pejorative classification of the rural, southern, white working class, and instead becomes a new mode of the mainstream, one that is simultaneously unbound by the very real pressures of class and status that defined the “traditional” redneck or hillbilly even as it seeks to reify certain social situations inherent within a white, hetero, masculine America. As a theoretical construct, the Redneck Nation is certainly much broader than the Dixie Chicks and their criticism of war, broader than country music, even broader than the concept of scripts I am examining here. In fact, the modern iteration of the Redneck, as a socio-political construct of self-assignation, spreads throughout American literature and culture, with the roots of the Redneck Ideal in early American frontier literature, then continuing though modern and contemporary Southern literature and, now, a broader popular culture. In the current state of our Redneck Nation, individuals may choose to claim membership as a means to establish an incontrovertible American citizenship. Based in American ideals of self-reliance (consider Emerson and Jefferson as proto-Rednecks) and anti-elitism, the ethos of the modern Redneck identification evokes a distinctly American sense that can be defined by what it is not: not elite or high-falutin’, not overly intellectual, not overly-socialized and, perhaps most crucially, not not-American. Here I turn back to the Dixie Chicks and their violation of the American Redneck scripts. In this context, the issue of Patriotism looms largest, both overtly as a mechanism for displaying ones allegiance to a national power (and, here, Maines violated Patriotism by choosing to be “not-with” the nation) and covertly as a sign of acceptance of the ideals of the less-tangible Redneck Nation that defines contemporary American political/patriotic discourse. The two go hand in hand, of course, as the scripts I'm suggesting require fidelity to the national power as evidence of membership in the ideological Nation, just as full citizenship in the Redneck discourse predicates unwavering allegiance to the U.S. government. In the wake of 9/11, several country stars released hyper-patriotic songs that tapped in to the general American sentiment of shock, anger, even war-readiness: Clint Black's “Iraq and Roll,” Alan Jackson's “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)”, Darryl Worley's “Have You Forgotten,” Chely Wright's “Bumper of my SUV,” and of course Toby Keith's aggressive “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”1. Each of these, in its own way, followed the accepted guidelines of the Redneck Nation, as each song displayed a reaction that expressed emotions and reactions proper for the idealized American citizen. The shock, anger, and latent (or less-than-latent) desire for retribution fit the national Zeitgeist perfectly, just as it fit the acceptable conservative parameters of the Redneck scripts in operation. Keith, in fact, became an anthem-writer for the American troops themselves, as his melodic desire to stick a boot in the collective terrorist ass was soon adopted as an unofficial fight song for the nation. Keith himself seemed plenty willing to wave the flag, support the troops, and act the part of the ideal, masculine, aggressive, hetero citizen—an angry white man ready to do battle for the good of the nation. And, even as support of the ongoing war in Iraq declines, the determination for “true” Americans to support the troops, to display fidelity to the homeland, to emphasize and defend good old-fashioned American values, remains steadfast. Put another way, Chevy truck commercials are still on the air. Enter the Dixie Chicks, who must be considered as tangential citizens of contemporary America, as defined by the scripts of the Redneck Nation, because of their failure to fit the masculine ideal. Still, before the 2003 uproar, the Dixie Chicks fit the scripts just fine, singing their way to the top of country music, even if their brand of country might be a little too bluegrass for the usual mainstream. But so long as the Chicks acted within the accepted parameters of their scripts—as pretty girls singing pretty songs, raising pretty children—they were acceptable citizens. But in going off-book, so to speak, by criticizing the president and his desire to go to war, the Dixie Chicks exposed themselves as deviants from the Redneck Nation. Their resistance, then, immediately called into question their status as citizens. And, in fact, with their lack of maleness already working against them, they were quickly condemned as poseurs to the Redneck Nation and were summarily evicted. That their status could be no more than tangential pre-Shepherds Bush is revealed in the way that criticism against the Dixie Chicks quickly took an ugly gendered turn. Maines was called “The Dixie Bitch,” and at least one country music listener called in to a station to offer this advice: “They should send Natalie over to Iraq, strap her to a bomb, and just drop her over Baghdad” (Shut Up and Sing). Similarly, the band was relabeled as the “Dixie Sluts” or “Ditzy Twits,” who Pat Buchanan suggested were “the dumbest, dumbest bimbos, with due respect” (Shut Up and Sing). That a patriotic snafu could so quickly result in the assignation of status as Bitches, Sluts, Ditzes, and Bimbos displays how tenuous the band's citizenship in the nation had been prior to the flap. Further, that such gendered epithets were so close at hand displays the inherent masculinity and anti-feminism within the script of the Redneck Nation. Any woman who breaks from the standard line is instantly cast as sexualized and empty-headed, removing her ability to offer intelligent debate (after all, she's just a bimbo ditz!) and reaffirming the woman's role as sexual object. Following the script allows temporary relief from or, at least, sublimated patriarchal dominance. Citizenship can only be won, though, by strict submission to the ideals of the Nation; deviance risks banishment and loss of protection. Most importantly, here, are the scripts themselves, not the authenticity of the actors nor even presidential opposition itself—at least not exactly. The trick of the Redneck Ideal is that it does not require actual membership of social class. As I mentioned before, the phenomena that strikes me most is how individuals assume the role of Redneck despite socio-economic positions that would seem to nullify their inclusion. George Bush, obviously, fits this bill, as his personal image depends heavily on his role as self-acclaimed Redneck. But as Country Music Television chief Brian Philips has said: “There's a real dichotomy between the raising of the son, George W., and the way most of our audience has been raised. But God bless Karl Rove if he was able to connect those two and make people feel like he was one of us” (Willman 111). The function of the scripts, then, might be best explained as a sort of Althusserian hailing, where self-assignation as Redneck comes about because of the interpellation enacted by ideological state apparatuses, which creates an “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (693). So, individuals who are not of the marginalized working class recast themselves as such and, more, themselves convert into an apparatus that demands others who are conceived as part of the imagined class act along the lines of the scripts that govern properly inclusive behavior. George Bush, here, might be considered as equally hailed as other individuals, as his presidential policy is restricted by the ideology of the Redneck Ideal: he must follow the guidelines of white, Christian, masculine America. To prove his validity as leader of the United States, he must act within the ideal, thereby offering both model and defense of citizenship. The Dixie Chicks, then, threatened the solidarity of the Ideal, acting from within the culture in opposition to the leader of that culture. Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks read it best: “It had to be somebody or some group that seemed like the All-American girls. It was perfect. It had to be the unlikely voice from what looked like the conservative heart of America saying it. That was perfect” (Shut Up and Sing). Their greatest threat to the Redneck Ideal was to disrupt the ideological image, to prove that the so-called “conservative heart of America” was a constructed heart, to reveal just how the nation hails its citizens and dictates a particular way of being. That an All-American girl group could, in fact, break from the script showed the scripts to be impermanent, which in turn called into question the accepted parameters of citizenship. Interestingly, even as the Dixie Chicks create that disruption, they cannot help but be bound by certain scripts. The documentary Shut Up and Sing, which chronicles the group's actions following their controversy, and which is clearly intended as a remediation of their image or, more, as defense of their position, places the women in the group within a clearly feminine ideal. Each is portrayed as mother, as wife, with many family scenes prominently featured. The point seems to be that the Chicks were unduly cast as rabble-rousers, that they actually fit the American ideal. Such is the power of the script: even those who break free from it find themselves inescapably written in. All of which leads me to WWE wrestling. Howdy. I know what you're all thinkin’. Now I reckon you're all a little confused out there. But I'm not what you think I am. [He pauses to put on his black cowboy hat] I ain't no foreigner. I ain't your stereotype. I ain't no Kung Fu fighter. And to me, chopsticks are just a piece of wood. Mattera fact, there ain't no yeller about me. But there's one color about me. A little red. That's right. I'm a redneck. My name's Jimmy Wang Yang. And I'm your boy. Giddyup. Yee haw (WWE website). The message is unmistakable, substituting one stereotype for another, but clearly aligning the wrestler with the Redneck Ideal instead of the foreign suspect. He marks himself visually as part of the culture, dressed in the videos in jeans, with the hat, standing in front of a pickup truck. He wears a black leather vest emblazoned on the back with the confederate battle flag. In the ring, he wrestles in a white tank top and blue jean-like trousers and wears a Fu Manchu mustache that presents an odd duality. Historically, such facial hair marks the ethnicity of the Far East, calling to mind stereotyped images of the Mongol warriors or Chinese Kung-Fu masters that Yang denies as his heritage in the video. Yet, at the same time, the Fu Manchu has more recently been adopted as a fairly typical marker of the good old boy. On Jimmy Wang Yang, the mustache could lend either way, reinforcing his Korean ancestry or helping to mark him as the redneck he claims to be. It is through scripting, however, that his appearance becomes unambiguous. He is a Redneck, as he proclaims, because he adheres to the expected, stereotypical parameters of the redneck. More, he substitutes—or, in the case of the Fu Manchu, transforms—the stereotypes of the Asian with the stereotypes of the white Southern good old boy, and in so doing eases anxieties that might appear because of his position as a minority within wrestling. In another video, he wonders why Asians are always thought to be good at math, why they are thought to set the curve. “Only curves I know is from my old lady,” he says, etching a silhouette in the air with his hands. In twenty seconds, he abdicates his role as stereotypically intelligent Asian, substituting instead a persona of the stereotypically chauvinist redneck, thereby enacting the properly anti-intellectual strain of the Redneck Ideal and proving that he is not claiming citizenship as anything other than American. As a visually obvious minority, Jimmy Wang Yang would not immediately fit the standards of the Redneck Ideal without these “credibility”-establishing establishing videos. Like the Dixie Chicks, Yang's status as minority places him in an always tangential citizenship. But unlike the Chicks, he ameliorates his position and guarantees his “naturalization” as American citizen through scripts that reinforce his desire to be American and proves through actions his willingness to be not not-American. Significantly, prior to assuming the identity of Jimmy Wang Yang, the man in the role wrestled on Smackdown as Akio, an “evil” Japanese wrestler whose unmediated Asianness proved his outsider status and guaranteed his situation as bad guy. He also used to wrestle as part of a trio of Elvis impersonators: there's surely grand significance there, even if it presently escapes me. Certainly, race is strongly in play with the case of Jimmy Wang Yang, and just as certainly, race is one of the most crucial issues in play with the Redneck Ideal. While scholars like Lucy Jarosz and Victoria Lawson see the construction of the redneck stereotype as a means for middle and upper class whites to deflect the guilt of racism—white racism is explained as “redneck” racism (11)—the self-assignation of Redneck that is so readily apparent in the case of Jimmy Wang Yang serves instead as a way to manage racism, to allow for it without accepting guilt. That is, the Redneck script exacts a strategic move that furthers the agenda of white dominance without accepting blame. Characters like Jimmy Wang Yang don't so much reinforce stereotypes as maintain them, allowing whites to both feel distance from “real” rednecks—since it's Jimmy, after all, doing the stereotyping—and to feel part of the group. The Redneck script maintains the power and prominence of traditional white values. By adopting the stance of “minority,” or by showing how a visually obvious minority can be included in the Redneck category, the Redneck can safely assume power without notice or critique. The Redneck becomes both an achieving “minority” and a permanent of The on the back of Jimmy Wang Yang's leather then, becomes a marker of his acceptance of the Redneck Ideal and a of the power of the Ideal. It has itself to the of Jimmy Wang Yang, him as part of the group and to the group's dominance. just as the ideology hails whites and them to follow the scripts of America, it hails and them the way to find membership in the nation. by adopting and accepting that which the Redneck Ideal demands can an be accepted into national citizenship. president, country or of American identity is predicated on of Redneck And increasingly in American culture, failing to status as ideological Redneck means failing to of full into national citizenship.