Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

"If I am native to anything": Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature

"If I am native to anything": Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature “If I am native to anything” Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature Alex Trimble Young and Lorenzo Veracini In “Th e Problem of the West” Frederick Jackson Turner simultane- ously recognizes and negates the possibility of western regionalism: Th e problem of the West is nothing less than the problem of American development.  .  .  . Th e West, at bottom, is a form of society rather than an area. It is the term applied to the region whose social conditions result from the application of older in- stitutions and ideas to the transforming infl uences of free land. (“Th e Problem” 61) Turner signals the importance of what he calls western “section- alism” but then claims that it is impossible to parse out the prob- lem of the West from the problem of the United States. Th e West, Turner argues, is the superstructural production of the frontier, the site that, before its closure, defi ned the American character and the unique nature of American development. For a writer to imagine a geographically defi ned West is, Turner argues, to “proclaim the writer a provincial” (61). For Turner the West is less a region than a “form http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Western American Literature University of Nebraska Press

"If I am native to anything": Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-nebraska-press/if-i-am-native-to-anything-settler-colonial-studies-and-western-KkcixSuX7Z

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
0043-3462

Abstract

“If I am native to anything” Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature Alex Trimble Young and Lorenzo Veracini In “Th e Problem of the West” Frederick Jackson Turner simultane- ously recognizes and negates the possibility of western regionalism: Th e problem of the West is nothing less than the problem of American development.  .  .  . Th e West, at bottom, is a form of society rather than an area. It is the term applied to the region whose social conditions result from the application of older in- stitutions and ideas to the transforming infl uences of free land. (“Th e Problem” 61) Turner signals the importance of what he calls western “section- alism” but then claims that it is impossible to parse out the prob- lem of the West from the problem of the United States. Th e West, Turner argues, is the superstructural production of the frontier, the site that, before its closure, defi ned the American character and the unique nature of American development. For a writer to imagine a geographically defi ned West is, Turner argues, to “proclaim the writer a provincial” (61). For Turner the West is less a region than a “form

Journal

Western American LiteratureUniversity of Nebraska Press

Published: Jul 12, 2017

There are no references for this article.