SPACE, RELIGION, and the CREATURELINESS of APPALACHIA Dissertation Submitted to the College of Arts and Scie

Home , Alexander Arthur, Americanism (heresy), Celtic nations, Environmental theology, Vince Miller

OF MOUNTAIN FLESH: SPACE, RELIGION, AND THE CREATURELINESS OF

APPALACHIA

Dissertation

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Theology

Scott Cooper McDaniel

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

Dayton, Ohio

May 2018

OF MOUNTAIN FLESH: SPACE, RELIGION, AND THE CREATURELINESS OF

APPALACHIA

Name: McDaniel, Scott Cooper

APPROVED BY:

______Vincent J. Miller, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor

______Silviu Bunta, Ph.D. Faculty Reader

______Kelly Johnson, Ph.D. Faculty Reader

______Anthony Smith, Ph.D. Faculty Reader

______Norman Wirzba, Ph.D. Outside Faculty Reader

______Daniel S. Thompson, Ph.D. Chairperson

Scott Cooper McDaniel

2018

iii

ABSTRACT

OF MOUNTAIN FLESH: SPACE, RELIGION, AND THE CREATURELINESS OF

APPALACHIA

Name: McDaniel, Scott Cooper University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Vincent J. Miller

The following dissertation articulates a constructive theology of creatureliness that speaks from within the particularities of Appalachia’s spatial topography and religious culture. I analyze the historical development and ecological implications of industrial resource extraction, specifically the practice of mountaintop removal, within the broader framework of urbanization and anthropocentricism. Drawing on the unique religio-cultural traditions of the region, particularly its 19th century expressions of Christianity, I employ a spatial hermeneutic through which I emphasize the region’s environmental and bodily elements and articulate a theological argument for the “creaturely flesh” of Appalachia.

Dedicated to Jade and Beatrice

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are numerous individuals that have made this dissertation possible. I would first like to thank Dr. Vince Miller, whose generosity and encouragement have proven invaluable in the completion of this dissertation. His constant support and advocacy of my research interests and this project has been integral to its completion

I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee – Dr. Silviu

Bunta, Dr. Kelly Johnson, Dr. Anthony Smith, and Dr. Norman Wirzba – for their support and time. Their questions and comments were challenging and insightful, and they have compelled me to a deeper consideration and explanation of my approach, perspective, and conclusions.

Additionally, I would like to thank my parents, Rusty and Martha Necessary. Their immense love and support for my goals has been unwavering. I am “of the mountains” because of them.

Finally, none of the following would be possible without my wife, Jade McDaniel.

Her infinite patience, unwavering support, and fervent love constantly reveal to me what it means to be “creaturely.” Whether reading chapter drafts, talking out ideas, or providing me the time and space to work, she has challenged and encouraged me to pursue this project to its end. This dissertation is as much hers as it is mine.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...... iv

DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………….....v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………...vi

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1

I. Development……………………………………………………………………….2

II. Concern………………………………………………………………………...... 8

III. Dialogue…………………………………………………………………………..11

CHAPTER ONE THE RURALITY OF NATURAL LIFE: HENRI LEFEBVRE, URBAN ABSTRACTION, AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE……………………………………………...... 24

I. Vignette – Harlan County, Kentucky 1931………………………………………...24

II. Dialectique of Triplicité and the Overcoming of Abstract Space: Hegel, Marx, and the Dialectical Thought of Henri Lefebvre...... 34

A. Hegel and Marx: The Limits of Knowledge and the Possibilities of Materialist Critique…...... 35

B. Triadic Spatiology: Henri Lefebvre and the Aufhebung of Lived Space……………………………………………………………………...40

III. The Right to the City: The Ancient Polis and Modern Abstraction………………..50

A. For the Political City: The Ancient City-State contra Urbanization….…….53

B. Against Abstraction: Representations of Space, Urbanization, and the Political City…………………………………………………………...... 57

IV. Marginal Subversion: Rurality, Nature, and Lived Space…………………………..64

vii

A. Rus and Chora: The Opening of a Counter Space………………………….68

B. On the Level of Natural Life: Lefebvre, Religion, and the Agro-Pastoral Festival……………………………………………………………………75

V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...87

CHAPTER TWO “CONTACT WITH THE EARTH”: PERIPHERAL IDENTITY, URBAN EXTRACTION, AND THE MYTH(S) OF APPALACHIAN RURALITY……………………………………………………………………………….90

I. Vignette – Yellow Creek Valley, KY 1887………………………………………....90

II. An Ancient Fringe: Peripheral Identity and Pre-Modern Urbanization……………………………………………………………………....95

A. “Peripheral Identity”: Ego-Boundaries and Liminal Spaces……………….97

B. Feudal Urbanization: Lowland Burghs and the Bureaucratic Ethos…………………………………………………………………….101

III. Pre-Industrial Appalachia: Agrarianism in the Mountains………………………...105

A. Appalachian Roots: Donald Davis and Bioregional History……………...106

B. Mountain Agrarianism: Ronald Eller and Pre-Industrial Appalachia...……113

IV. Civilization Comes to Appalachia: Railroads, Company Towns, and Late Nineteenth Century Urbanization………………………..…………………121

A. To Unite a Nation: Moral Development and the Railroad Sublime…………………………………………………………………..126

B. “Machines to Live In”: Company Towns and the Power of Urban Capital…………………………………………………………………....133

V. “Where There Were Mountains”: Mountaintop Removal and Urban Extremity in Appalachia…………………………………………………………………….139

VI. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………148

CHAPTER THREE ALONG THE VEGETAL MARGINS: EDNA ALEXANDER, URBAN EVANGELIZATION, AND THE ELEMENTAL IMAGINATION OF APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN RELIGION…………………………………………...155

I. Vignette – Eastern Kentucky, Mid-Twentieth Century………...…………………155

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II. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A Religious Sensibility of Mountaineers and Mountains………………………………………………………………………..166

A. Multiplicity of Equals: Place and Community……………………………169

B. Experience(s) of Grace: Values and Practices……………………………180

III. “A Peculiar People”: Metropolitan Representations of Appalachia………………189

A. Local Color Essays and Cultural Commodification………………………190

B. Denominational Home Missions and Regional Evangelization…………..195

IV. Remembering the Residue: Elemental Imagining Towards the Land……………..202

A. Poiesis and Ecology: Imagination and the Earth…………………………..207

B. Living in the Brown: Edna Alexander and the Encounter with Dead Leaves…………………………………………………………………...218

V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………230

CHAPTER FOUR ELEMENTAL BRIERS AND WILD CLIFFS: MERLEAU- PONTY, URBAN DISCARNATION, AND THE PROVOCATIONS OF THE FLESH…………………………………………………………………………………..233

I. Vignette – Eastern Kentucky, Late-Nineteenth Century…………………....….…233

II. Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Nature: Lefebvre and Merleau- Ponty.….………………………………………………………………………...240

A. Natural Poiesis: Lefebvre and Nature’s Creativity………………………..242

B. Generative Being: Merleau-Ponty and the Common Tissue of Existence...... 249

III. Carnal Ontos: Merleau-Ponty and the Flesh of Being…………………………..…253

A. Intertwining of the Flesh: Animality and the Limitation of Lateral Overcoming……………………………………………………………...257

i. Ineinander…………………………………………………………258

ii. Lateral Overcoming………………………………………………....262

B. Be(wild)ering Elementality: Of Vegetal and Lithic Flesh…………………269

i. Elementality and Vegetal Flesh………………………………………271

ii. Wild Being and Lithic Flesh………………………………………...286

IV. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………298

CHAPTER FIVE WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN FOLD: THEOLOGY, AGRARIANISM, AND THE CREATURELY PARTICULARITY OF APPALACHIA………………………………………………………………………….300

I. Vignette – Powell Mountain, VA 2018…………………………….…………….300

II. Introduction……………………………………………………………………..301

III. Theologies of Creation: The Possibilities and Limitations of the Agrarian Interpretation……………………………………………………………………310

IV. Toward a Theology of Creatures: From the Perspective of Appalachia…………..320

A. Strange Kinship with a Mud Turtle: Animal Creatureliness………….…...322

B. Elementality of Leaf and Brier: Vegetal Creatureliness…………………...325

C. The Wild Regolith of Mrs. Allen’s Homestead: Lithic Creatureliness……………………………………………………………329

V. Where Creatureliness Becomes: The Mountain Roots of Appalachia’s Creatures…………………...…………………………………………………….332

VI. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………341

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………343

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….348

INTRODUCTION

“I’m telling you, every day you’re leaving a place you won’t be coming back to ever. What are you going to leave behind? What are you taking with you? Don’t run off and leave the best part of yourself.” - Jim Wayne Miller

“Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.” - Nan Shepherd

Appalachia begins like a heartbeat. Elemental pulses shift water and fold earth. Fire flows and wind erodes. Plates collide, subduction occurs, peaks rise. Ridge becomes plain.

Crust thickens, rises into the air, water cuts, earth resists. Plants grow and decay, returning to the soil from which they came. Animals crawl from the mud, take to the sky, climb the trees, shed skin and fur. Creation occurs, creatures become.1

Chestnut and elk, rhododendron and black bear, hemlock and otter, salamander and laurel, river cane and wren, cranberry and nuthatch commune with ridge and valley of primeval sedimentation. Humanity is absent, but only for a time. Mississippians emerge from a southern river valley, developing a dynamic network of chiefdoms and cultivating an ecology of wild domestication. Spanish desire for minerals and gold precipitates cultural encounter. Disease and religion collapse and dilute indigenous communities. The familiarity of peaches, okra, watermelon, and sorghum begins. Cherokees remain, embodying both the

1 John McPhee. Annals of the Former World. (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

persistence and vulnerability of indigeneity. European contact continues apace. Culture evolves with topography.2

Millions upon millions upon millions of years before the present, some of those

“decaying” plants do not return to the “mud” but enter into a geodynamic metamorphosis.

As these carbon rich plants submerge in the viscous mix of water and earth they are deprived of oxygen and harden into a lithic seam that eventually fires the world and fuels

“civilization.”3 Industrialists and prospectors lay the mainlines and “discover” the slumbering mineral in the shadow of war; they will soon realize its combustible property and capital possibility. Land is taken, plants are razed, streams are diverted, rocks are penetrated.

Farmer becomes miner, homestead becomes company town, everyday rhythm becomes mechanical time. The deep shaft is replaced with the decapitated surface. What took millions of years to create is un-created in mere decades by urbanization.

I. Development

The following argument emerges from an almost indelible overlap between personal concern and academic interest. As regards the former, it represents a kind of mourning and lament about the environmental consequences of industrial resource extraction that seem to define so much of Appalachia’s past and present. Admittedly, my awareness of this problem and the subsequent realization of the extent to which it has shaped my own self- understanding, has been somewhat fitful, never really coming to fruition until, as with the experience of a many Appalachian scholars, I left the region. Distance seems to have cultivated a more intentional attachment.

2 Donald Davis. Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of Appalachia. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2005). 3 Lowell Duckert. “Earth’s Prospects” in Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, Editors. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

And yet, it was only through such distance that I found myself immersed in the academic or intellectual reflections on the region. Despite having grown up in Southwest

Virginia and attending a small-liberal arts college in my hometown, I had yet to read any text from the field of Appalachian Studies until the summer following my first year at the

University of Dayton. Having been awarded a summer fellowship, in which I proposed to examine the overlap between Yoderian ecclesiology and agrarianism, I pursued a number of rabbit trails into a deeper awareness of Appalachia’s complex and fascinating history. It was at this moment that my academic concerns shifted, away from a predominant focus on the political and cultural dimensions and implications of Anabaptist Christology and ecclesiology, and towards an ever-deepening identification with Appalachia.

My identity as “Appalachian” has therefore come to – if not define – fundamentally shape my approach to theology and religious studies. However, if my deepening awareness of my “location” as an academic has precipitated a new subject of intellectual inquiry, it has done so only in response to the mourning that is elicited by my encounter with the absence, the disappearance, of that which is constitutive of the region: the mountain(s). Here, the practice of mountaintop removal comes to the fore, albeit within a different context.

Whereas most approaches to the issue tend to emphasize its economic and environmental impact – which I do not discard – I contend that we should not ignore its spatial and religious dimensions. The first point is perhaps obvious, given that mountaintop removal consists in the physical removal of the mountain peak and the fundamental reshaping of the region’s topography. It is an indelibly spatial process. Yet, its “spatiality” is, as I will argue, irrevocably connected to the process of “urbanization.” I will discuss my appeal to this concept subsequently. For now, I want to discuss the religious dimensions of industrial resource extraction.

Consider mountaintop removal as an act of desecration, one in which the life of human and non-human is violated and their worth either denied or reduced to a monetary exchange value. Such a description is not only intentional, and reflects my own perspective, but is dependent on a specific conceptualization of the “sacred” and consequently emerges out of a particular religious tradition. Here we encounter the second point. As an explicitly interdisciplinary project, my argument analyzes the violence of industrial resource extraction in Appalachia as a consequence of the spatial transformation wrought by urbanization and industrialization and the evacuation of a distinctively ecological and agrarian religio- theological imagination. In this, I enter an ongoing dialogue among Appalachian Studies scholars about the historical evolution and meaning of industrialization. While numerous scholars have addressed the historical, political, and sociological dimensions of this process, little has been done with regards to its theological/religious implications. Assuredly, a number of works have considered the intersection of industrialization and religion, most notably Deborah Vansau McCauley, yet are limited by an overwhelmingly descriptive focus.4

While this approach is certainly invaluable in understanding the regional nuances of

Appalachian religion and its relationship to “mainstream, denominational Christianity,” it is indicative of the absence of an explicitly Appalachian constructive theology. This characteristic does not preclude theoretical inquiry but merely indicates the need for developing an explicitly Appalachian theology.

The argument that follows is an imaginative remembering and creative appropriation of Appalachia’s religious history. Here, I analyze the cultural and environmental crises of

Appalachia as indicative of the spatial transformation enacted by urbanization. As an emptying of a distinctively nature oriented religious culture, the urbanizing ethos of the

4 Deborah Vansau McCauley. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History. (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995).

industrialist and home missionary demanded that the mountaineer yield to their vision(s) of progress and embrace the ideology of development, for only then could civilization fix the region’s arrested development. Accordingly, the particularities of Appalachian religion – its affective character, bodily practices, and environmental resonances – were declared heretical and replaced with the orthodoxy of mainline Protestant Christianity. As McCauley argues, when denominational evangelists entered the mountains they denied the existence and validity of “Appalachian mountain religion” as an expression of American Christianity.

From this perspective, the phrase “Appalachian Christian” was if, not contradictory, certainly oxymoronic.

As I engage this uniquely American religious tradition, I do so in order to retrieve elements of a rural and environmental sensibility that represents an alternative to the urbanization and anthropocentricism that has adversely impacted the region from the late

19th century forward. I then use those elements or traces to construct a theological imagery of creaturely flesh. This “constructive theology” then challenges the anthropocentricism of urbanization through a re-imagining of humanity’s relationship with other creatures. My reference to “constructive theology” is intentional and echoes what Jason Wyman describes as the attitude or mood which is characteristic of this approach to theological inquiry.5

According to Wyman, “constructive theology” should be understood as “an attempt to create an open-ended, context specific variety of theology that is an ongoing conversation made up of many voices rather than a single systematic description of the nature of God and the world’s relation to it.”6 Here, the interdisciplinary approach and appeal to critical inquiry, which “constructive theology” embraces is specifically emphasized, particularly as

5 Jason A. Wyman. Constructing Constructive Theology: An Introductory Sketch. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), xxxiii. 6 Ibid., xi.

they facilitate an examination, critique, and reformulation of “Christian symbols for contemporary crises.”7 For my project, the “contemporary crises” that I am concerned with is the destruction of Appalachia’s environmental topography through the process of

“urbanthropocentrism.” My approach to Christian doctrine and dogma, therefore, emphasizes elements of a specifically Appalachian expression of Christianity – “Appalachian mountain religion” – which might draw humanity into a deeper awareness of the existential intertwining the exists between us and other creatures.

Thus for example, the dream vision of Edna Alexander discussed in chapter three, in which she encounters a local woman dressed in brown, has a mystical experience in which she feels called to emulate this woman, dyes all of her clothes brown, and then subsequently imagines herself as one with a pile of dead leaves, is placed within an explicitly eco-critical framework. Indeed, this particular scene of this particular chapter functions as hinge from the primarily philosophical (chapter one) and cultural (chapter two) to the eco- phenomenological (chapter four) and theological (chapter five). Accordingly, there is a kind of hourglass shape to my narrative, a flowing from the broad/general through the specific to the broad/general; this description is not rigid or absolute, the broad/general contains specifics and the specific certainly has broad/general implications.

Perhaps most important, there is a narrative thread that connects each chapter – an embrace of the periphery. Here again, it is important to note the extent to which the concept of space and the spatial transformation of Appalachia shapes my theological approach. My argument opens with a consideration of ‘space’ precisely because the distinctive features of Appalachian culture (chapter two) and religion (chapter three) cannot be properly understood outside the topographical spaces within which they

7 Ibid., 47.

occur(ed). Indeed, the constructive moves that I make in chapters four and five reveal the extent to which my methodology and hermeneutical is shaped by this attention to space.

The examples that I refer to, the sources that I draw upon, the language that I employ - each are chosen precisely because they are what has been lost and/or marginalized through the (spatial) processes of urbanization and denominalization. As I discuss in chapter three, the environmental/ecological elements of Appalachian mountain religion were a significant source of concern for the metropolitan based denominational missionaries.

Accordingly, my retrieval of this tradition emphasizes those characteristics that do not appear explicitly orthodox or doctrinal. In making such choices, I am not necessarily rejecting this kind of theological language, but rather emphasizing (and perhaps privileging) an alternative religio-theological imagery and symbolism. Indeed, my use of the phrase “religio-theological,” as opposed to “religious” or “theological” as I have sought to demonstrate throughout this dissertation, particularly in chapters three and four, a re- imagining of Appalachian mountain religion should not/cannot limit itself to the language of dogmatic theology. Rather, as an argument in “constructive theology,” my dissertation works along the margins of Christian theology in order to articulate a critique of and an alternative to urbanthropocentrism. My project, therefore, is not merely descriptive, although certainly chapters one and two contain descriptive elements; even the descriptive components of my analysis of urbanization and argument for rural space (chapter one) and explanation of Appalachia’s distinct agrarian past and its subsequent urbanization through industrial resource extraction, provide a hermeneutical explanation for the constructive moves that I make in chapters three, four, and five.

Throughout my argument, I attempt to think from the edge or margins – rural,

Appalachian, leaves, flesh, creatures – of what we seem to typically value. My turn to

“Appalachian mountain religion” flows out of my desire to re-imagine the “otherness” of the region. While the marginalization of Appalachia has been a constitutive dimension of its exploitation, I believe that the “otherness” of the region need not merely function as a reified commodity but rather offers us an opening within which to challenge both urbanization and anthropocentricism. Re-imagining the nature-oriented sensibility of

Appalachian mountain religion and the practices that were indelibly rooted in the regional topography, I enter the space between ontology and theological anthropology and construct a theology of creaturely flesh that evokes the existential intertwining between the mountains and its people. Doing so, I seek to offer a unique perspective and incisive critique of the interconnected relationship between the urbanization of Appalachian and its ecological crisis.

II. Concern

Before discussing the specific points of the following chapters I want to comment on my use/preference for the word “urbanization.” With regards to both rural spaces, broadly, and Appalachia specifically, exploitation has frequently occurred through some sort of resource extraction, whether agricultural products or natural resources. Accordingly, the distinct but entwined processes of “capitalism” and “industrialization” have more often been used to explain this point. I do not discount this theoretical tendency and indeed refer to these concepts throughout the following pages; the history of Appalachia cannot be told or understood apart from some reference to industrial capitalism. Rather, I contend that

“capitalism” and “industrialization” in Appalachia cannot be properly understood apart from

“urbanization.” The capitalists/industrialists/missionaries that entered the mountains in the late 19th century were “from” the metropole(s). They were representatives of urban space, embodiments of urban ideology. Accordingly, my understanding of “urbanization” is

fundamentally connected to my concern and critique of industrial resource extraction. The

“urbanization” of Appalachia is emblematic of the broader processes of urbanization that not only transform rural cultures, but overwhelmingly destabilize and destroy non-human life. The concrete, steel, and glass of “urban space” are constructed atop soil, grass, and water. Urbanization is therefore problematic because it perpetuates the notion that humanity can and should cover the earth in artifice. In Appalachia, such a process reaches its extremity in the physical destruction of the mountains.

In light the current cultural and political climate, we must also consider, even if briefly, the intersection of urbanization, race, and rural spaces. While some critiques of

“urbanization” or “urban space” have historically been linked to both explicit and subtle racial prejudices, my interest in and use of the concept completely rejects this association.

Consequently, my argument for “rural space” should not be read as an attempt, tacit or otherwise, to retrieve some contrived authentic “white” past. The association of “rural space” or “agrarian cultures” with whiteness is as much a reductive simplification and myopic interpretation as it is an accurate historic description. Indeed, as regards Appalachia, the argument that the region once represented a preserved Anglo-Saxon stock is a distortion perpetuated by urban journalists and essayists for the explicit purpose of establishing its

“peculiarity” and consequently justifying their exploitative encroachment. However, historically, sociologically, culturally, the region has never been dominated by a single ethnic group, but rather has always “housed” a vibrant mix of races and cultures. Indeed, Rodger

Cunningham notes that Appalachians have been frequently removed from “either whiteness itself or the positive white stereotypes of intelligence, civilization, and genetic strength.”8

Such a contention does not negate the tangible benefit that “whiteness” has afforded “white

8 Rodger Cunningham. “Reflection on Identity and the Roots of Prejudice.” “Appalachian Identity: Roundtable Discussion.” Appalachian Journal. Vol. 48, No. 1 (Fall 2010), 74-75.

Appalachians” – Cunningham is explicit in describing “anti-Black racism” as the “semiotic keystone of all American prejudice and oppression” – but it does indicate the extent to which industrialization necessitated the dehumanization of all races in the region.9 My concern with urbanization and embrace of rurality obviously shaped this complex historical/cultural process, but I want to emphasize the extent to which oppression in

Appalachia is indelibly woven into the “natural space” of the region. Moreover, there is, as bell hooks notes, an “oppositional” possibility in such rural cultures that should not be dismissed.

Offering an invaluable reflection on the intersection of race, gender, and rural space in Belonging: A Culture of Place, hooks connects the themes of “place” and “belonging” to her own experiences growing up in Kentucky, as well as to the experiences of “black farmers…[and] black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to growing organic and to finding solace in nature.”10 Perhaps more relevant to my argument, she also considers the extent to which her “belonging” to

Kentucky, specifically the various manifestations of patriarchal fundamentalist violence in her own life, also cultivated “oppositional habits of being”:

Growing up, renegade black and white folks who perceived the backwoods, the natural environments, to be a space away from manmade constructions, from dominator culture, were able to create unique habits of thinking and being that were in resistance to the status quo. This spirit of resistance had characterized much of Kentucky’s early history, the way in which white colonizers first perceived it an untouched truly wild wilderness that would resist being tamed by the forces of imperialist white supremacist capitalism. Even though the forces of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy did ultimately subordinate the land to its predatory interests it did not create a closed system, individual Kentuckians white and black, still managed to create sub-culture, usually in hollows, hills, and mountains governed by beliefs and values contrary to those of mainstream culture. The free thinking and non-conformist behavior encouraged in the backwoods was a threat to

9 Ibid. 10 bell hooks. Belonging: A Culture of Place. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), 3.

imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy hence the need to undermine them by creating the notion that folks who inhabited these spaced [sic] were ignorant, stupid, inbred, ungovernable. By dehumanizing the hillbilly, the armchair spirit which empowered poor folks to choose a lifestyle different from that of the state and so called civilized society could be crushed. And if not totally crushed, at least made to appear criminal or suspect.11

We must avoid appropriating hooks’ description of Kentucky’s oppositional past in a superficial way, particularly with regards to the conflict, frequently violent, between white and black individuals/communities. Her reflections on Wendell Berry’s The Hidden Wound and subsequent dialogue with him in Belonging reveals the importance of reflecting on and critiquing the ways in which “white privilege” and “rural space” have frequently reinforced one another.12

My reference to hooks’ work is intended to reinforce the extent to which an attention to and appreciation of “rural space” – what she calls the “backwoods” – is indelibly bound to a reactionary or conservative politics. As I argue in the chapter one, it can contribute to a radical critique of capitalism. Indeed, her allusion to “unique habits of thinking and being” and “non-conformist behavior” are the very characteristics attributed to

Appalachians by industrialists and missionaries. What distinguishes my approach to this history is the contention that such a perspective be connected to spatial logic of urbanization.

III. Dialogue

Chapter One

I begin with an analysis of the conflict between urban and rural spaces. As a distinct region of America, Appalachia is predominantly, although not exclusively, rural and the economic exploitation of industrial capitalism initiated in the mid-to-late 19th century cannot

11 Ibid., 19-20. 12 Ibid., 174-201.

be understood apart from a broader consideration of urban-rural dynamic. Drawing primarily on the work of Henri Lefebvre, specifically his reflections on the production of space, I seek to challenge those arguments which regard “rural space” as a space of poverty

– intellectual, cultural, economic – and fundamentally inferior. While seeking to avoid any kind of romantic or naïve embrace of rurality, I argue that such a space represents a unique type of “material embodiment” – a way of being that offers an alternative existential topology to the dominant ethos of urbanization. As an alternative to urban space and a critique of capitalist industrialization, “rurality” is thus considered as a particular type of spatiality which makes possible a deeper intimacy and reciprocity between human and non- human beings. Accordingly, it is the “tangible opening” for a different form of living.

A philosophy of rural space. On one hand, it is a foregrounding of what I consider to be one of the fundamental concerns facing 21st century humanity: the death and sacrifice of non-human life. Here, my attention is simultaneously global and local. While I am assuredly working in the shadow of climate change, my argument emerges from what could reasonably be considered one of the “collateral affects” of our rapidly warming world: the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. The process of industrial resource extraction is assuredly a cause of global warming, but is equally so, and perhaps somewhat more intimately, the overwhelming disappearance of a particular kind of space. Indeed, the historical development of coal mining in the region can be seen as an incessant elimination of “space” (topography, roots, beings) by time (efficiency, speed, profit). Here, “space” is not a “realm without meaning” but is rather “the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality…of coexisting heterogeneity.”13 I contend that the “coexisting heterogeneity” of what we call “nature” – animals, plants,

13 Timothy Creswell. Place: A Short Introduction. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 10; Doreen Massey. For Space. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005), 9.

stones, humans – is more “possible” within rural space. Certainly, this kind of space neither guarantees harmonious reciprocity nor precludes violent exploitation, but I contend that it is a prerequisite for the possibility of such multiplicity. Moreover, as the space of daily encounter between “human” and “nature”, it is the “rural” that serves as the opening for anti-anthropocentric relationship.

On the other hand, my argument in this chapter is an attempt to think, if not systematically, at least conceptually about the relationship between urban and rural.

However, my appeal to Henri Lefebvre qualifies the “philosophical” dimension of my argument. Here, we must note the extent to which Lefebvre takes seriously the Marxist critique of philosophy and the insistence that “philosophical thought” be oriented to

“changing the world.” He writes,

The non-philosophical world persists in the face of philosophy and the philosophical world, whether as determined adversary and tenacious reality, or as residue hard to reduce…The conflict between the philosophical world, philosophy that seeks to be world, and the non-philosophical world will not proceed without damage to philosophy and the philosopher. To escape from this and resolve the conflict, there is only one way: for philosophy to become world, not as philosophy, but as project that is realized in the world, denied by its very realization as this supersedes it.14

To approach “rural space” in a “philosophical” way is, from a Lefebvrian perspective, in actuality an attempt to encounter the very thing that Socrates denied as having anything to offer – trees and open country. It is, in Lefebvre’s terms, a desire to recognize and embrace the residue of philosophical thought – everyday life, creative, natural vitality, rurality.

Indeed, as I will argue in chapter one, my turn to “rural space” seeks to pursue Lefebvre’s initial critique of philosophy and urbanization to what I consider its logical conclusion – a realization that “rural space” is “lived space” against which “urban space as conceived space” seeks to extend its power. Accordingly, if a central element of Lefebvre’s work is the

14 Henri Lefebvre. Metaphilosophy. (New York, NY: Verso, 2016), 50-51.

confrontation of philosophy with life – that is, with the everyday life of human reality – then, we cannot discount the possibility that such an occurrence is most fruitfully possible within the poietic capacities of rural existence.15

Chapter Two

If chapter one focuses on a general discussion of rural space and its importance in developing a critique and alternative to capitalist alienation and its environmental consequences, chapter two particularizes this discussion by focusing on Appalachia. Here I enter into dialogue with Appalachian Studies. Urbanization is uniquely experienced in

Appalachia and I discuss its impact by focusing on the development of the railroad and the production of company towns. As essential components for establishing of industrial hegemony in the region, company towns were fundamental to the restructuring everyday life; companies required individual miners and their families to live in company owned houses, paid miners in script that could only be used at the company store, and often provided a company approved minister to provide spiritual leadership. The primary focus of this chapter is to examine the transformation of Appalachia’s pre-industrial agrarianism as emblematic of urbanization.

In many ways the argument of this chapter is simply a different way of reading the history of Appalachia. Indeed, within the field of Appalachian Studies there are a number of more comprehensive accounts of the region’s industrialization and modernization.16 I say this not to discredit my own work, but to rather emphasize what I think makes it distinct, and by extension, important. In placing the industrialization of Appalachia within the

15 Ibid., 12, 330-332. 16 John Gaventa. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982); Helen Matthews Lewis, Lind Johnson, and Don Askins. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. (Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978); David Whisnant. Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power, and Planning in Appalachia. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1994).

broader context of urbanization I am able to discuss the process as affecting more than the region’s economy or culture. That is, in reading the historical transformation of

Appalachia’s economy and culture through the lens of urbanization I am able to frame this process in existential/ontological terms. Consider for example the following passages from

John Gaventa, Jack Weller, and David Whisnant.

Blessed with natural beauty, the resources of the Valley stand raped: unreclaimed strip (open cast) mining in layers along the mountains has left the landscape scarred, the hillsides eroded, the creeks and bottom lands filled with silt, acid and coal. A glance at the miner’s gnarled hands and the sound of his weak lungs reminded me that deep mining, too, had taken its toll. In the United States a miner is killed every other day, one is injured every ten minutes, and those that survive stand a three in four chance of getting black lung (a chronic disease from inhaling minute particles of black coal dust). There is little compensation in the community for what is lost at work: services from the county courthouse, reached via a dangerous road, are few. All around inequalities abound.17

A colony as I understand it, is a group of people with land and resources which are owned and/or controlled by persons other than themselves, and whose resources and productive capacities are used for the advantage of those who control them. Appalachia is simply our American example of how we use colonization powers in the economic realm all over the world. We strip an area and its people of their wealth under the guise of “developing” them, saying all the time of course that without this development look where they’d be. Yet in essence, we are robbing of their wealth, impoverishing their people, controlling their economy, politics and people, meanwhile growing powerful in the process.18

Regional development must finally be understood as cultural drama rather than technocratic enterprise. It is an arena in which the dynamics of conflict are set at the deepest spiritual, psychic, and cultural levels…Cultural values and assumptions turn out to have controlled the development process in Appalachia in an astonishing number of its aspects. Of profoundest importance is the fact that the cultural values and predispositions shared by most planners and development agency bureaucrats have set the narrowest of limits upon their imagination; constricted the boundaries of their tolerance for social, economic, and political alternatives; and marked off the little that seemed to them “reasonable” and “sensible” from the much that did not.

17 Gaventa, vi. 18 Jack Weller. “Appalachia: America’s Mineral Colony” in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Edited by Helen Matthews Lewis, Lind Johnson, and Don Askins. (Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978), 48.

Thus the planning and development process turned out over and over again to be culturally narcissistic rather than imaginative and progressive.19

Taken together, these passages give the reader a general sense of the problems caused by industrialization. From Gaventa we gain a sense of the concrete impact that the process has had on the land and its inhabitants; Weller helpfully frames this history in the context of global colonialism and the violent exploitation of peoples and extraction of resources; and finally, Whisnant orients our attention to the cultural dynamics of “economic development” and the paucity of “imagination” evident in the plans of developmental agency. However, what none of them do is connect this history to urban space(s); Gaventa comes closest, noting specifically that the transformation of the Yellow Creek Valley followed the demands of the “metropolis”, while maintaining a primarily sociological/political scientific perspective.20

I do not deny the importance or value of their respective hermeneutical frameworks

– or the overall descriptive/analytical focus of Appalachian Studies as a discipline – rather I insist that the “inequality”, “colonialism”, and “development” of Appalachia describe above should be considered as both cause(s) and effect(s) of “urbanization.” Accordingly, my focus in this chapter is to shift our perspective on Appalachian history and culture in order to expand our sense of industrialization’s impact. If industrial development entails an economic and cultural change, it also so precipitates a kind of existential transformation of people. That is, through coercive means industrial power not only dismantled the distinct and unique agrarian economy of the region, but in so doing detached people from the very soil of their existence. Indeed, the violence committed against the environment or

19 Whisnant, 268. 20 Gaventa, 50.

topography must be seen as violence committed against the people. Describing this process as “urbanization” allows us to recognize the depth and degree of this transformation.

Chapter Three

In this chapter, I turn to 19th century Appalachian religion and the role of the imagination. I focus in particular on the role of “local color” writers and home missionaries in the urbanization of Appalachia. In addition to the economic exploitation wrought by absentee landowners and industrialists, the late 19th century also witnessed a distinctive form of cognitive hegemony, whereby the complex lived history and experiences of Appalachia were reduced to a series of abstractions designed to facilitate the formation of a homogenous national culture. This “othering” of Appalachia was in effect the rendering of a predominantly affective and materialist religious imagination as heretical and thereby dangerous. I contend that an essential dimension in constructing a theological critique of this process is a retrieval of the environmental and bodily character of Appalachian mountain religion. Drawing from John Sallis’ philosophical work on the imagination, I argue that if imagining is a practice of “encountering the other,” Appalachian mountain religion offers a means of recognizing and returning to the otherness of the ridges and hollers of its emergence.

I consider chapter three to be the hinge of my argument as it is the place where I shift from the primarily, although not exclusively, descriptive and analytical work of chapters one and two to the constructive work of chapters four and five. It is here that we begin to see the extent to which Appalachia shapes my perspective as a theologian. To be clear, the particular tradition described as “Appalachian mountain religion” is not one that I have personal contact or experience with; I did not grow up in it, was not directly shaped by its practices and beliefs, and in many ways typically considered myself opposed to its unique

expression of faith. I still do not personally identify with or attend this kind of church.

There remains, at best an anxiety about and at worst a rejection of, intellectual arguments for religion.

Why then do I appeal to this tradition as an important resource for developing a theological critique of urbanization? First, and upon this point we must be clear, the name

“Appalachian mountain religion” is given to Appalachia’s late 19th century religious tradition by the historian Deborah Vansau McCauley. McCauley situates 19th century Appalachian

Christianity within the broader processes of industrialization and the home missionary movement. The appellation “Appalachian mountain religion” is therefore an attempt to emphasize the importance that topography/environment had on the development of the region’s religious identity. And while she emphasizes history and culture, she nonetheless provides a valuable framework for an ecological/environmental interpretation. There are no explicit appeals to or references to this name by individuals or communities during the time period; they would more than likely referred to themselves as simply “Christian” or, perhaps,

“Holiness.” Accordingly, it is more a historiographical tool than a historical reality, something created and used by McCauley to tell the story of the late 19th century religious traditions in Appalachia. Two, this point does not invalidate McCauley’s argument nor weaken my appeal to the concept but rather indicates the extent to which we must use a variety of interpretative tools to understand this period in Appalachian history.

The reality of a religious tradition that emphasized oral preaching and foot washing, affectivity and emotional expression, humility and grace, and the free movement of the Holy

Ghost is “there” no matter what name we give it. Indeed, various manifestations of it exist in small pockets throughout the mountains. Of course, the name we give it makes a great deal of difference and my attraction to McCauley’s narrative depends significantly on the fact

she has decided to name this particular tradition “Appalachian mountain religion.” My appeal to the “imagination” is therefore an attempt to read and use this past for an explicitly ecological/environmental purpose.21 Indeed the name itself – “Appalachian mountain religion” – is important precisely because it is a spatial evocation; it is a remembrance, however removed from the past, of the past. Perhaps more importantly, the name is itself an act of creativity. It calls into being something new and in so doing opens a space for alternative interpretations.

Chapter Four

My argument here focuses on the limitations of “nature” in the discourse of ecocritcism. As Appalachian Studies scholar Rodger Cunningham notes, Appalachians traditionally understand the environment and landscape as “creation” rather than “nature.”

While not entirely dismissive of “nature” as a practical concept, I contend that its theoretical limitations necessitate that we substitute an alternative language for the human/non-human relationship. “Nature” is frequently conceived as a passive container or static materiality.

Consequently, the dynamic vitality of non-human life is forgotten and we are able to justify our violent exploitation. As a critique, I introduce Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical reflections on the intertwining between humanity and the natural world. For Merleau-Ponty,

“nature” and “humanity” are united through a shared ontological materiality – “the flesh.”

As an alternative concept to nature, “the flesh” challenges philosophical and theological anthropocentrism and provides an alternative imagery for describing an intimate relationship with non-human life.

Here I focus on four specific characteristics or features of “the flesh” – intertwining, strange kinship, elementality, and wildness. I structure the chapter in such a way that a

21 Henri Lefebvre. Critique of Everyday Life: The One-Volume Edition. (New York, NY: Verso, 2014), 582.

particular characteristic is connected to a particular being. Thus, my discussion of

“intertwining” focuses primarily on the human, specifically Merleau-Ponty’s imagery of “one hand touching another”, and my discussion of “strange kinship” emphasizes the animal.

While these two examples are important, they are not the primary focus of the chapter. My intention is to deepen and expand our understanding of which beings we should consider

“enfleshed”; here I turn to the figure of the plant and stone. Discussing the former in connection to “elementality,” I emphasize the ways in which vegetal life is an embodiment of elemental materiality. I then turn to the figure of lithic being and the possibilities of

“lithic flesh.” A perhaps counter-intuitive, if not contradictory, idea I contend that, when pushed to its limits, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy offers us the opportunity to more radically challenge anthropocentricism. The notion of a “lithic flesh” draws the human into a deeper, more challenging, yet ultimately more profound, relationship with non-human life.

Chapter Five

This final chapter represents the explicitly theological dimension of my argument.

Building on the previous chapter’s focus on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the flesh, I offer a “placed” theology that draws on the environmental/topographical features of Appalachia.

More specifically, I argue that the theological imagery of “creatureliness” or “creatures” provides both a more thorough critique of and alternative to urbanization and anthropocentricism. Here I enter into a dialogue with agrarian theologies of creation, primarily the work of Norman Wirzba, which seek to return “humanity” to the soil and interdependent relationship with the rest of creation. While I acknowledge the value and impact of these accounts, I believe that they are insufficient for the Appalachian context.

The agrarianism that Wirzba argues for, drawing as it does on the work and life of

Wendell Berry and echoing the vibrant experiences of centuries’ worth of culture, is

thoroughly appropriate for the Carolina Piedmont or Kentucky bluegrass or Midwestern prairie. For those communities and individuals living in relatively flat/even topographies, it is relatively obvious to proclaim, as Maurice Tellen does, that “agrarianism’s natural home is the field, the garden, the stable, the prairie, the forest, the tribe, or the village.”22 There are certain aspects of Appalachia’s agricultural tradition(s) that resonate with this argument; mountain homesteads contained gardens and stables, and were often in direct proximity to the forest. However, despite such similarities, the region is unique for precisely the one thing missing from Tellen’s list: mountains. The topography of the region necessitated a kind of “forest farming” – a combination of cultivating, wildcrafting, and hunting and gathering – that required adaptation to the uneven terrain. Within such a spatial context, a traditional agrarian theology of creation cannot adequately account for its peculiarity; we need a theological imagery that not only resonates with a great intimacy and connection to the soil (agrarianism) but envelops that which exists outside the purposes of agriculture. In short, a theology of Appalachian creatures will not only account for the region’s agrarian past, but in so doing embrace its inherent wildness.

In order to articulate this point, I return to some of the specific examples and vignettes that reference throughout preceding chapters. Here, my approach echoes Kathryn

Tanner’s description of “theological creativity”:

It does not seem to amount to any “pure,” freewheeling expression of creative drives. It seems, instead, to be the creativity of postmodern “bricoleur” – the creativity, that is, of someone who works with an always potentially disordered heap of already existing materials, pulling them apart and putting them back together again, tinkering with their shapes, twisting them way and that. It is a creativity expressed through the modification and extension of material already on the ground. This sort of creativity does not necessarily bring with it…a plodding reformism. The effects of such

22 Maurice Tellen. “The Mind-Set of Agrarianism…New and Old.” The Essential Agrarian Reader. Edited by Norman Wirzba. (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky), 54.

tinkering can be genuinely revolutionary. Small changes…can have a major effect.23

In constructing a theology from within and out of the Appalachian context, the “already existing material” that I work with are the 19th century religious tradition described by

McCauley and the topography within which it emerged. Indeed, whereas the majority of

Appalachian Studies scholars tend to approach the latter as a landscape or background for human culture, I contend that a genuinely environmentally oriented theology must move beyond a primarily historical or social scientific hermeneutic. That is, if “the flesh” of being is fundamentally elemental and wild, then the mountains of Appalachia need not be reduced to a backdrop for the development of a distinctively place-based religion.

This chapter is divided into two sections. In the first, I consider some recent arguments that place “creation” at the center of theological reflection. With regards to the problem of anthropocentrism and urbanization, the importance of “creation” as a theological theme is invaluable, not least of which because they offer us the opportunity to reconsider humanity’s relationship with non-human life within a more dynamic context.

While perhaps brief and admittedly circumscribed in its scope, this section considers the possibilities and limitations of creation “oriented” theologies.

By way of challenging these limitations, I seek to expand the “conceptual scope” of what we call “creatureliness.” My concern here is to construct an image of and argument for

“creatureliness” that does not limit itself to a common or shared animality. In order for this idea to be adequately (or even potentially) subversive of the anthropocentricism that has so thoroughly shaped our encounter with non-human life, it is incumbent to understand

“creatureliness” beyond the boundaries of shared animality. Moreover, and this is particularly true for the Appalachian, the appeal to “creation” and “creatureliness” cannot be

23 Kathryn Tanner. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 166.

detached from particularity of topography. Rocks, plants, creeks – these are as much embodiments of “creaturely flesh” as humans and animals. Perhaps more provocatively, the creatures of Appalachia – be they human, animal, vegetal, or lithic – only become within the creatureliness of the mountain(s

CHAPTER ONE

THE RURALITY OF NATURAL LIFE: HENRI LEFEBVRE, URBAN ABSTRACTION,

AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE

“In the moral (and ecological) sense you cannot know what until you have learned where.” - Wendell Berry

“It is correct that in the conditions of the modern world, only the man apart, the marginal, the peripheral, the anomic, those excluded from the horde (Gurvitch) has a creative capacity…the greatest chances of creating.” - Henri Lefebvre

I. Vignette – Harlan County, Kentucky 1931

On February 16, 1931, in response to, among other grievances, a ten percent wage cut, miners from the Black Mountain Coal Company in Harlan County, KY organized a spontaneous (or wildcat) strike and left the mines. Already suffering from precarious living situations and starvation, the miners recognized the pecuniary motivations of the company’s action and were well aware of the extent to which the operators would go to secure their profit. Having experienced a similar strike in 1922, a number of miners understood the need for organized support and appealed to the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)

District 9 President William Turnblazer for aid. Turnblazer passed on the miners’ request to

National Vice President Philip Murray and a mass meeting was organized for March 1st in

Pineville, the county seat. While Murray pledged support, on the provision that the striking

miners form a chapter of the UMWA, he was explicit in his rejection of radical or revolutionary action. The UMWA would support the miners and engage the company on their behalf, but only out of a spirit of cooperation, not hostility and animus. For Murray and the union leaders, addressing the miners’ grievances and advocating for reform required a measure of conciliation. Unfortunately, but in hindsight thoroughly predictable, the operators did not share this attitude.

Following the Pineville meeting, coal operators throughout Harlan (and adjacent Bell)

County initiated a wave of punitive measures designed to quell the strike, including mass layoffs and evictions from company owned houses. Intended, of course, to break the strikers’ morale, this move only strengthened the miners’ resolve and they responded with increasing militancy. Throughout the spring, strikers and local law enforcement, including

Sheriff William H. Blair’s deputies and numerous state troopers, engaged in a violent, guerilla style conflict; eventually, the UMWA would help organize and support eleven thousand miners in their standoff with the coal companies. And then, seemingly without warning, the union declared the strike illegitimate and withdrew its support. According to John Hennen, the UMWA bureaucracy, particularly President John L. Lewis, “feared that the organizing campaign was broader than it was deep and would cut too severely into UMWA relief funds.”1 Already weakened by the nationwide depression, precipitous decline in union membership, and decreasing demand for coal, from this perspective the UMWA’s actions appear to be pragmatic response to an increasingly dire situation, both locally and nationally.

However, as Hennen notes, Lewis’ authoritarian leadership style was not conducive to worker-initiated action, and union discipline was a primary concern as well.

1 Doug Hennen. “New Introduction” in Harlan Miners Speak. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 1-3

Whatever the primary reason, without union support the strike collapsed and the miners were back where they started. And yet the story of this particular event does not end here, as the following June the National Miners Union (NMU) arrived in eastern Kentucky and attempted to resurrect the moment. Explicitly Marxist in its ideology, the NMU was founded in 1928 as part of the attempt by the American Communist Party’s challenge to what it considered to be the overwhelming conservatism of John Lewis and the UMWA. Indicative of the Communist Party’s shift from an official policy of “boring from within” (the process of working within the established, mainline union structure) and towards a stance of “dual unionism,” the NMU joined other industrial labor organizations in the Trade Union Unity

League, which rejected “cooperation with management in favor of mass strikes and class conflict [and] promoted mass organizing, a seven-hour work day, a five-day work week, international trade union solidarity, racial equality, and the reorganization of American industry on a Soviet model.”2 While relatively small compared to the UMWA, the NMU was nonetheless a legitimate alternative for many unemployed Appalachian miners, and their willingness to support the strikers of Harlan County was seen by the coal operators as an even greater danger than the UMWA.

Material artifacts from the period appear to warrant the companies’ fears. A broadside from the time calling on “miners, women and children” to march on Pineville and greet a delegation of 15 from the Worker’s International Relief campaign, describes the starvation caused by unemployment and poverty as “the last and most vicious weapon of the mine operators and the authorities.”3 Similarly, it references the “brutal terror” enacted by the sheriffs, deputies, and judges in their efforts to not only silence the miners’ calls for justice,

2 Ibid., 8. 3 “A Call” Broadside. https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/national-miners-union-and-other- radical-groups.

but even more so destroy their very lives. The document ends by reiterating the necessity of making “it possible to bring relief [clothes, food, milk] into Pineville for distribution to all striking camps by coming to the demonstration and protesting against terror and arrests.

Smash down the closed door.”4 In another broadside, the NMU attacked the United Mine

Workers, describing it as a “scab-herding tool of the operators.”5

Company officials and local authorities responded to the NMU’s presence with increased violence and propaganda, with the union’s emphasis on racial equality and the Communist

Party’s atheism specifically emphasized. To a certain extent this approach was successful, as the racial prejudice and traditional religiosity of some miners were significant barriers to sustained union support. Similarly, a number of miners joined the NMU and organized on its behalf without knowing about the Communist Party’s atheism and, upon realizing this core tenet, promptly left the organization. Miner and preacher Finlay Donaldson is emblematic of this attitude. In a letter to his fellow miners and citizens, he describes his experiences at a Mass Meeting of the Community Party in Chicago, noting in particular the party’s open fidelity to the Soviet Union. He writes of seeing “them who were believers in the Communists with great applause give honor to Soviet Russia by honoring and saluting the flag.”6 While maintaining his fierce advocacy for miners’ rights and drawing attention the physical toll his 33 years in the mines had taken on his body, Donaldson confesses his faith in American capitalism to address the grievances and needs of “our poor starving humanity.”7 He ends the letter by denouncing his previous affiliation with the NMU and affirming his dedication to “God and the United States.” And yet, despite these efforts, a

4 Ibid. 5 “Drive Out the Scab Herding U.M.W.A.” Broadside. https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal- strike/national-miners-union-and-other-radical-groups. 6 “Findlay Donaldson letter.” https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/national-miners-union-and- other-radical-groups 7 Ibid.

number of striking miners were undeterred and maintained their support for the NMU throughout the strike. Hennen notes that the union providing material support – specifically setting up soup kitchens and offering legal aid – likely cancelled out concerns about their

“radical” or “alien” character to the starving miners and their families.

Unfortunately for the miners, the NMU was unable to break the iron grip of the coal operators and by 1932 most of the union members and leaders had either voluntarily left or were driven from Kentucky. By 1935, the NMU had been disbanded by the American

Communist Party and the strategy of working with established unions was revived. As the labor movement in America gained strength throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the AFL, CIO, and UMWA experienced considerable gains and protections for workers, only to see them disappear in the neoliberal shift towards greater mechanization, deregulation, and financialization in the 1970s.8

We begin at this moment in Appalachian history for two reasons. One, it establishes a historical and cultural context that orients the reader to the particular regional focus that will shape and guide my narrative. While the following discussion necessarily reaches beyond the history and culture of Appalachia and seeks to expand the disciplinary boundaries of Appalachian Studies, my reflections on rural space and Marxism are inextricably rooted in the particularities of Appalachia and the impact that industrialization has had and continues to have on the region.

Two, it offers a compelling example of a radical leftist politics emerging from within the region specifically and a rural space more generally. The NMU’s level of support in

Appalachia is indicative of a regional radicalism that was not only opposed to capitalist

8 The preceding has been adapted from Doug Hennen’s introductory essay to Harlan Miners Speak, a collection of first-person account regarding the Harlan County coal wars from the 1930s and 1970s. Doug Hennen. “New Introduction” in Harlan Miners Speak. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008).

exploitation and committed to grassroots solidarity, but – and this is perhaps most important for my argument – was resonant with Marxist theory.

However, while the example of the NMU offers a valuable historical and cultural foundation for my argument, this opening chapter does not focus directly on Appalachian political history or the work of a regional labor movement. Rather, my primary aim is more general in scope: the articulation of a philosophy of rural space infused with a Marxist sensibility. A perhaps contradictory pursuit, especially considering the general dismissal of rural spaces and cultures espoused by Marx and a number of those following after, I nonetheless follow Henri Lefebvre in his own trajectory and contend that “the rural” offers a space within which capitalist exploitation is assuredly and acutely present but potentially resisted and subverted. That is, while the isolation of rural space(s) can (and frequently has) contributed to significant issues, we need not lament it as the primary cause of political apathy or quiescence, but rather embrace such positioning as an opportunity to cultivate an alternative culture or style of living along the margins of capitalist hegemony. Indeed, the assumption that the isolation of rural space(s) is inherently wrong or bad is indicative of the extent to which urbanization determines our understanding of space and political praxis.

Those living within rural space(s) are considered “isolated” – both physically and culturally – primarily because of their separation from the norms of culture, the metropolitan center and its inhabitants. While in many respects his philosophy problematically echoes some of the urban bias that justifies the exploitation of rural space(s), Lefebvre nonetheless provides a theoretical language that challenges what Alexander Thomas describes as

“urbanormativity.”9

9 Alexander Thomas. Critical Rural Theory: Structure, Space, Culture. (New York: Lexington Books, 2011), 5.

Considering his place in the broad Marxist canon my turn to Lefebvre is not entirely surprising, as his own political trajectory saw him change from a dutiful member of official/party Marxism to a uniquely heterodox theorist. Active in the French Community

Party (PCF) in the early twentieth-century, which saw him vociferously attack intellectuals and activists who had deviated too far from party orthodoxy, Lefebvre himself eventually occupied an increasingly precarious relationship to the party hierarchy. Breaking with the

PCF in the late 1950s, Lefebvre criticized the party’s interpretation of Marxist theory as overly reductionist and static, focusing entirely on economic processes of production and, following his expulsion from/voluntary rejection of the PCF, he articulated a “heterodox and open-ended historical materialism that…committed to an embodied, passionately engaged, and politically charged form of critical knowledge.”10 Indeed, what distinguishes

Lefebvre from many of his contemporary intellectuals is an acute willingness to push Marxist theory beyond the confines of economic production and social scientific analysis, wherein the alienation wrought by capitalism is recognized as transforming not only the forces of productivity but the entirety of everyday life. As such, his reflections on space offer the rural subject an invaluable resource for constructing a theory of rural space.

My argument in this chapter is divided into three sections. First, I provide a detailed explanation of the theoretical core of Lefebvre’s reflections on space: the dialectique de triplicité

(“dialectic of triplicity/triple dialectic”). While understanding the dialectical triad is necessary for grasping the totality of Lefebvre’s unique interpretation of Marxism – particularly his argument concerning the “production of space” – it also represents one of the more confusing dimensions of his work. The focus of this section is to place this

10 Stefan Kiper et al. “On the Production of Henri Lefebvre” in Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. Edited by Kanishka Goodnewardena, Stefan Kiper, Richard Milgrom, and Christian Schmid. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 3.

particular concept within the context of Lefebvre’s approach to history and the development of urbanization. Focusing on his Marxist reading of the Hegelian dialectic and his articulation of a “triple dialectic,” I emphasize the centrality of “lived space” and its connection to everyday life. In doing so I start to establish the framework within which to understand the value of rural space. The “triple dialectic” cannot be examined or understood in isolation from Lefebvre’s broader project of analyzing modern capitalist society and its effect on spatial philosophy and practices. As Stuart Elden notes, the “triad” must be seen as a component of Lefebvre’s critique of formal logic, which is focused on metaphysical identity and being, and pursuit of concrete or dialectical logic, wherein content and form, history and concrete reality are emphasized; here, Lefebvre’s critical appropriation of Hegelian philosophy must be addressed.11 As a tool of practical analysis, the triad represents the application of Lefebvre’s concrete (dialectical) logic as it pertains to the cultivation of knowledge regarding the material history of capitalism and its transformation of space. In this, any interpretation of its conceptual foundations must be paired with

Lefebvre’s study of the urban/rural relationship.

The second section focuses on the role of “urbanism/urbanization” in Lefebvre’s work, addressing in particular its pronounced, if complicated, urban bias. My contention is that while Lefebvre retrieves “space” as critical subject of/for philosophical reflection, he is unable to consider the spatial architectonics of revolutionary critique and praxis “beyond” the city. That is, while his philosophical reflections on space are essential in analyzing the specific process of urbanization, his fidelity to a Marxist paradigm prevents him from recognizing the extent to which urbanization was operative in pre-capitalist societies. The ancient political city of which he approves was characterized its own unique forms of rural

11 Stuart Elden. Understanding Henri Lefebvre. (New York: Continuum, 2004), 30, 32.

exploitation and oppression. According more importance to rural spaces than the vast majority of Marxist philosophers, Lefebvre nonetheless rejects the possibility that such space might facilitate resistance to capitalist abstraction. Given his thorough critique of

“urbanization,” this point is disconcerting and represents a significant limitation of his argument. In this section, I argue that Lefebvre’s history of space is complicit in this bias and in turn represents a partial understanding of the urban/rural or city/country relationship.

Consequently, there is a parallel between his discussion of abstract space/lived space and urbanization/rurality.

In both relationships, the former is opposed to and seeks hegemony over the latter.

However, while Lefebvre demonstrably argues against the power of abstraction and conceived space over “the lived,” it is altogether unclear that he accords a similar privileging for rurality. As we shall see, urbanization is the spatial manifestation of alienation and

Lefebvre argues forcefully against its expansion. However, rather than posit rural space as the alternative to “urbanization,” he argues for the “right to the city.” This is the blind spot in Lefebvre’s analysis, his attraction to and appreciation of rural spaces and communities, yet inability to entertain the notion that such spaces can serve as the basis for resistance to urbanization.

The final section constructs a theory of rural space that attends to, and expands on,

Lefebvre’s appreciative reflections on rurality. Here I draw on his essay “Notes Written One

Sunday in the French Countryside” and emphasize the intertwining of humanity and nature that characterize rural space. My argument is organized around two specific points. The first is a consideration of the etymology of the term “rural,” specifically with regards to the terms rus and chora. While we can clearly trace our English word “rural” and its derivatives to the former, the latter is equally important, particularly in expanding our understanding of

the urban/rural tension and challenging Lefebvre’s rather circumscribed reading of Greek and Roman history. That is, my focus on these terms seeks to provide a clear understanding of how they reflect and embody a particular spatial production and ontological relationship.

To this end, the second subsection appropriates one of Lefebvre’s clearest and most fruitful reflections on rural/agrarian space. Focusing primarily on his essay “Notes Written One

Sunday” – in which he connects rural space(s) and agrarian culture(s) to nature and natural life – I argue that despite the limitations of his philosophical work on urbanization, Lefebvre remains an important resource for defending rural space. Moreover, because he does not necessarily limit his reflections on rural space to an agrarian economy or culture, or perhaps more accurately because he expands the sense of rural space and agrarianism to the human/nature relationship, we are able to articulate an understanding of the former that emphasizes the latter.

As such, the premise that guides this chapter is fairly simple: rural space is where capitalist alienation and fragmentation is acutely experienced and where the possibility of its resistance and subversion is potentially manifest because it offers the possibility of a greater intimacy between humanity and nature. As the example of the NMU indicates, rural spaces in general, and Appalachia in particular, are not natural bastions of conservative or reactionary politics. Victims of a century and half’s worth of exploitation and inequality, many who lived in these spaces are not committed to the survival and perpetuation of the capitalist system. Articulating this “rural radicalism” requires a theoretical model that a) emphasizes the spatial intertwining between humanity and nature and b) does so from an explicitly Marxist perspective.

II. Dialectique de Triplicité and the Overcoming of Abstract Space: Hegel, Marx,

and the Dialectical Thought of Henri Lefebvre

In discussing Lefebvre’s triple dialectic we must focus on how the concept emerges within Lefebvre’s discussion of capitalist production and its impact on space. Rather than seeing it as part of a self-contained systematic theory, it is more helpful to approach it as an analytical tool, a piece of theory whose meaning occurs only within the context of Lefebvre’s reflections on concrete, material history, specifically capitalism’s abstraction of space and fragmentation of daily life.

What is it that motivates Lefebvre to articulate the dialectique de triplicité? It is not a desire to formulate a new philosophical or theoretical system, given Lefebvre’s thorough distrust and rejection of systematic knowledge. His work is entirely too concrete, too oriented towards lived reality to represent any kind of “new metaphysics.” The triad is not an element of a “new philosophy,” but an example of Marxist criticism and the attempt to overcome philosophical, and by extension political, abstraction:

Marx and Marxism fundamentally criticize philosophy, that is, system, speculative thought, ontology, metaphysics…Philosophy as such is classed among ideologies, even if in a specific sense, not aligning it either with vulgar and banal representations or with principles of law, aesthetic efforts and works, and so forth…Philosophy must be superseded. It realizes itself by superseding itself and abolishes itself by realizing itself. The becoming- philosophy of the world gives way to the becoming-world of philosophy, revolutionary realization and superseding of philosophy as such. Each philosophical notion, inasmuch as it enters into the “real” (into praxis), becomes world, it is accomplished, every philosophy is superseded. And philosophy as a whole, as a system entering into the world, has to be superseded.12

Modern philosophy must be “superseded” because it has detached itself from lived reality.

As a matter of purely speculative thought and the pursuit of idealist metaphysics, philosophy professes either nominal political neutrality or is amenable to capitalist ideology. Lefebvre,

12 Henri Lefebvre. Metaphilosophy. (New York: Verso Books, 2016), 17-18.

like Marx, does not dismiss the importance of theory or philosophical reflection. Rather, the knowledge and understanding achieved through philosophy is only meaningful if directed towards revolutionary critique and dismantling of capitalist ideology. The “becoming-world” of philosophy evokes the creation of a different form of life.13 What is needed, therefore, are theoretical tools that enable one to analyze and assess this process wherein capitalism’s parasitic effects on people and space can be uncovered. As Lefebvre writes, the overarching goal of his work on space is “to expose the actual production of space by bringing the various kinds of space and the modalities of their genesis within a single theory;”14 a

“supercode” or “spatiology”15 that will unite form and content. Hence, the claim that

“(social) space is a (social) product” is both a critique of philosophical abstraction and affirmation that “space implies, contains and dissimulates social relationships.”16 Within this analysis, a particular type of social relationship, “one which is inherent to property relationships (especially the ownership of the earth, of land) and also closely bound up with the forces of production (which impose a form on that earth or land” is emphasized.17

A. Hegel and Marx: The Limits of Knowledge and the Possibilities of Materialist

Critique

The Hegelian dialectic is a central component of this “spatiology.” According to

Hegel, the progression of history towards a rational unity occurs through the resolution of various contradictions or tensions in society: subject/object, mind/nature, self/other. The goal of philosophical speculation is the “overcoming” or “sublation” of these contradictions wherein the first term (thesis) overcomes its negation (antithesis) through unity (synthesis).

13 Andy Merrifield. Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 117. 14 Ibid., 18. 15 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space. (Malden: Blackwell, 1991), 404. 16 Ibid., 83. 17 Ibid., 85

For example, in the relationship between Being-Nothing-Becoming, the contradiction between the first and second terms is resolved or overcome in the third because Becoming unifies and preserves both Being and Nothing. Becoming is the synthesis because one is able to “become Nothing from Being” or “become Being from Nothing.”

Lefebvre does not reject the logical structure of this argument; Hegel’s emphasis on contradiction and conflict, of a fluidity and diversity in reality as opposed to stasis or monism, as well as his insistence on the unity between thought and reality, are critically important for his own work.18 Rather, he rejects the inherent idealism, and so abstraction, of

Hegel’s philosophy. Inherently “discursive” wherein “reality” is grasped through the philosophical system, the contradiction between “form” and “content” is superseded or transcended through speculative reflection. He writes,

In Hegel’s philosophy the human Mind…proposes to repossess all its “objective products”…in every sphere: art, religion, social life, science and history. It seeks to raise them to their most conscious form – the form of a concept – by transcending everything which divides and disperses the content, or externalizes it in relation to rational thought…To this end Reason itself must be defined by the movement of thought which challenges, unseats and dissolves particular assertions and limited contents, which passes from one to the other and tends to dominate them. Thus the dialectic, the immediate relation between thought and its diverse, fluid content, is no longer outside logic. It is integrated with logic, which it transforms by transforming itself. It becomes the life and internal movement of thought: both content and form.19

In this context, materiality, the concrete substance of lived reality and lived space, are subsumed in Absolute Knowledge. Accordingly, ideas, not human praxis, are the driving force of history – itself defined as an epochal progression of consciousness – and life, history, society are emptied of its inherent sensuality. The Idea embodies

18 Stuart Elden. Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible. (New York: Continuum, 2004), 29-32. 19 Henri Lefebvre, Dialectical Materiali\sm. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 17, 52.

an identity that is completely full and contains all determinations, wherein an all- encompassing knowledge becomes its own content.20

Politically, the Hegelian dialectic lends itself to a philosophical defense of the state and established order. Individual objectivity, the possibility of truth and ethical behavior are possible for men and women only as they are members of objective spirit, the state.21

Hegel’s conservative reformism, his distrust of democracy, and idealism are seen by Lefebvre as a circumscription of “praxis”, a precluding its revolutionary possibilities.22 Such a philosophical perspective instantiates a political system (constitutional-monarchy) that stands above every aspect of lived reality, serves as the source of human satisfaction and plenitude, and relies on the ministrations of a technocratic bureaucracy.23

Speculative philosophy thus “produces a mental space which is apparently, but only apparently, extra-ideological. In an inevitably circular manner, this mental space then becomes the locus of a “theoretical practice” which is separated from social practice and which sets itself up as the axis, pivot, or central reference point of Knowledge. The established “culture” reaps a double benefit from this manoeuvre: in the first place, the impression is given that the truth is tolerated, or even promoted, by that “culture”; secondly, a multitude of small events occur within this mental space which can be exploited for useful or polemical ends.”24 Hegel’s dialectical approach is, despite its emphasis on the unity between “form” and “content,” ultimately contradictory as it privileges the former and seeks

20 Ibid., 34, 42. 21 Stathias Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx. (New York: Verso 2003), 29. Kouvelakis’ work examines the relationship between modern philosophy and “revolution.” A thorough, in-depth narrative of mid-19th century Europe, he is particularly concerned to chart the genealogical relationship between Kant, Hegel, and Communism. Of Hegel he writes, “To do away with the ancien regime, break the power of the aristocracy and finish with absolutism – a task he considered decisive, whereas the liberal critique tended to ignore it – Hegel favoured gradual change. The moving force behind it was to come from the very highest levels of society, aided and abetted by philosophy…He advocated a rationalization of state institutions, carried out within the framework of a constitutional monarchy (39).” 22 Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, 33. 23 Ibid., 34. 24 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 6.

to subsume the latter in thought.25 Further, as actualized in history, this philosophy justifies an impersonal, hyper-rational, bureaucratic political order that is either unable or unwilling to challenge capitalist hegemony. Indeed, for Lefebvre, this bureaucratic order is a fundamental dimension of not just capitalism as an economic system, but the production of urban space. In order to challenge this situation, dialectical thought must become more concrete and materialist. It must become more Marxist and, consequently, spatial.

As I noted in the preface, Lefebvre’s understanding of and relationship to Marxist theory created significant tension between the philosopher and the official party apparatus in

France. Indicative of what Stefan Kipfer calls a “porous Marxism,” Lefebvre’s understanding of the “materialist dialectic” does not insist on the complete evacuation of its

Hegelian dimension and as such stood in contrast to official party doctrine, particularly

Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism.26 Indicative of a formulaic and static interpretation of Marx, the latter work “combined a nominally dialectical philosophy of nature with a mechanical conception of materialism, complete with a reflection theory of consciousness.”27 Rejecting this mechanistic and reductionist interpretation, Lefebvre argues that a genuinely dialectical theory unites the idealism with the materialism.

Drawing on Marx’s critique of the Hegelian dialectic, he asserts that “Materialism seeks to give thought back its active force, the one which it had before consciousness became separated from work, when it was still linked directly with practice.”28 The alienation of the individual and the community can only be analyzed by a dialectical/concrete method that does not devolve into abstract idealism. Rather, he insists

25 Ibid. 26 Stefan Kipfer, “Preface to the New Edition” in Henri Lefebvre’s Dialectical Materialism. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), xxvi. 27 Ibid., xv. 28 Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism, 61.

that “we must accept the ‘rich content’ of life in all its immensity: Nature, spontaneity, action.”29 As the combination of idealism and materialism, dialectical materialism offers the best tool to engage the “complex content of life and consciousness.”30 Lefebvre summarizes the efficacy and power of dialectical materialism in its: 1) according of primacy to content; 2) praxis as the central reference point; 3) analysis of content through reconstruction of total movement; 4) incorporation of living individual into history; and 5) an openness to becoming.31 Dialectical materialism thus orients philosophical/theoretical reflection towards the particular praxis of becoming by which the living individual seeks totality.

Equally so, dialectical materialism challenges the binary logic of traditional dyads.

Indeed, it is not a coincidence that Lefebvre associates the dualistic character of ancient

Greek philosophical reflection with “representation,” a concept that is critically important in the spatial triad. He writes, “The relationship between two entities (duality, opposition, contrariety, dyad) vanishes as it takes shape, turning into image and reflection, a mirror effect, a rivalry that is derisory to the primacy of either one. Hence the annihilation of one by the other, or sometimes their arrival at the logical compromise of mutual representation.”32

Whether the conflict between the two entities ends in a one-sided annihilation or mutual compromise, the end result is the same: the disappearance of the other. In contrast, a triple dialectic embodies the possibility of inexhaustibility and openness to the becoming of life:

“The introduction of the third term reveals a transformation in thought, its evolution in the world that is in process of becoming. The third term indicates both the contradictory complexity of the real and the movement that springs from contradiction and moves

29 Ibid., 47. 30 Ibid., 73. 31 Ibid., 91, xx. 32 Henri Lefebvre, “Triads and Dyads” in Key Writings, ed. Stuart Elden Elizabeth Lebas and Eleonore Kofman. (New York: Continuum, 2003), 50.

towards going beyond it.”33 If a triadic logic/theory puts us into contact with the “real”

(concrete) and offers us the opportunity to transcend the closed circularity of a binary relationship, how does it operate with regards to space? To this end, why is “space” a necessary object for dialectical analysis? Why is it a necessary tool in analyzing and critiquing capitalism? How does Lefebvre’s spatiology lend itself to theorizing rurality? Understanding the use of the triad, specifically within the context of his critique of urbanization, is key to answering these questions.

B. Triadic Spatiology: Henri Lefebvre and the Aufhebung of Lived Space

According to Lefebvre, there are three types of space that characterize the materialist dialectic: spatial practice, representations of space, and spaces of representation. Interwoven in moments of conflict and contradiction, each type of space is integral to production of social space.

Spatial Practice (perceived); or the physical dimensions of a society which “secretes” it space. Through slow, methodical production, spatial practices embrace the production and particular locations characteristic of specific social forms. Emphasizing the physical form of social space, this dimension focuses on the “use” of space. Lefebvre notes, for example, that in neo-capitalist societies, one of the clearest examples of “spatial practice” is the high-rise housing project of government subsidies.34 In focusing on the physical dimensions of space, spatial practice is also indicative of “social morphology,” in which space is to “lived experience” what form is to the living organism.35

Representations of Space (conceived); or the mental constructions of space. Here the emphasis is on how we think about space and how we conceive it in relationship to physical

33 Henri Lefebvre. “Twelve Theses on Logic and Dialectic” in Key Writings, ed. Stuart Elden, Elizabeth Lebas and Eleonore Kofman. (New York: Continuum, 2003), 58. 34 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 33, 38. 35 Ibid., 94.

spaces. As a representation, this type of space is primarily encountered within a quantifiable, and subsequently, abstract framework. Mathematical, specifically geometric, models are articulated and embraced in this type. Additionally, conceived space is controlled and employed by a technocratic bureaucracy focused on extended capitalist ideology into daily life and erasing subversive, inefficient, and/or heterodox spaces. Representations of space divest lived experience of its dynamism and imagination; quantification, calculation, measurement and the accumulation of fact are its core values. Modern architecture, particularly that of Corbusier, is the dominant spatial expression.36

Spaces of Representation (lived); or the space of users and everyday life. In this space, symbols, images, and the imagination are given priority and emphasis is given to non-verbal communication of meaning.37 Accordingly, this space is an affective space, wherein bodily passions and actions are expressed and embraced.38 Here, users – both individual and collective – appropriate space for their own purposes and its revolutionary possibilities are embodied in subaltern moments that exist in the cracks of bourgeois geography.39 Lefebvre links this type of space to art and totality.40

It is important to note the confusion that can develop when reflecting on these three terms. While the first (spatial practice) is relatively straightforward in its association with the material or physical features of a particular social space, the second (representations of space/conceptual space) and third (spaces of representation/lived space) necessitate some further explanation. Or more precisely, we need to offer a more concise, specific phrasing that attends to distinction between these terms. Certainly the contrast between the

36 Ibid., 38-42. 37 Ibid., 39-40. 38 Merrifield, 110. 39 Shields, 161. 40 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 33.

“conceptual” and “lived” signify the distinction between abstraction and affectivity, despite the terminological overlap in the use of “representation.” Indeed, it is the use of the term

“representation” that is problematic, particularly with regards to “spaces of.” Consider for example that Lefebvre’s primary comments regarding “representation” are made in relation to Cartesian philosophy and the alienating effect of “representational thought.” Here, the ability of the human to “re-present” reality via abstract conceptualization produces a particular kind of space: abstract, conceptual, urban. Were Lefebvre to limit his use of

“representation” to conceived space the confusion would perhaps be minimal, if not altogether absent. Unfortunately, he uses the same word, albeit differently, in reference to lived space.

The prepositional “of” is operative for both cases and the meaning of each idea derives from the placement of their constitutive terms. That is, “representations of space” emphasizes the former: abstraction, conceptualization, geometric, philosophical, mental.

“Space” in this context derives its importance or meaning from the “representational; hence its association with urbanization. Conversely, “spaces of representation” appears to place the emphasis on “space”: affectivity, use, passion, art, the body. Why then the appeal to

“representation?” Would it not be more effective to name this idea simply “lived space” or

“bodily space?” Or, considering Lefebvre’s emphasis on cultivating a “style of life,” could we not describe it as “spatial style” or “space of poiesis?” I contend, somewhat cautiously, that the use of “representation” here refers to its symbolic and imaginary qualities, wherein

“representation” is thus detached from its “conceptual” or “intellectual” context; similarly, I will argue in chapter three that the imagination is not simply an intellectual act, but equally so a bodily and ecological sensibility. And so we are left with the task of creating a phrase of reference that evokes the subversive, revolutionary potential of “space of representation.”

In Metaphilosophy, Lefebvre offers a helpful term – residue, that which escapes and resists abstract systems.41 Arguing for a “theory” or “method” or residues, he associates the term with a “new romanticism with revolutionary tendency, or rather, one fundamentally revolutionary.”42 Here, we could legitimately speak of a “romantic space” or “residual space.”

Indeed, I am inclined toward the latter, provided we connect it to the “margins” or

“periphery.” Marginal space. Peripheral space.43 Rural space. Appalachian space. Bodily space. Creaturely space – each can evoke the subversive, revolutionary sensibility of “spaces of representation.” If, as I will argue, we can posit a parallel between “representations of space/spaces of representation” and “urban space/rural space”, the second term in both pairings gestures towards a lived space that is materially and symbolically rooted in the elemental corporeality of the land.

The application of this triad is the subject of considerable debate among scholars working on Lefebvre. Some contend that the spatial triad entails a “spatializing” of dialectical thought. For example, Rob Shields argues that Lefebvre “shifts the ground of dialectical materialism from time to space.”44 As a spatialized dialectic, the triad alters the traditional dialectic of “affirmation-negation-negation of the negation.” Drawing on

Lefebvre’s emphasis on the “third-term-as-other,” Shields claims that the third term “is in fact treated more as a “negation of the negation” than an equal player with the first two, and he [Lefebvre] uses language that harks back to his older work on the ‘total person’.”45

Consequently, he interprets Lefebvre as seeking “to respatialize the dialectic, holding the

41 Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, 299. 42 Ibid., 301. 43 My reference to “peripheral” space prefigures the forthcoming discussion in chapter 2 concerning Appalachian and its “peripheral” character, both geographic and symbolic. Here I will draw on Appalachian Studies scholar Rodger Cunningham, whose Apples on the Flood, traces the exploitation and marginalization of the region to a series of pre-modern and medieval waves of colonial expansion that established a pattern of psycho-geographical “peripheralization.” 44 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 119. 45 Ibid., 120.

negation of the negation not as the point set in motion (line) but as a radical ‘outside’, a

‘beyond’ or otherness, constitutively distinct from the original binary of field and point, or affirmation and negation. In effect, the shift is from ‘affirmation-negation-negation of the negation’ to ‘affirmation-negation-otherness’.”46 Shields’ argument hinges on his belief that

Lefebvre does not take the triad to its logical conclusion. Rather than challenge the temporal bias extant in the Hegelian dialect – Shields argues that the traditional dialectic form equates affirmation with space and negation with time – Lefebvre’s spatial theory is in effect incomplete. He thus emphasizes the “otherness” of the third term as way of overcoming Hegelian temporalisation such that the triad is seen as a re-introduction of space

(spatialization) into dialectical materialism.47

Shields’ emphasis on the “otherness” of the third term is critical, particularly with regards to the relationship between “conceived” and “lived” space. However, we must ask whether his argument regarding “Lefebvrian spatialisation” is not so much a re-introduction of space as it is a perpetuation of the binary split between time and space that Lefebvre himself rejected. For example, Stuart Elden does not dispute the importance of the “third term” in Lefebvre’s spatiology, noting its central place in adequately understanding the import of his work. However, rather than construing the “third term” as a “spatial other,”

Elden argues that the “‘dialectique de triplicité’ is neither a replacement of dialectical reasoning with ‘trialectics’ or the introduction of space into the dialectic.”48 For Elden, the spatial triad does not posit an either/or choice between space and time, but instead insists on spatio- temporal unity. In this holism, the third term is not an artificial synthesis of the affirmation

46 Ibid., 152. 47 Ibid. 48 Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 37.

and negation, but rather represents a dialectical encounter with the issue of space.49 The triad is not merely a history of space or a spatializing of history, rather in the continual movement between the three terms it is a unification of space and time.

Elden’s argument is important, specifically in his refusal to abandon time or history in favor of space. When placed within the context of Lefebvre’s philosophy, it is clear that the triad must be understood in relationship to space and time; the concept is foremost about the spaces we inhabit, but this does not require the expense of temporal concerns and it is critical to keep in mind the spatio-temporal relationality of social space.50 The three processes of space, ostensibly separate and conceivably independent, are in fact interconnected and yield an approximate analysis rather than systematic certainty.51

With this in mind, we can make two statements regarding the function of the triple dialectic. One, it provides the necessary conceptual apparatus to examine productions of space, particularly with regards to modern capitalism and its transformation of space. Here, our emphasis is on the theoretical dimension of the triad. If our ideas about society shape

(produce) our society, then theoretical knowledge is important not only as it is itself an “idea,” but equally so because it allows us to engage our ideas. Hence, “mental space” and

“concepts” are important and cannot be abandoned, but rather must be integrated into total practice.

Two, through such critical knowledge, the triad seeks to open the necessary space for subverting the dominant – and dominating – capitalist spaces. A significant aspect of the triad’s importance certainly rests in its analytical dimensions, but we must always keep in

49 Ibid. 50 Christian Schmid, “Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space” in Space, Difference, Everyday Life, 29. See also Christian Schmid. “Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of The Production of Space: Towards a three-dimensional dialectic” in Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, ed. Kanishka Goonewardena, Stefan Kiper, Richard Milgrom, Christian Schmid. (New York: Routledge, 2008). 51 Ibid.

mind the purpose of such analysis: the exposure of capitalist abstraction and its subversion through “total living.” For Lefebvre, the subversive potentiality of space is located in the unification of the finite and infinite in the art of living and lived space.52 Indeed, while theoretically the three elements of the triad form a unity and cannot be thought of separately, its practical application entails a privileging of the third term and it is the emphasis given to

“art” and “living” that makes Lefebvre’s triad unique, complex and – I contend – resonant with arguments for rural space(s).

While Elden emphasizes the equality and unity within in the triadic relationship, such that neither one is more important in the analysis of the production of space, I contend that when read in the context of Lefebvre’s criticism of capitalism and urbanization, the “third term” of the “lived” (spaces of representation) assumes a greater significance. Here, we must note the commonality between what Lefebvre says about urbanization and conceived space.

That is “representations of space” are associated with capitalist technocracy because they are conceptual abstractions that produce a hierarchical social order that consumes everything in its path. Abstraction and alienation coexist in a mutually reciprocal feedback loop in the service of capitalist accumulation. As Michael Trebitsch writes:

[For Lefebvre] alienation appears as a historical process of down-grading, of loss of…ancient “human plenitude”, by virtue of a dual movement of separation and abstraction: on the one hand, a separation of the social and the human, culminating in the division of labour and specialization of spheres of humans activity; on the other hand, an increasing abstraction of human actions stripped of their living substance in favour of signs…Alienation thus leads to the impoverishment, to the despoliation of everyday life.53

Alienation as “separation” and “division,” specifically as it pertains to labor and the forces of production, is of course a central tenet of Marxist orthodoxy. Further, that a Marxist thinker

52 Schmid, 32. 53 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: The One Volume Edition. (New York: Verso Press, 2014), 19.

would identify the concentration of wealth and power in the bourgeois class as initiating fundamental changes socio-economic relationships through the introduction of “specialized” wage labor is not surprising; in this Lefebvre is thoroughly within the parameters of “official

Marxism.” Rather, it is the second half of Trebitsch’s comment that indicates the unique character of Lefebvre’s theory – the emphasis on “everyday life.”

Kanishka Goonewardena notes that whereas “the objective of socialist revolution was visible as the radical reconstruction of everyday life…in its pre-revolutionary days….everyday life reeked of negative connotations, highlighting its ‘inauthenticity’ in the modern world.”54 While approaching everyday life with nuance, noting its trivial dimensions, repetitive quality, and the depth of alienation experienced therein, Elden argues that

“Lefebvre…wished to put forward a programme for radical change, for a revolution of everyday life, so as to end alienation…A revolution cannot just hope to change the political personnel or institutions, it must also change ‘la vie quotidienne’, which has already been literally colonized by capitalism.”55 In this colonization, this domination, philosophical abstraction and capitalist ideology intersect. Lefebvre writes,

Abstract space thus simultaneously embrace the hypertrophied analytic intellect; the state and bureaucratic raison d’etat; ‘pure’ knowledge; and the discourse of power. Implying a ‘logic’ which misrepresents and masks it contradictions, this space, which is that of bureaucracy, embodies a successful integration of spectacle and violence…We find that abstract space so understood is hard to distinguish from the space postulated by the philosophers, from Descartes to Hegel, in their fusion of the intelligible (res extensa) with the political – their fusion, that is to say, of knowledge with power.56

54 Kanishka Goonewardena, “Marxism and Everyday Life: On Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and some others” Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, ed. Kanishka Goodnewardena, Stefan Kiper, Richard Milgrom, and Christian Schmid. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 118. This perspective is perhaps expressed most acutely in Heidegger’s belief that everyday life is “the realm of…inappropriate’ existence, an existence where humans do as one does, and the authentic or “appropriate” way of being is not open to them (Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 112).” 55 Ibid., 117. 56 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 308.

Abstraction is at the heart of both philosophical metaphysics and capitalist alienation. For both, it facilitates the fragmentation and atomization of social reality. It cultivates the technocratic ethos in which every moment is anticipated, programmable, and thereby rendered intelligible. It is the definitive feature of bourgeois consciousness, wherein individuality is oppositional and competitive.57 It serves as the source of capitalist power and facilitates the dismissal, dominations, and erasure of all that it considers superfluous and residual. “Lived space” and “everyday life” are thus victims of capitalism’s abstract hegemony.

Therefore, I maintain that while conceived space is an important dimension – particularly as it relates to something like Lefebvre’s “unitary theory” and “supercode” – in challenging the fragmentation of space, lived space (spaces of representation), particularly in its connection to everyday life, must be emphasized. In this, I agree with Schmid’s argument concerning the artistic third movement in Lefebvre’s trialectic, wherein the proper embodiment of space occurs through the poetic dimension of lived space, which itself challenges the reductionism of conceived space.

Within this context, the dialectical relationship between “representations of space” and “spaces of representations” is not necessarily one in which a synthesis is reached between the “concept” and “lived reality.” Here, whatever theoretical equality exists between the three types of space is in effect “overcome” through its practical application. Thus, if the problem of the Hegelian dialectic is its “idealization” and “mental abstraction,” then we cannot contribute to this abstraction by ignoring the radical implications of positing “lived space” as praxis and praxis as reality.58 Within the spatial triad, the Third Term is associated with reality and is therefore emphasized and from a conceptual standpoint this argument is

57 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 624, 731, 114. 58 Ibid., 38.

perhaps not problematic.59 Indeed, both Elden and Shields recognize the importance of the

Third Term.

Lefebvre’s philosophy reminds us that space matters and that it is only through our spatial relationships that we create a way of life. Furthermore, his “triple dialectic” is an invaluable theoretical tool for recognizing the importance of space and analyzing its production. Accordingly, I have focused on the relatively abstract dimensions of his thought, the influence of Marx and Hegel and the development of the trialectic, because they provide the necessary philosophical framework to examine the dynamic between urban and rural spaces. Indeed, as we shall see in the following chapter, Lefebvre’s work helps us recognize the extent to which urbanization was fundamental in the transformation of Appalachian space(s). We must recognize that the industrialization of the region was simultaneously its urbanization. The theoretical dimensions of Lefebvre’s philosophy of space help us achieve this goal.

However, there remains the problem of Lefebvre’s urban bias. As I discussed in the subsection on the trialectic, in an abstract context there is a fundamental equality between the three types of space; practiced, conceived, and lived all function together in the

59 Understanding the relationship of the Third Term to the First and Second Terms is, in part, contingent on how we define Hegel’s Aufheben and its impact on Lefebvre’s dialectical triad. While the term has historically been interpreted as “sublation” – a synthetic movement of preservation and transformation between the thesis and antithesis – Elden remarks that Lefebvre’s use of the French word depassement (overtaking; surpassing) is much closer to Nietzsche’s uberwinden (Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 37). As “overcoming,” the third term does not result in the disappearance of the first and second, but rather in their enrichment and concretization. Here the contradiction between the first and second terms is surpassed but the first and second terms do not disappear. Within the limited confines of logical reasoning present in the spatial triad this interpretation is convincing. It is clear that Lefebvre does not wish to discard either physical or mental space, as he is acutely aware of the ways in which our ideas (mental constructs) about space shape society. However, within the broader context of his critique of capitalism, I believe that the “overcoming” of the third term is akin to what Shields describes as “othering.” That is, as an exercise of formal logic, limited as it were to the kind of intellectual captivity that Lefebvre decries, the spatial triad does indeed function “equally.” Thus, within the rather abstract logic of the spatial triad as a series of concepts, defining depassement as sublation makes sense. For Hegel, “sublation” is the movement of dialectic and represents the progress of rational thought (geist) in history. However, if placed in the very historical context that Lefebvre analyzes, I contend that we are reminded that the Third Term “is not an attitude of the mind” but rather a “practical solution to the problems posed by life, to the conflicts and contradictions to which praxis gives birth and which are experienced practically (Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism 37, 99).”

production of space. Yet, when applied to the history and the production of space, that is when combined with Lefebvre’s analysis of capitalist space, the Third Term assumes an altogether different place. Within Lefebvre’s interpretation of history and his advocacy for differential space over and against capitalist abstraction, the Third Term of “lived space” can legitimately be paired with rural spaces. Indeed, I contend that perhaps one of the most faithful embodiments of a renewed subjectivity, self-realization, and poetic dwelling occurs within rural spaces. I believe that the inability to recognize the potential for rural spaces to embody the subversive life that Lefebvre envisions is contingent on an acute, if complicated, urban bias within his work, particularly his reading of the historical development of urbanization. Further, I contend that despite his proclivity to focus on the “city” as the space of revolutionary praxis, Lefebvre’s work provides an opening for articulating an argument for rural spatiality. In the following section I focus on specific points of his historical narrative: his reading and emphasis on the ancient polis and the shift towards abstraction initiated by capitalism. In short, Lefebvre’s historical narrative of urbanization provides an invaluable definition of what “urbanization” entails but fails to recognize the extent to which this process was apparent prior to the advent of capitalism.

III. The Right to the City: The Ancient Polis and Modern Abstraction

Part of the difficulty in understanding Lefebvre’s argument concerning urbanization is the relative confusion that his terminology yields. Much of this depends on a certain ambiguity in how Lefebvre defines and uses the terms “city” and “urban,” particularly as it pertains to the differences between them. For example, Lefebvre is quite explicit in the opening pages of The Urban Revolution: the “city” is a clearly defined historical and social object of a particular historical and temporal period, while the “urban” or “urban society” is

directly connected to the processes of industrialization and the expansion of capitalism.60 As part of his analysis of the history of urbanization the distinction made between the “city” and “urban society” is intelligible and easily understood. While not romanticizing the city spaces of ancient society or the medieval west, Lefebvre is clear in his appreciation for the various and complicated ways in which those types of space “express and symbolize a person’s being and consciousness.”61 In contrast, “urban society” as a distinct object and

“urbanization” as a specific process is associated with the development of bureaucratic rationalization and consumption, of technocratic control and calculation. A logical progression of capitalist accumulation, the urban is associated with centrality and the concentration of peoples, markets, and wealth.

Lefebvre’s political goal is the transformation of the sterile, bureaucratic spaces of the modern urban center into “ludic cities” or genuine public sites of encounter where creativity and jouissance could be experienced.62 Emphasizing his oft-quoted call for a “right to the city,” Elonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas identify in Lefebvre a desire for “a renewed urban society, a renovated centrality [that leaves] opportunity for rhythms and use of time that would permit full usage of moments and places.”63 Likewise, Stathis Kouvelakis argues that “urban society” enables “the creative freedom of Subjects, the Festival, and ‘ludic centrality’ [to] unfold unchecked, recreating at a higher level the immediate unity of nature, everyday life, and enjoyment which was characteristic of the original Festival specific to rural community.”64 Kouvelakis expands on this argument, claiming that the qualitative use-value of social appropriation, contra commodification, is “inherent in the ‘second nature’ of the

60 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 1-2. 61 Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, “Lost In Transpositions” in Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, ed. Elonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 7-8. 62 Ibid, 15. 63 Ibid., 19. 64 Stathis Kouvelakis, “Henri Lefebvre, Thinker of Urban Modernity” in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism, ed. Jacques Bides and Stathis Kouvelakis, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009), 716.

urban.”65 Finally, Stuart Elden offers a similar assessment of Lefebvre’s attitude towards urban space, writing:

Urban space is therefore not just the place where political struggles occurs, but increasingly the very object of that struggle. Just as a battlefield is the site of conflict but also part of the territory over which conflicts are often initiated, the city plays a similar role. One of the crucial issues is that of the relationship between the centre and the periphery. For Lefebvre the call for a right to the city is a right to centrality. The importance of centrality can be found in different forms in the cities of each kind of society, each mode of production…One of the central claims in Lefebvre’s analysis of the Paris Commune was the way in which it could be read as a reclaiming of the urban centre by the marginalized masses.66

A critical dimension of this perspective is the differentiation between “urbanization” as a process and “the city” as a social space. Within his triadic spatiology, urbanization is associated with “conceived space” and the power of technocratic planners, while “the city” functions as a “lived space” of potential resistance. Essential to this framework is an appeal to “centrality” and “totality” as focusing our attention on the necessity of renewing “city life.”

Through this process, Lefebvre identifies the city as the space which might subvert the fragmentation produced through the capitalist mode of production.67 Accordingly, the revolutionary militancy of urban renewal required a “dynamic core” and open space which could regroup anew “differences in relation to each other.”68 In this context, “centrality” is an inherent dimension of Lefebvre’s broader project of resistance, for through centralization

– the appropriation of the city center through the genuine dwelling (of workers, artists and students) – the city will once again become an open space of cultivated spontaneity. And while the 1848 French Revolution, the Parisian Commune of 1871, and the May 1968

65 Ibid., 718. 66 Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 151. 67 Andy Merrifield notes that for Lefebvre, by the late 1960s, cities had either replaced or would replace factories as the primary site of Marxist analysis and struggle, such that the former “would be major sites of capital accumulation, on the one side, and of organized revolt, on the other…For Lefebvre, accordingly, a new Marxist humanism must be founded on a new right, on a right to the commons, a right to the city, which will emerge like a ‘cry and demand,’ he says, like a militant call-to-arms (168).” 68 Ibid., 169; Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 151.

occupation of Paris are appealed to as emblematic of a “renewed city,” Lefebvre’s sees the ancient Greek polis as an archetypal form of a “lived city.”

A. For the Political City: The Ancient City-State contra Urbanization

One primary reason for the dismissal of rural space is the fragmentary character of

Lefebvre’s historical narrative. To be sure, he is acutely aware of the dynamism and creativity extant in rural cultures, and as we shall see, certain aspects of his work lend themselves to a defense or support for such spaces. Unfortunately, these dimensions are often ignored and attenuated. With regards to the process of “urbanization,” this historical reading complicates our understanding of its evolution and impact on social relations and space. Articulated most clearly and succinctly in The Urban Revolution, Lefebvre’s history of urbanization is fluid, with distinguishable but overlapping historical periods, represented on a horizontal axis that posits an evolutionary model of urbanization, beginning with 0% (pure nature) and ending with 100% (complete urbanization).69 Leaving aside the problematic concept of “pure nature,” which I will address more closely in chapter four, I want to focus on how the historical process of urbanization is not exhausted by the process of industrialization. Assuredly, Lefebvre’s narrative accurately assesses the importance of industrialization, but it simultaneously ignores what I refer to as proto-urbanization extant in ancient political city-states. Simply put, contra Lefebvre, I believe that the process of urbanization is not an inherently a “modern” process.

While I agree with Lefebvre on the importance of industrialization and technological innovation in the expansion of an urbanized spatiality, I reject his tendency to confine the advent of urbanization as a distinct process to the 14th-century. Certainly, the modern manifestations of urbanization are unique and we must address them as such. Nonetheless I

69 Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, 7.

believe that the exploitative, oppressive character of urbanization was present long before the advent of capitalism. And while Lefebvre is cognizant of this quality of the ancient city- state (i.e. the Roman polis), his placement of such a space along the “urbanization axis” belies a far too simplistic embrace of the ancient political metropole as a model of total praxis, and in so doing, an inability to imagine rural spaces as capable of facilitating and cultivating resistance to abstraction and alienation.

According to Lefebvre, the key characteristic that separates the political city, which is closer to “pure nature” represented by the zero percentile along the “urbanization axis,” is the presence and power of an exchange and trade system; the development of a space of exchange – a market – marks the beginning of urbanization. Accordingly, the 14th century signals an historical shift, as “the city” becomes increasingly dominated by market forces and becomes the center of capital accumulation.70 As such, in the first “city-scape” identified along the axis –the political city – merchants are viewed suspiciously and “controlled” by the physical barriers of the city.71 Lefebvre writes, “Exchange and trade, which are essential to the survival of life, bring wealth and movement. The political city resists this with all the power at its disposal, all its cohesiveness; it feels, knows, that it is threatened by markets, merchandise, and traders, by their form of ownership (money, a form of personal property, being movable by definition).”72 This interpretation is telling and helps us understand

Lefebvre’s call for the renewal of urban space and the “right to the city.”

The ancient political city-state is distinguished from the merchant city by its focus on territorial power, wherein the ruling power “administers, protects, and exploits a territory that is often vast…manages large-scale agricultural projects such as drainage, irrigation, the

70 Ibid., 9. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid.

construction of dams, the clearing of land…[and] rules over a number of villages.”73 Here, the emphasis is on the control of physical space and the expansion of the imperial order across physical space. Accordingly, “urban space” in this frame is not identified with a particular economic system, as the “merchant” city will be, but rather the city is in large part defined by its territory. Its collective identity is circumscribed by the figure of the emperor and his sovereign power and the city as a territorial community exists to the extent that the emperor’s power allows it to be.

And yet, despite this tendency towards hegemonic control and hierarchical power, the ancient city did not erase the sense in which “the land” was considered collective property.74 While the rural periphery of the city-state was subjected to the dictates of the urban core, possession of land itself remained, at least nominally, in the hands of its inhabitants; Lefebvre notes the extent to which “effective possession” is procured through tributary payments.75 Further, within this ancient space, albeit unequal, community, there was a conscious resistance to any pursuit of fragmentation. According to Lefebvre, the philosopher(s) of the city-state embody the totality of urban life and pursue a “oneness of thought and being, of discourse and act, of nature and contemplation, of the world (or the cosmos) and human reality.”76 Linked to philosophical inquiry, “The city…gathers by and in its logos the wealth of the territory, dispersed activities and people, the spoken and the written (of which each assumes already its collection and recollection…If philosophy and the city are thus associated in the dawning logos (reason), it is not within a subjectivity akin to the Cartesian ‘cogito’.”77 The logos of the political city does not entail a will towards the

73 Ibid., 9. Emphasis added. Lefebvre’s primary reference points are Greece and Rome. 74 Henri Lefebvre, ‘Philosophy and the City’ in Writings on Cities, ed. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 87. 75 Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, 9. 76 Lefebvre, “Philosophy and the City” in Writings on Cities, 88. 77 Ibid., 89.

abstraction of conceived space.78 Rather, through its centralizing force, the political city is

“an oeuvre, closer to a work of art than to a simple material product.”79 As such, this city can be a space of creative activity, of symbolism, imagination and play.80 Consider his description of the Greek polis:

As a spatial and social hierarchy [that utilizes] its meticulously defined space to bring demes, aristocratic clans, villages and groups of craftsmen and traders together in the unity of the polis…Its centre – the agora – served as focus, as gathering place…What, then, of difference. Difference was produced…Between the Cosmos and the “world”, difference arose as part of a “historical” process…the difference occurred spontaneously, which is what distinguishes produced difference from difference which is induced, and generally reduced.81

In both the Greek polis and renewed urban space we see a center pulsating with life and difference, community and spontaneity, a work of art where people can encounter one another and truly inhabit their space. Further, Lefebvre contends that a harmony existed between conceived and lived space.82 Unfortunately, this historical interpretation of the political city and a renewed urban society ignores significant aspects of ancient history and, in turn, partially contradicts Lefebvre’s trenchant critique of urbanization. We will discuss first the connection between urbanization and abstraction as doing so will allow us to better recognize the limitations of Lefebvre’s interpretation of the ancient city.

Indeed, Lefebvre’s call for the “right to the city” is rooted in a belief that the city is akin to an artistic work and “the effort to reach out towards a new humanism, a new praxis, another man, that of urban society.”83 Further, despite his appreciation for the ancient city, this desire for a renewed right to the city does not entail a nostalgic return to such

78 Ibid. 79 Henri Lefebvre, “The Specificity of the City” in Writings on Cities, ed. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 100. 80 Henri Lefebvre, “The Right to the City” in Writings on Cities, ed. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 147. 81 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 249-250. 82 Ibid., 247. 83 Ibid., 150.

“traditional” cities. Rather he sees in the renewed urban society an echo of the City of

Greek civilization where art and culture develop and emerge.84

And yet this picture is incomplete and one-sided. When seen through the lens of rural experiences, the process of centralization is fundamentally problematic, as it has been and remains a means of economic, cultural and political domination. Here, the symbiotic relationship between capitalism and urbanization comes to the fore. As a means of production, capitalism not only requires the accumulation of surplus labor, but through this process, it produces a particular type of space – urban. Urbanized space is thus identified as abstract, fragmented, hierarchical and homogenous. Further, as the form of capitalist space, the urban produces marginal spaces, either expanding regions of poverty or perpetuating historical relationships of uneven extraction; indeed, the process of “uneven development” is fundamental to the bios of urbanization. Consequentially, a marginalized or peripheral perspective, one physically and mentally beyond or outside the material city, challenges the viability of a renewed city as the best response to urbanization.85

B. Against Abstraction: Representations of Space, Urbanization, and the Political

City

In what follows, I offer a double-challenge. First, I will challenge Lefebvre’s reading of history, particularly his ideas regarding the dynamism and creativity of ancient city-states.

Second, I will challenge interpretations of Lefebvre that either ignore and dismiss the tangible concern for, and certain embrace of, rural/agrarian spaces extant in his work. Just as the diverse “spaces of representation” in everyday life represent fissures in the capitalist mode of production, so too there are openings in Lefebvre’s work that enable us to

84 Lefebvre, “No Salvation Away From the Centre?” in Writings on Cities, ed. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 206. 85 Lefebvre, “The Right to the City” in Writings on Cities ed. by Kofman and Lebas, 154.

construct a practical theory rural spatiality. Indeed, I contend that, in significant ways, everyday life in rural spaces might provide more fruitful sites of resistance to capitalist hegemony.

Considering Lefebvre’s recognition of urbanization’s propensity for domination, homogenization and abstraction, it is troublesome that he speaks so approvingly of the “city.”

Of course, we can explain this apparent contradiction terminologically, where “urbanization” is a process and “urban” a metonym for “city.” Lefebvre is aware of the potential for such terminological confusion and seeks clarification in differentiating the “city as object” from the “urban as horizon and possibility.”86 Within this schema, urbanization is seen as a generalized process that fractures form and function of the ancient city and prevents the renewal of urban life.87 As a key component of Lefebvre’s argument in The Production of Space, the connection between urbanization and abstract space is critically important in understanding not only Lefebvre’s critique of Cartesian/mental space, but equally so his diagnosis of capitalism’s transformation of space.

True to form, Lefebvre identifies the production of abstract space with the abstraction of social relationships. While his historical reflection on the period of this dual development remains truncated, Lefebvre helpfully points out that the decrease in productive activity accompanied a detachment of labor from social life.88 As a result, abstract space, “as a set of things/signs and their formal relationships” replaced historical space.89 Abstract space is furthermore identified with the “formal and quantitative” dimensions of social life; it figures space according to measurable dimensionality and rejects

“the sensual and the sexual” and it “operates negatively” towards differential space(s),

86 Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, 16-17. 87 Ibid., 17. 88 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 49. 89 Ibid.

dissolving, incorporating and eventually replacing them. 90 As the space of quantitative, rational analysis, abstract urbanization is associated with Cartesian mental space conjoined to rationalistic power wherein “what is involved in all cases is the effective application of the analytic spirit in and through dispersion, division and segregation.”91 While abstract analysis is ultimately dismissive of bodily perceptions and knowledge, it paradoxically expresses itself in what Lefebvre refers to as the “phallic formant.”92 Here, “phallic brutality…the brutality of political power, of the means of constraint: police, army, bureaucracy” embodies the destructive ethos of abstraction.93 The power of the phallic object does not only perpetuate a patriarchal social structure, it equally corresponds to the evacuation of the body and its dissolution from “nature” from our considerations of space; this point will be discussed more fully in chapter three.

Perhaps most importantly, abstract space is the space of capitalism’s power.

Lefebvre writes, “The dominant form of space, that of the centres of wealth and power, endeavours to mould the spaces it dominates (i.e. peripheral spaces), and it seeks, often by violent means, to reduce the obstacles and resistance it encounters there. Differences, for their part, are forced into the symbolic forms of an art that is itself abstract.”94 Abstract space is thus paradoxically homogenous and fragmented; the latter a result of fractured totality and the former a consequence of violent coercion. It is extremely important that

Lefebvre identifies “abstract space” with the capitalist mode of production. Not only does it demonstrate the concrete and specific example central to his philosophical critique, it provides us with a “thick” description of abstraction as a process. In many ways, we can say

90 Ibid., 49, 50. 91 Ibid., 308. 92 Ibid., 286. 93 Ibid., 287. 94 Ibid., 49.

that abstract space, capitalism, and urbanization are interdependent and complementary elements in the alienation and commodification of daily life. Consequentially, we cannot isolate one element from the other two, as they loop back into one another to (re)produce an ethos of efficiency, accumulation and domination.

As a process of abstraction, urbanization therefore corresponds to the broader fragmentation and homogenization wrought by the capitalist mode of production.

According to Lefebvre, victims of this process include not only the individual and communal body/bodies and natural spaces, but equally so the ancient political city. Urban society is opposed to the process of urbanization. I contend that the consistency of this picture is dependent on a particular spatial perspective, a privileging of the “city” or “urban” against the “rural.” When perceived from within rural spaces we cannot so easily delineate between the “urban as possibility” and “urbanization as process.” From a rural perspective, a renewed urban space still implies the evacuation of rural spaces such that, as Lefebvre notes, it does not matter what survives of the countryside. Moreover, emphasizing the relationship between abstraction and urbanization allows us to challenge Lefebvre’s argument that capitalism, industrialization, and the general process of urbanization co-evolve in such a way that urbanization does not truly begin until the advent(s) of capitalism and industrialization.

To be clear, I do not dispute the interdependent relationship that exists between capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization, nor do I think we should ignore the specific ways in which capitalism has perpetuated the domination of rural spaces. Industrial capitalism, with its attendant technological innovation, has proven particularly destructive for rural communities, including Appalachia. Rather, we must extend Lefebvre’s understanding of “urbanization” back into history. Looking at the ancient city from a rural perspective and apart from Lefebvre’s positive description of the Greek polis might reveal to

us the minute but powerful ways “urbanization” as a process of abstraction and destruction shaped the political city’s relationship to countryside. What is needed therefore is a

“ruralization” of Lefebvre’s theory and re-appropriation of its insights from and for rural spaces. Doing so will allow us not only to critique Lefebvre’s embrace of the ancient city, it will likewise afford us the necessary analytical tools to recognize that his philosophy is perhaps not so “urban” as it appears.95

While Lefebvre’s understanding of the logics and actions of the political city is insightful, he fails to adequately appreciate the coercion and domination of rural communities by this space. So while peasant communities may have, as Lefebvre contends,

“retained effective possession” of the land, this ownership was increasingly subjected to the dictates of the city-center, whether Greek or Roman. Indeed, it is all the more disconcerting that Lefebvre locates ancient political cities further away from “complete urbanization” considering his awareness of their oppressive capacities. Of course, to a certain extent this is understandable; capitalism, industrialization, and complete urbanization are surely intertwined in such a way that we cannot accurately posit the ancient political city as a fully urbanized space. But it is incorrect to use such a conclusion as the basis for positing the ancient political city as closer to “natural space.” True, these city-states were not as technologically advanced as modern cities, a critical aspect of Lefebvre’s argument which will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. The extent of “city-state control” over nature

95 Consider for example his discussion of Roman society and its production of space, particularly the various ways in which patriarchal (phallic) power asserted itself. According to Lefebvre, the masculine symbols of Roman society embody the military, authoritarian, and juridical character of the dominant of masculine subjectivity (Production of Space 245).” Conversely, the feminine is the realm of fertility and reproduction, which is not denied but increasingly “thrust down into the ‘abyss’ of the earth, as the place where seeds are sown and the dead are laid (Ibid.).” The dialectic between the masculine and feminine is thus organized in such a way that the former perpetually dominates the latter while never fully evacuating it of its vitality and dynamism. The result was a system of representations and symbols that perpetuated the Roman city-state and absorbed any and all discrete, autonomous spaces – nature, land, agrarian village, women, children, and slave – into its political cosmology. As such, the spatial triad contributes to the production of a particular space (Ibid, 243, 246)

and rural spaces may have not been as intense or expansive as that of the merchant and industrial city (itself the progenitor of urbanization), the emergence of the political city, nevertheless represented a concerted effort of centralized power and authority to control peripheral spaces, particularly rural-agrarian villages.

Archeologist Alexander Thomas provides a helpful rejoinder to Lefebvre’s history.

In contrast to Lefebvre’s somewhat idealistic vision of the ancient political city as a site of creative praxis, Thomas’ attention to the “cultural” dimension of urban power is extremely important and demonstrates the pluriform character of urban space. Urbanization need not be defined by its technological innovation or the presence of a robust space of market exchange. Rather, it can be understood in a more circumscribed but open way, as a “form of social organization based on the need to organize the labor and resources necessary for a large population.”96 Additionally, ancient forms of urbanization were, according to Thomas, primarily focused on the production of trade networks to enable the distribution of necessary goods to various central nodes.97 Within this context, urbanization can then be identified with technological innovation, military capacity, population density, and/or cultural/political centralization, all of which were extant, to varying degrees and forms, in urban spaces prior to the advent of capitalism.

Indeed, Thomas contends that an intricate, powerful bureaucratic system was integral to the economies of many ancient city-states. As an extension of kinship networks,

“the ultimate target of this bureaucracy was the mobilization of a vast peasantry that actually produced the food and goods necessary to survival.”98 Consequentially, this nascent bureaucracy functioned to not only extract necessary goods from the periphery, but in doing

96 Ibid., 154. 97 Ibid., 179. 98 Ibid., 163.

so produced fundamental inequalities both within and without the city’s walls. Thomas describes this process as a social distancing “between those in power and those who are ruled” resulting in a weaker set of constraints on elite control and more outlandish displays of wealth.99 And while he is keenly aware of the differences between ancient urban economies and modern capitalism, Thomas notes the various ways in which the former instantiated a similar domination of its “lower classes”, the peasantry and urban laborers. He writes,

Peasants were subjected to hard labor in the fields during the agricultural year and to corvee labor at other times repairing the canals, roads, and other urban infrastructures. In the cities themselves, urban laborers were to varying degrees dependent upon rations distributed by the elite…[and while] we do not have adequate knowledge of the level of pay allotted to urban workers and the degree to which they had additional resources such as access to land…suffice it to say that the bulk of the agricultural and industrial surplus was spent in the opulence of the palace, temple, and homes of the “fathers” of major oikoi rather than on the population at large.100

Thomas’ argument provides us with a more complex picture of ancient urban society, despite the somewhat anachronistic use of the word “industrial” to describe work within the city. Specifically, he challenges Lefebvre’s too-quick embrace of “centrality” as somehow redemptive or politically advantageous. Contrary to the notion that “city centers” were (and remain) spaces of genuine communal encounter, despite whatever hierarchy or oppressive social structure exists, Thomas helpfully reminds us that city-states were organized according to specific values (accumulation) by a specific group of people (elite; rulers, priests, bureaucratic functionaries). Indeed, we should note the extent to which Lefebvre’s appraisal of the ancient political city does not account for its religious dimensions. While he does note importance of priests for the political city, there is little reflection on the role of the

99 Ibid., 179. 100 Ibid., 181.

temple or its functionaries in the evolution of the city-state. Commenting on the inability of local peasant communities to resist its exploitation, Thompson notes that

As coercion is a costly tactic, hegemonic means – particularly religious ideology but other means as well – provided a preferable alternative. Thus we can see an increasing role of the temple in the construction of theological treatises meant to secure the primacy of the city over the country. As secular rulers came to hold more power…this theology by necessity included the secular leadership as well. This normally involved the king participating, even presiding over, important religious rituals…All authority is bureaucracy flowing from the gods.101

Of course we cannot posit a direct correlation or comparison between the religious systems of ancient cities and modern states. Rather Thomas’ comments on the importance of the religious hierarchy in the formation of the ancient city-state indicate the extent to which theology and space cannot be easily detached. Moreover, because Thomas does not disregard the effect of that this oppressive system had on the surrounding rural spaces, but rather places it at the center of his analysis as the “basic dynamic that led to the creation of city-states and then to nation-states,” we are able to recognize the extent to which what

Lefebvre describes as “urbanization” was equally present in the “political city” of which he approvingly speaks.102

IV. Marginal Subversion: Rurality, Nature, and Lived Space

In the first section of The Communist Manifesto, as he is describing some of the various ways in which the bourgeoisie has established the dominance of capital over labor, Karl

Marx remarks that in its subjugation of the country to the towns the bourgeoisie

“has…rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.”103

Through its concentration of people into the centralized space of the town, the bourgeoisie has effectively disappeared traditional communities and their way(s) of life. The agrarian

101 Ibid., 149, 163. 102 Ibid., 189. 103 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 84.

laborers is thus “taken” from his/her land and integrated into the growing and evolving industrial spaces. Marx is of course critical of this process and certainly does not promote, or even accept, the exploitation of rural laborers.104

How then should we understand his reference to the “idiocy of rural life?” Is it, as

Hal Draper contends, an unfortunate error of mistranslation that has replaced “idiocy” with

“isolation” (“the isolation of rural life”)?105 According to Draper, the German word idiotismus was not a cognate of idiotie (“idiocy”), but rather was based on the Greek work idiotes (private citizen, individual), which referred to someone withdrawn or isolated from political life. Within this conceptual schema, Marx is not so much referring to rural laborers or individuals as “idiots” but is rather commenting on their detachment or distance from the space of political conflict. Understandably then, individuals and communities are “rescued” from such isolation through the concentrating powers of the bourgeoisie because such concentration enabled the development of class-consciousness and proletarian activity.

Simply put, labor could not coalesce around a shared experience of exploitation in the isolation of the countryside. And to a certain extent, Marx’s argument is accurate and represents an acute diagnosis of some of the (potentially) problematic aspects of “rural life.”

We can reasonably question whether the Black Mountain miners discussed at the beginning of this chapter could or would have developed the sense of class consciousness and solidarity apart from their concentration in the company towns and mines. Shared experiences and daily interaction are assuredly fundamental components in any sort of collective struggle.

And yet, is isolation an irresistible aspect of rural life? Certainly from an “urban” perspective the premise cannot be denied. Individuals and communities who dwell in the

104 Ibid., 105 Hal Draper, The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto. (Berkley: Center for Social History, 1998).

“countryside” are, without question, isolated from the dynamic vitality and creativity of metropolitan spaces; as we have seen, Lefebvre’s call for the “right to the city” is intimately connected to the belief that urban space(s) promote and facilitate not only political awareness, but creative responses/resistance to capitalist exploitation. Here, the affirmation of an “urban cultural capital” – knowledge, skill, education – perpetuates what Alexander

Thomas, Brian Lowe, Gregory Fulkerson, and Polly Smith term “urban-normativity.”106

However, I will suspend the premise, deny its validity and question its terms. My thesis for this section is unequivocal. Rural space(s) are considered “isolated” (and “idiotic”) because of an urbanthropocentric ideology, such that those living in rural spaces are considered detached from social or communal life because “community” or “relationality” is defined as

“proximity to other humans.” While there may be important differences in how this ideology has been/is articulated, it suffuses philosophical reflection from Descartes to Marx and indicates the extent to which anthropocentricism and urbanization are inextricably connected. However, if we approach this point from within rural space(s), the accusation of

“isolation” not only collapses, but appears foolish. Certainly, those living in rural space(s) experience dispersal and decentralization, even while developments in infrastructure progressively link them to urban centers, its communities and individuals do not exist in some stereotypical melancholic isolation. Rather, rural space(s) embody the possibility of not only a dynamic, vibrant relationship between humans, but perhaps most importantly, between humanity and nature. Such is the importance of rural space(s): the hope that a life along the margins of urban society might lead one into conviviality with the flora and fauna of one’s home.

106 Alexander Thomas, et al. Critical Rural Theory: Structure, Space, Culture. (New York: Lexington Books, 2011), 5.

Despite the limitations of his arguments for and defense of “the city” as the revolutionary space, Lefebvrian philosophy offers resources and tools for recognizing and embracing the revolutionary potential of rural spaces; as Stuart Elden notes, in contrast to

Marx’s dismissal of the countryside and positive appraisal of bourgeoisie rescue efforts,

Lefebvre “both appreciated and understood the rural.”107 And while Lefebvre’s interpretation of Marx echo the latter’s embrace of urban space, such that he remained wary of perceptual and political limitations of regionalism, his childhood among the Pyrenees and lifelong connection to the village of Navarrenx left an indelible impression on his thought, wherein we can discern a sense of the insurgent possibilities of rural life woven throughout his critiques of capitalism and alienation, analysis of everyday life, and arguments for cultivated spontaneity.108

Perhaps more importantly, Lefebvre’s work provides a means of imagining rural space and religion that weaves together humanity and nature. Here the heterodoxy of his

Marxism is most palpable, particularly as it provides an opportunity to combine a Marxist analysis of capitalism, environmental criticism, and a robust defense of rural space(s). More pointedly, I contend that rural space(s) and its adjectival cognates “rurality” and “rusticity” should be recognized as emblematic of Lefebvre’s spaces of representation.109 To this end, the following subsections address two specific points. First, I discuss the etymological root of the word “rural,” specifically the Latin term rus and Greek term chora, so as to provide a

107 Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 135. 108 Merrifield, 13-14. In Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination, Merrifield offers a reinterpretation of Marxist theory within the context of “an affective politics of hope…as it delves into the heady subcontinent of dream, of latent desire (10).” I will discuss his argument in more detail in chapter three. Here I simply want to note the extent to which Merrifield connects his “magical Marxism” with a politics that advocates “moving of this system [capitalism] beyond it, outside of it, attacking it for sure, but by inventing something else, proposing something new (37).” Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination. (New York: Pluto Press, 2011). 109 Here, Lefebvre provides a methodological framework for my work on Appalachian religion. As I argue in chapters three and four, the unique religious traditions of Appalachian – specifically Appalachian mountain religion – embodies the kind of affective symbolism that characterizes the space of everyday users and cannot be understood apart from its rural context.

detailed explanation of what makes rural space distinctive. Specifically, I argue that rural space/rurality entails an existential encounter with and openness to nature. Accordingly, in the second subsection I turn to Lefebvre’s essay “Notes Written One Sunday in the French

Countryside,” focusing specifically on his discussion of the agro-pastoral festival and the relationship between humanity and nature. In establishing the conceptual groundwork for subsequent chapters, I argue that if a) rural space(s) genuinely challenges the hegemony of urbanization and b) an essential element of this challenge are the various ways in which rural space cultivates a deeper, more intimate relationship between humanity and nature, then we cannot dismiss or ignore the religious dimensions of rural space.

A. Rus and Chora: The Opening of a Counter Space

My appeal to the term ‘rural” is not arbitrary. There are numerous other equally valid concepts that convey the sense of connection to the land or nature beyond or opposed to the city. For example, derivatives of the word “country” – including “backcountry” and

“countryside” – are frequently used in opposition to the “city”; Raymond Williams’ The

Country and the City is perhaps the most recognizable example of theoretical analysis that emphasizes this term.110 Equally important are the various eponyms that have been used to evoke the cultural space(s) of rurality and the country: peasant, primitive, pastoral, wilderness, agrarian. We could also note the various pejorative terms that have been used to refer to rural space: the sticks, boonies, backwater, backwoods, middle of nowhere. While certainly helpful in understanding the socio-cultural, economic, and ecological dimensions of rural

110 Raymond Williams. The Country and the City. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). See also Michael Woods. Rural. (New York: Routledge, 2011). Woods notes: “The term ‘countryside’ originally emphasized the definition of the country relative to the town (the ‘side’ of the town), but expanded to take on a broader and symbolically laden, meaning in British popular culture. However…‘countryside’ does not have the some emotional charge in other English-speaking countries, where it has not been widely used, at least until recently. Where ‘countryside’ is used in North America, for example, it tends to retain more of its original meaning, being mainly applied to rural areas close to urban centres in regions such as New England and southern Ontario (4).”

lifestyle, the focus on a specific characteristic or trait of rural living leads us to choose a term that is as equally particular in its connotation, but generous in its possibilities. “Rural” is therefore not necessarily a more accurate description of this particular type of space, and assuredly the distinct elements of an agrarian/pastoral culture are important to my discussion and understanding of the “rural” and “rurality.”

However, my approach to the term cautions against a too strong association between rural space and an agrarian culture. While an agricultural economy and/or peasant culture are certainly critical for recognizing and naming a space as “rural,” we need not limit our understanding (and imagining) of this space to such typical markers. If there is a symbolic connection between “rural space” and “agrarianism” it must be considered as evolving with and emerging from particular relationship(s) between humanity and nature. Farmer, crop, game, soil – each of these characters only exist within a space that brings human, plant, animal, and earth into physical proximity. But, and this is particularly true of Appalachia, this type of relationship does not exhaust the encounter between humanity and nature, or at least is should not. In order to recognize the subversive character of “rural space” we cannot define it solely in terms of agrarianism; doing so risks a kind of functionalism that reduces non-human life/nature to an overwhelmingly instrumental importance. “Rural space” evokes not only particular forms of economy or culture, but equally so a distinct existential sensibility. Within rural space, the human and non-human live at the physical and conceptual margins of civilization, but it is precisely this marginalization that represents the possibility of resistance to urbanization and anthropocentricism. Indeed, the rural is vitally important because so much of our experiences within such spaces can affect a decentering of the human.

This of course does not entail a romantic and naïve embrace of a complex, dynamic, and imperfect way of life. In arguing for rural space(s) I do not intend to provide a sentimental picture that blithely dismisses the numerous ways in which rural life has been

(and continues to be) exploitative and/or oppressive, particularly towards women, people of color, and the environment. However, such problems do not so much invalidate as qualify my argument. Furthermore, in acknowledging the presence of sexism, racism, homophobia, and reactionary politics in rural spaces, it is important to consider the extent to which

rustics…are made conservative by others: by national ideologues seeking the primordial essence of the nation, by colonial and development experts validating their own authority and importance, by urbanites needing a low other against which to claim their own superiority, by religious leaders attempting to preserve their power of the family, and by reactionary members of the middles and upper classes seeking validation for their own more conservative views.111

Much of what Gerald Creed and Barbara Ching described in this paragraph can be applied to

Appalachia, particularly with regards to impact that “national ideologues”, “development experts,” and “religious leaders” have had on the region.112 For example, the region’s religious history can be seen as a fundamental conflict between different religious cultures and styles, the consequence of which – as we will see in chapter three – is the disappearance of a distinctively nature oriented religious sensibility.

Accordingly an embrace of “rural space” and “rurality” cultivates an openness towards nature precisely because it is in such spaces that we are more likely to encounter

“more than human” others. Here, we start to see the importance of the etymological roots of the “rural.” A cognate of ruralis (“of the countryside”), itself derived from the Latin word

111 Gerald Creed and Barbara Ching. “Recognizing Rusticity: Identity and the Power of Place” in Knowing Your Place: Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy, ed. Barbara Ching and Gerald Creed. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 29. 112 For example, racism in Appalachia is certainly attributable to individual biases/prejudices, but the social structures of company coal towns, which were intentionally segregated so as to suppress any class solidarity between white and black miners, indicate the extent to which racism was systematically built into the spaces of a miner’s daily life.

rus (open space), rural has functioned through adjectival description used in reference to areas or spaces that lie “outside” the city.113 Indeed, its comparative character is undeniable; speaking of the “rural” or “rurality” necessitates its counter of “urban” and “urbane.”

However, while its initial use was topographical – referring to the physical space around defensible settlements – Michael Woods notes that “by the time of classical Rome, more sophisticated representations of rurality had developed, not only conceiving of the countryside as a ‘place’, but also attached to that place a series of moral and cultural associations.”114 It is here, at the intersection of morality and topography, that we can properly understand the importance of rural space.

From the perspective of urban-normativity, the openness of the rus speaks to its emptiness. “Rural space” is, even if acknowledged as containing the peasant/agrarian laborer, rendered a void that remains to be controlled and occupied by the polis. Here the association between urbanization and abstract thought is operative. Urbanization is a fundamentally abstract (and abstracting) process because as it conceptualizes space as an object to be manipulated (through calculation and measurement) it simultaneously ignores/dismisses the concrete and embodied particularity of space as lived. However, whereas Lefebvre locates the genesis of urbanization in the context of industrialization and modern capitalism, a rural reading of history reveals its more ancient manifestations.

Accordingly, we should deepen our understanding of rus by considering a similarly complex, yet promising, term – chora.

While this term had been used prior to the Timaeus, its Platonic articulation is considered by many to be the genesis of Western reflection on space.115 Here, Plato

113 Woods, 4. 114 Ibid., 17. 115 Maria Theodorou, “Space as Experience: ‘Chore/Choros.’” AA File, 34 (Autumn 1997), 46.

formulated a three-fold model of the elementary forms of existence: 1) eidos, an unchanging, uncreated and indestructible Model that resists sensory perception and only accessible via intelligence; 2) a copy of the primary form that is materially embodied in topos and thus perceptible; and 3) the chora, an eternal receptacle or container which functions as the possibility of becoming.116 According to Paivi Kymalainen and Ara Lehtinen, chora is “the motive that signifies the relations between the present and both its initial and potential becoming. It is for Plato the source of identity and life connected to motherhood and birth.”117 As a transitional form between eternal Idea and material Object, chora simultaneously “conforms to the theory of ideas” and transcends both thought and experience while erecting a barrier between them.118 More consequentially, chora is fundamentally empty, an indeterminate space that can be occupied or filled by concrete objects/content.119 Thomas Rickert helpfully describes this ethereal quality: “It is important to note that while the chora thereby designates a kind of beginning, it has no real qualities itself; its odd passivity marks it as fundamentally indeterminate. The implication is that while a beginning requires a place, the generative or choric aspects of that place remain indeterminate, or, as we shall see, give nothing to what emerges.”120 The “lack of real qualities”, “passivity” and “nothingness” of the chora are essential to understanding its “place” in Platonic thought. More importantly, when appropriately contextualized, both textually and materially, we can begin to see the sociopolitical assumptions and implications of this term.

116 Ibid., See also Paivi Kymalainen and Ari A. Lehtinen, “Chora in Current Geographical Thought: Places of Co-Design and Re-membering.” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, (2010), 252. 117 Kymalainen and Lehtinen, 252. 118 Thedorou, 47. 119 Thomas Rickert, “Toward the Chora: Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer on Emplaced Invention.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 40 No. 3, (2007), 254. 120 Ibid.

We fail to grasp the full import of chora as a spatial concept if we limit ourselves to its philosophical dimensions. That is, Plato’s argument regarding the chora is as much a reflection on the role of city in Ancient Greece as it is an account of the creation of the cosmos. As such, chora as a philosophical and political concept hinges on a dismissive attitude towards the errancy of eros, the feminine and rurality. Indeed, as both Thomas

Rickert and John Sallis reminds us, Plato’s arguments regarding cosmological generation are directly related to his analysis of the polis and its ideal form. According to Sallis, the discourse enacted in the Timaeus is inherently political, written as a reflection and expansion on two previous “incomplete political discourses, Socrates’ recapitulation of yesterday’s discourse and Critias’ outline of the discourse that he will present in detail later.”121 As a philosophical concept, chora has a double function: 1) cosmologically (abstractly), it serves as an embryonic space between Form and Object and 2) politically (practically) it represents the

“territory” or “countryside” around the polis. Distinct, yet interrelated, the cosmological and political dimensions of the chora explain the fabrication of the eidetic city.122

To this end, chora as a philosophical construct is an attempt to account for the disembodied character of Plato’s “city of the head.”123 It addresses the question of how technical, lifeless ideas are given concrete form and how the soul can access those ideas despite the limitations of the material, sensible body. Creation through the chora is thus not only an abstract becoming of the Idea, it is the concrete facilitation of a distinct socio- historical space. Accordingly, chora is situated at the margins of existence. As an erotic space

– one associated with corporeality, sexuality, birth, femininity – chora is opposed to and

121 John Sallis, Chorology. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 138. 122 Ibid., 21. 123 Rickert, 257.

marks the limit, and potential destabilization, of urban techne and the technical city.124

Similarly, as analogous terms, the “[hupodoche/feminine and chora/country] lie beyond the polis, providing internal and external limits on, and conditions of the possibility for, an ideally transparent realm of masculine [and urban] discourse, commerce, sociality, and law.”125 Accordingly, men of spirit and philosophical disposition are conceived as guardians of rational thought and civilized order, both essential to the health and growth of the polis.

Further, as one occupies the polis and embodies its urbane logic and ideology, one also opposes the nonphilosophical men who “have dragged their front limbs and head down to the earth, planting all four feet there, because of their kinship with the earth, because they are of the same kind as it.”126 It is this spatial relationship – between country and city, chora and polis – that I find most compelling and potentially subversive.

Plato’s use of chora is concomitant with an ancient form of urbanization, a denigration and rejection of the countryside and its inhabitants as meaningful and/or full of life and value. The emptiness of the chora as a cosmological receptacle that enables the material becoming of the Eternal Idea parallels the assumed emptiness of the chora as countryside as a manipulable space of natural resources and agrarian labor. Indeed, the emptying of the chora as countryside enables and facilitates the extension and expansion of the “idea(l) polis.” Just as the eternal Idea requires a malleable, empty space for its becoming, so the city (abstract and actual) must perpetually transcend the borders of its surrounding country to survive and thrive.127 The polis is thus dependent on the chora for an existence that demands the disappearance of “bastard discourses” – discourses that violate the logic and

124 Sallis, 20, 26. 125 Emanuella Bianchi, “Receptacle/Chora: Figuring the Errant Feminine in Plato’s Timaeus.” Hypatia, 21, No. 4 (Fall 2006), 131. 126 Ibid., 139. 127 Rickert, 259.

truth of paternal law extant in the city. Within this context, chora represents a chasm between Idea and reality.128

As a type of “chasm-atic” space the, rus and chora provide a conceptual resource for articulating the potential for “rural” resistance to/subversion of urbanization. Stepping outside the dominant ideological context that has guided western thought for centuries, we are able to witness not only the exploitation of rural spaces but equally so the subversive elements that lie dormant in the corporeality of the land. Rather than seeing the rus or chora as fundamentally empty, as a non-place(d) space where urban hegemony can materialize, we must recognize its dynamic vitality and subversive potential. Contra Plato, rus-as-openness and chora-as-countryside designate not an empty space, open to perpetual occupation and expansion, but rather the gravity of rural space draws the individual into its rhythms and materiality. Here such openness is “taken as the foundation which is the prerequisite to any act of human existence [and] provides us with a way of conceiving an otherwise primordial notion of the givenness of existence in terms of a specific, concrete relation.”129 Rural openness does not signify emptiness, as if it were a container to be filled with concrete and steel, but rather receptivity and responsibility to the kindling of non-human life. “Rurality” is

“being landed” – an ontological dwelling in the materiality of an human/nature intertwining.

It is, to borrow from Lefebvre, an everyday existence on level of natural life.

B. On the Level of Natural Life: Lefebvre, Religion and the Agro-Pastoral Festival

In this final subsection, we return once more to Henri Lefebvre’s reflections on space and everyday life while emphasizing the religious dimension of rural life. Assuredly, his approach to the subject adheres to “traditional” Marxist interpretation of religion as a

128 Bianchi, 131. 129 Todd Mei. Land and the Given Economy: The Hermeneutics and Phenomenology of Dwelling. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 115.

repressive mystification that perpetuates the objectification and alienation of individuals and communities – particularly the proletariat – and circumvents the pursuit of genuine liberation from capitalist oppression. However, as with his reflections on rural space and agrarian cultures, Lefebvre’s criticism of religion is not entirely predisposed towards a wholesale rejection. Rather, as Roland Boer argues, Lefebvre’s virulent (and in many respects personal) attack on religion – specifically Roman Catholicism – is complicated and multifaceted, particularly when placed in the broader context of his work concerning everyday life and the production of space, and actually reveals a certain degree of appreciation for its power.130 Boer writes,

Lefebvre’s ostensible theory of religion can be summed up fairly easily: religion superimposes itself on a much more vital magic and squeezes out its life; religion is infinitely syncretistic, absorbing and transforming a myriad of beliefs, myths and practices as it persists through eras in which everything else seems to change; it is fundamentally alienating, a prime cause and affect of the groveling status in which human beings find themselves; and religion is remarkably tenacious and pervasive precisely through the hold it has on everyday life.131

From this perspective, Lefebvre’s criticism of religion should be understood dualistically

(that is dialectically), a tension between an overt anathema to official/institutional religion and a subtle recognition that religious belief and practice is not only a fundamental dimension of life for many, but equally so a source for understanding and critiquing the

130 Roland Boer. Criticism of Heaven: On Marxism and Theology, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005). Boer’s discussion of Lefebvre’s Marxism and religion is part of a three volume series examining the intersection Marxism and religion among some of the most influential Marxist theorists from the 20th century – Raymond Williams, Ernst Bloch, Lucien Goldman, Walter Benjamin, and Antonio Gramsci among others. Indeed, with regards to the current project, his analysis of G.E.M. St. Croix has demonstrated the extent to which Marxism helps illuminate the historical and contemporary conflict between urban and rural spaces. In “The Heresies of Henri Lefebvre” Boer analyzes Lefebvre’s Marxism and his critique of alienation - specifically the latter’s “Notes Written One Sunday in the French Countryside” in the Critique of Everyday Life - as a fusion of liturgy and autobiography, wherein Lefebvre “traces…the disintegrating effect of both capitalism and the organized religion of the Roman Catholic Church (166).” Accordingly, there is an intimacy, a sense of personal connection (and revulsion) apparent throughout Lefebvre’s description of the small village church and its rituals of alienation which consume and exhaust the entirety of life, all for the purposes of establishing the conflict between the opposite totalizing systems of Marxism and Christianity (173).” 131 Ibid., 199.

commodification of life experienced in urbanization. To be clear, the interpretation of

Lefebvre as kind of “heterodox religious thinker” is ultimately Boer’s, for while he certainly addresses religious issues and draws on religious imagery, not only in his essay “Notes

Written One Sunday in the French Countryside” but also his articles “The Metamorphosis of the Devil” and “The Message of the Crucified Sun,” Lefebvre never explicitly claims or identifies with any kind of religious sensibility.132 Rather, according to Boer, in his more

“dialectical moments” Lefebvre acknowledges that “religions, theological or metaphysical projects, [are] authentic attempts to reconcile man with himself, the human with nature, the individual with the social.”133 There are three points I want to emphasize: 1) the connection between religion and everyday life, 2) the connection between religion and space, and 3) the religious “healing” of the human/nature divide. This is perhaps most clear in “Notes

Written One Sunday in the French Countryside.”

Regarding the first point, Boer notes that there are two primary moves that Lefebvre makes in the essay. The first is critical and focuses on the specific ways in which “religion,” and more specifically religious authority and institutions, dominate an individual’s daily life.

Of particular concern here are the various moral codes that define and “perpetually guide” an individual’s behavior at both a micro- and macro-level. Boer writes, “On a macro-level, there is the global reach of a structure that determines so many of the contexts in which human beings live. At a micro-level, the Church’s rituals and beliefs are internalised into the fabric of the human body and mind so as to be unnoticeable.”134 From this perspective, such an intertwined structure of domination is dehumanizing. It convinces the individual of his/her innate sinfulness, erects an impenetrable barrier between God and self, and insists

132 Henri Lefebvre. Introduction to Modernity. (Brooklyn: Verso Press, 2011). 133 Boer, 199. 134 Boer, 200.

on a mediating system of confession and repentance.135 Lefebvre experienced this order first hand and felt it to be an intolerable constraint on intellectual curiosity, sexual desire, spontaneous joy and human freedom. Hence, reflecting on the Catholic parish in his local village, he writes:

O Church, O Holy Church, when I finally managed to escape from your control I asked myself where your power came from. Now I can see through your sordid secrets, all the more obvious here for being without the beguiling adornments of art. How naïve people were to believe that they could get rid of you with a few sacrilegious protests. How holy men must have laughed at the “freethinkers” (while pretending to be deeply shocked and making sure to retaliate at the earliest opportunity). Now I can see the fearful depths, the fearful reality of human alienation. O Holy Church, for centuries you have tapped and accumulated every illusion, every fiction, every vain hope, every frustration. You have garnered them in your houses like some precious harvest, and each generation, each era, each age of man adds something new to them. And now before my very eyes I see the terrors of human childhood, the worries of adolescence, the hopes and misgivings which greet adulthood, even the terrors and despairs of old age, for it costs you nothing to say that the ending of the world is nigh and that Man is already old and will perish without realizing his potential…The Church is nothing more and nothing less than the unlimited ability to absorb and accumulate.136

For Lefebvre, religion, at least as inflected in Roman Catholicism, is ultimately a current iteration of a historical problem. In its ability and willingness to “accumulate” souls and property, the Church perpetuates the social differentiation that lies at the heart of alienation.

Here the priest becomes the pre-modern chief or king, all of whom increased in power and wealth at the same time appearing to serve the community. Indeed, through a combination of religious ritual and political power, this figure benefited from a “perennial mixture of illusion and reality” that served to consolidate the position in the community.137 Religion, as both a source and consequence of abstraction, is a fundamental cause for the “deprivation of

135 Ibid., 200. 136 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 237. 137 Ibid., 228.

everyday life” and a “reactionary, destructive critique” of everyday life that can only be countered by Marxism.138

And yet, the relationship between “religion” and “everyday life” is not wholly alienating. Rather, in true dialectical fashion, Lefebvre appears to allow for a demythologizing of religious myth and re-mythologizing of everyday life. Critical is the recognition that religion is strongest, and most potentially subversive, not in institutional structures or official rites, but in the everyday practices of its practitioners. Here, “religion” is not imposed from above or by an external force, but is “born again” in the interactions between humans and between humanity and nature.139 The rhythmic gesture, vernacular speech, quotidian traditions – all can be infused with religious meaning. As Boer notes, such an understanding of religion is perhaps foreign to a modern sensibility that has separated life into distinct areas or spheres. He writes, “At certain times, religion is the language of human culture without which human beings would not have been able to interact with one another, let alone think or exist. Only in this way, it seems to me, can Lefebvre’s argument concerning the strength and power of religion in everyday life be understood.”140

The “Notes” essay also illuminates the extent to which Lefebvre’s critique of religion is intertwined with space. In the extended block quote provided above, Lefebvre claims to have unveiled the dark heart of the Church, exposing its power and rejecting its claims.

What was not mentioned is that this revelatory moment occurred in the walls of his local parish. As Boer writes, the church “is a hub of the village, part of the…spatial practice…It is also central to the representation of space…The over patterns of its architecture, however modes, the fact that it is there as part of a much larger global network of the Roman-

138 Ibid., 230, 247. 139 Boer, 202. 140 Ibid., 204.

Catholic Church, its inseparable relationship to a whole set of codes and knowledge…and its every corner overloaded with signs – all of these locate it within the representation of space.”141 Accordingly, the “church” as a produced space is identified with abstract thought and order, analysis and planning, technocratic bureaucracy and the erasure of deviant space.

As a paradigmatically conceived space, the church must be identified with the divestment of symbolism and imagination, spontaneity and desire, in everyday life. As Boer writes, “As far as [Lefebvre] is concerned, the order imposed by the church, which stands in as the local manifestation of the Church, is dehumanizing, crushing the symbiosis with nature that he at least finds in the magic of his ideal rural community.”142 It is the church and the Church that

“crucifies the sun.”143 We shall return to his point in our discussion of the peasant festival.

At present it is important to note that Boer identifies a subtle, but important, appreciation for the church in Lefebvre’s thought. Here, there is an implicit contrast between an ornate cathedral and small village parish, notably the presence of a dark mystery, local saints of the peasantry, and the smell of damp incense.144 For Boer, the “dark, cave-like interior of the church” evokes “the covert, clandestine dimension of spaces of representation.”145 This aspect or dimension of the little church, in a sense, preserves something of a peasant mythos or agrarian culture that the institutional Church might seek to contain or control. Accordingly, there is a kind of affective and bodily dimension of the village church, something that is not entirely subject to the ideology of representation of space. It is my argument that peasant festival more fully embodies this subversive potential of religion, particularly as it reflects and cultivates a deeper intimacy between humanity and

141 Ibid., 207. 142 Ibid., 208. 143 Ibid., 204, 206-207. 144 Ibid., 208. 145 Ibid.

nature. Indeed, if we read Lefebvre’s comments concerning the agro-pastoral festival in a religious framework we move closer to both a better understanding of religion’s revolutionary potential and the value of rural space as a critique of urbanization.

An important resource for Lefebvre’s reflections on the peasant festival is the

Renaissance humorist Francois Rabelais.146 Andy Merrifield writes,

Rabelais’s mockery of Middle Age authority, Lefebvre maintained in his 1955 study Rabelais, can help us mock our own authority and our own contemporary seriousness, and restore a new sense of democracy and lighter meaning to everyday life. Here play and laughter become revitalized seriousness, no joking matters, not sidetracks and diversions to make money and accumulating commodities…Lefebvre presents Rabelais as a visionary realist who has a foot in the past as well as inkling of the future – of the contradictory birth pangs [sic] of modern capitalism, the new mode of production invading his old world. In an odd way, Rabelais also propels us into a postcapitalist world, because, Lefebvre argues, he revealed a “vision of the possible human, half-dream, half-fantasy”…an idea of a human being…Lefebvre’s Rabelais chronicled how nascent bourgeois culture, with its hypocritical moral imperatives and capital accumulation exigencies, repressed the subversive spirit and basic livelihood of the peasantry.147

146 See Stuart Elden. “Through the Eyes of the Fantastic: Lefebvre, Rabelais, and Intellectual History.” Historical Materialism. Vol. 10, No. 4, (2002). Elden offers an in-depth reading of Lefebvre’s understanding and use of Rabelais’s work, particularly with regards to his position in the French Communist Party (PFC). According to Elden, we must read Lefebvre’s work on literary and philosophical figures within the context of his tense relationship with the PCF between the late 1940s and mid 1950s (90). He writes, “In these works, Lefebvre developed and explicitly Marxist sense of writing intellectual biography, which…was also a chance to write some intellectual history (92).” Here, it is important to note the impact of the Soviet theorist Andrei Zhadnov on French Communist thought, specifically his “either-or” articulation of Marxist theory that outlined a “two camps” doctrine of postwar political reality: imperialist and anti-democratic (American) or democratic and anti-imperialist (Soviet) (91). Consequently, French Communists repudiated anything associated with America and French Marxism was increasingly associated with Russian socialism (91). Within this context, “Lefebvre’s work of this transitional period, was therefore, part of the appropriation of French cultural capital in opposition to Americanism and for Marxist goals; but it was also a means of resisting dominant trends within Soviet thinking (92).” His appreciation of Rabelais must therefore be seen in light of second clause, as an attempt to reflect on and appropriate the work of a marginalized figure within “the context of multiple, and sometimes, contradictory, intellectual and social currents (96).” Elden writes, “For Lefebvre, Rabelais is a ‘realist visionary’, with feet both in concrete reality and idealist aspiration, someone who is open to a whole range of interpretations…Lefebvre’s reading of Rabelais is therefore wide ranging and historically situated. He argues that there are two major influences on Rabelais’s work, the peasant life, and the emergence of a new bourgeois class, the commercial and manufacturing class, rather than the merchant bourgeoisie of the medieval cities. (96, 99).” Elden’s article offers a contrast between Lefebvre and Mikhail Bakhtin’s interpretation of Rabelais, noting that “while [the latter] emphasises vulgarity, the grotesque and laugher, [the former] focuses more on the fantastic, the parodic, the burlesque (106).” 147 Merrifield, 15-16.

Rabelais “utilised agrarian myths and transformed them in the expression of the real and contradictory forces exerted within society” that was undergoing a fundamental change.148

Living at a time of intense socio-economic transformation, Rabelais’s reflection on the peasantry and rural life emphasizes the depth and gravity of their cultural symbolism.149 In this context “rurality” and “rural spaces” refer not merely to the concrete socio-economic features of a particular region or community, but, and more importantly, a broader sense of the intertwining of humanity and nature.150

The festival in peasant life can be interpreted in a number of different, but overlapping, ways. The event was essentially a large communal meal at a specific site near a mountain, forest, or river. Each member of a village would contribute something to the meal and dancing, masquerades, sports, and comical insults accompanied the feasts.151 It was a celebration in the truest sense, a momentary intensification of everyday life in which spontaneous and exuberant expressions of joy transgressed the established norms and boundaries of the order and discipline required for survival.152 The festival was the explosive release of this year long “fast.” Throughout the year individuals and families stockpiled provisions and willingly sacrificed for the future, an acknowledgement of the vulnerability and precariousness that defines a subsistence culture. In an exuberant day of excess, peasant communities not only “gave rein to all the desires…pent up by collective discipline” but in

148 Elden, “Through the Eyes of the Fantastic”, 106. Lefebvre recognizes the importance and value of myths and mythology as reestablishing “the unity between man and nature that had been disassociated by the city, by abstraction, by the use of signs and numbers. It played the role of a living and lived mediation, both fantastic and practical, images and activities themselves both natural and social…It was a style of life, political and religious at the same time, with specifically, ‘pagan’ features. Hence the creative power of this mythology, far above that of ideological illusion that might include ‘beliefs,’ far above the magical illusion of taming nature by the use of divine names and gestures (Metaphilosophy 214).” 149 Ibid., 101. 150 Elden Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 137. 151 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 221-222. 152 Ibid., 222.

doing so strengthened the social bonds between members.153 The festival was that moment of transcendence in which the porosity of the boundary between self and other was most acutely witnessed and embraced. As an intensification of everyday life it is not so much detached from the rhythms and spaces that mark the community’s daily life, but rather embodies and expresses what lies dormant within.154 The physical experience of “[the festival] constitutes not just a negative, escapist dimension: it manifests its own positive and highly distinctive temporality [and spatiality].”155

Yet how should we understand the medieval peasant festival within a 20th and 21st century context? Why is the peasant festival an important resource for retrieving and articulating the subversive potential of rural spaces? Assuredly, we cannot assume a one-to- one appropriation, despite Lefebvre’s association of the “peasant festival” with the carnival- esque dimensions of the May ‘68 Parisian revolt. Nor should we see the “festival” as an event to be uncritically appropriated, as if its orgiastic character was not somehow problematic. Furthermore, while Lefebvre insists on the intertwining of everyday life and the festival experience, the effervescent quality of the latter is a limitation or obstacle for any critical theory of rural everyday life; our concern with “the rural” lies in its ability to cultivate an alternative lived space.

I contend that the “peasant festival” is important because it points towards a picture of the everyday human/nature relationship that challenges the homogeneity of urbanization and anthropocentrism. While momentary, the festive event(s) signal a “freedom and collective intoxication…to realise the communion between the members of society and

153 Ibid. 154 Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction, 14. 155 Michael Holquist. “Bakhtin and Rabelais: Theory as Praxis.” boundary 2: Engagements: Postmodernism, Marxism and Politics. Vol. 11, No. 1/2 (August 1982-Winter 1983), 14.

nature.”156 Not only does the peasant festival demonstrate the importance of physical topography of communal rituals and mythologies, but as a kind of eschatological embodiment of a liberated future it points to a time

when human beings lived…on the level of nature and natural life… still defined and understood their basic humanity through the phenomena of nature, animals and plants, the heavens or the bowels of the earth…still immersed in an immediate natural life, [where humanity] lived, mimed, sang, danced [their] relation with nature and the cosmic order…On the same level as nature, [humanity] was also on the same level as [itself], [their] thoughts, the forms of beauty, wisdom, madness, frenzy, and tranquility which were available to [them]. In his reality, [they] lived and achieved all [their] potential.157

Indeed, as Norman Wirzba notes, an archaic or agrarian culture that “defines itself in reference to its primordial, often sacred, origin (arche), an origin that not only accounted for life’s being put into motion, but also gave existence its definition and direct…was geared toward directed work, play, and devotion to the sacred center that made existence vital and real.”158 Here, the community is fundamentally concerned with “the broader contexts and sources of life” and “archaic ritual action instilled in people the profound sense that their lives were placed within and directed by a larger whole.”159 As an important dimension of an agrarian culture, the peasant festival embodied a human/nature intimacy, such that through its symbolism and rituals, humanity briefly lived like the lilies in the field. However, whereas

Lefebvre seems to appreciate yet dismiss this kind of culture, Wirzba seeks the recovery of a sensibility that “embeds” humanity in a wider environmental context.160

By way of explaining this point more concretely, let us consider the experience of death. Here, an emphasis on death and dying draws us into a deeper understanding of

156 Elden, “Through the Eyes of the Fantastic,” 100. 157 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 222-223, 227. 158 Norman Wirzba. The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3. 159 Ibid., 4. 160 Ibid., 7.

ecology’s impact on religion and returns us to Lefebvre’s argument. From a religious, specifically Christian, perspective “death” is a fundamental problem; it is a punishment for sin, separation from God, and that from which we are liberated in Christ’s resurrection.161

While death cannot be avoided, it is certainly not approvingly embraced as essential part of a broader process. Death is emptied of its finality. From an ecological or biological perspective, such an understanding could be seen as problematic. Here, the Christian emphasis on “life after death” echoes the Platonic rejection of the body and locates “eternal life” in an immaterial, transcendent realm. Yet, Wirzba notes, such a perspective is highly specific and does not preclude the articulation of theological and religious interpretation of death that resonates with ecology. They are not incompatible but rather represent distinct ways to understand death and can help illuminate one another. For example, regarding our fear of death as a “final” event or moment, Wirzba contends that this attitude emerges from an arrogant, and we might say anthropocentric, pretense of self-importance “that prevents us from submitting to the greater grace of life’s processes and love’s intentions.”162 Wendell

Berry offers a similar sensibility in his poem “The Stones.”

Here the poet-farmer is provoked by the “slope full of stones…where the earth caught and kept them dark.” Removing them from the ground, the speaker is confronted with his own finitude: “I gave pain and weariness to their bearing out. What bond have I made with the earth, having worn myself against it? It is a fatal singing that I have carried with me out of that day. The stones have given me music that figures for me their holes in the earth and their long lying in the dark. They have taught me the weariness that loves the ground, and I must prepare a fitting silence.”163 According to Fritz Oehlschlaeger, the poem

161 Ibid., 120. 162 Ibid., 121. 163 Wendell Berry. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. (Berkley: Counterpoint, 1998), 68.

emphasizes the extent to which “the body that gives itself in heavy labor, that knows the resistance of the world, will sing its own diminishment…to learn to be lightened, and even glad, that we, too, will be supplanted by a wildness, a yearning, creation’s fierce joy in renewal.”164 Death draws us into a reality that is something more than us. Living on the

“level of nature,” the rural community understands and embraces this point. Indeed, according to Lefebvre, for the ancient peasant community the dead are never truly gone. He writes,

In the Earth, their temporary home – mother and tomb – the dead continued to participate in the order of things, in the regularity of the seasons and of human activities. Strange phantoms, they went on moving and living…They were still part of the order; and they could disturb it…The rural community was therefore also community with the dead, and festivals for the dead found a place amidst the festival for the living…The graceful tributes of fruits of the earth which sustained the life of dead, link[ed] them with the living.165

The “peasant festival” is therefore a particular embodiment of a lived space that was “just as concrete as that of the body – of which they were an extension…[a] space bore along the myths and stories attached to it…more in common with a spider’s web than with geometrical space.”166 This agro-pastoral or archaic space was marked by qualitative indicators, affective significance, and infused with a deep symbolic meaning that is evocative of the triadic “lived space.”167 Indeed, Lefebvre writes, “The ‘primitive’ situates or speaks of space as a member of a collectivity…He [sic] does not envisage himself in space as one point among others in an abstract milieu.”168 As we have seen, this sense of communal belonging places the individual, both materially and symbolically, among other living things. The land, the dead, the elements – these both participate in and constitute the agrarian world. “Rural

164 Fritz Oehlschlaeger. The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love. (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 2011), 261-262. 165 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 226, 230. 166 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 193. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid., 194.

space” exists at the level of “natural life” not only because of its agrarian or agro-pastoral economy but, more profoundly, because of a concrete symbolism that intertwines humanity and nature.

V. Conclusion

Perhaps it is impossible, particularly in an increasingly urbanized society, to actually live at “the same level as nature.” Certainly the “natural peculiarity” of Appalachia – the mountains – have been willingly disappeared through industrial resource extraction, in turn limiting the ability of its inhabitants to live on the “level of nature.” We will discuss in greater detail in the following chapter. For now, it is enough to point out that Lefebvre’s abandoning of his work on rural sociology and the rent system derives in large part from his belief that as “urban space” has become so all-encompassing that it is the only site of resistance to abstraction.169 As we approach the 100th percentile along the urbanization spectrum, as the urban center increasingly becomes the locus of power and resistance, the only possible goal is to “achieve the autogestion of urban life by people of the city.”170 The urban center must be occupied by the democratic power of labor. For those living within the city/cities this is a legitimate and necessary political goal. Unfortunately, it has little to offer individuals and communities living within or along the rural margins. Moreover, it does not account for the extent to which the exploitation of rural space(s) necessitates the exploitation of nature.

If “rural life” or “rural space” is something to be embraced, it is not only because it provides the opportunity for an agrarian culture and economy. Or rather, in such an opportunity, “agrarianism” is not simply a cipher for “farming” but is the ability to actually

169 Elden writes, “Urban space is therefore not just the place where political struggles happen, but increasingly the very object of that struggle. Just as a battlefield is the site of conflict but also part of the territory over which conflicts are often initiated, the city plays a similar role (Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 151).” 170 Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, 157.

live an interconnected life with the land. Indeed, despite Lefebvre’s insistence on the dialectical relationship between spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation, one of my primary goals for this chapter has been to argue that while this point makes sense theoretically, when we actually apply the spatial triad to specific historical moments or particular spatial productions it is possible to argue that the third term – “lived space” – is more important, that it carries greater socio-political significance. Because “lived space” is the space of the imagination and symbolic meaning, because it is the space of the body and affective passions, it “represents” – or better yet, embodies – the potential subversion of philosophical abstraction and capitalist exploitation.

We part ways (if not entirely) with Lefebvre on the assumption that such a subversive space can only be produced in “the city.” Indeed, when we take into consideration the aforementioned characteristics of “lived space”, as well as the importance accorded to nature and natural life, it is entirely possible to argue that “rural space(s)” embodied them more clearly. It is in “rural space” that the concrete materiality of our shared embodiment with “nature” opens humanity into the creativity of other life forms.

As we will see in the next chapter, the Black Mountain miners were – as were most

Appalachian workers – victims of ruthless exploitation because they were in large part identified with nature, with the mountain themselves. For the capitalist financier and industrialist, “Appalachia” was assuredly a space rich in natural resources, but equally so one of lawless independence and dispersion.171 Indeed, as a fundamentally forested space,

Appalachia embodied (and contains the potential embodiment) the ontological multiplicity that is so threatening to abstraction, hegemony, and homogenization.172 Appalachia, as a

171 Robert Pogue Harrison. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 6. 172 Ibid., 51.

rural space, is a space of becoming that roots humanity – literally and symbolically – in nature.

CHAPTER TWO

“CONTACT WITH THE EARTH”: PERIPHERAL IDENTITY, URBAN

EXTRACTION, AND THE MYTH(S) OF APPALACHIAN RURALITY

“[Coal] is transformed as coal-the-diggable, coal-the-sortable, coal-the-transportable, until it eventually becomes coal-the-burnable. In these shifts the lump of coal rubs up against other participants in the chain: unhappy [miners], conveyor belts, contracts. In its shape, its cost, and its composition, coal is made in the friction of the commodity chain.” - Anna Tsing

“[The mountaineer’s] sense of identity is not located in his skin; in many ways…it is located in the world with which he shares his being.” - Rodger Cunningham

I. Vignette – Yellow Creek Valley, KY 1887

Beginning roughly in 1887, agents of the London based American Association, Ltd. traveled to the small farming community of Yellow Creek Valley in southeast Kentucky.

Organized by Alexander Arthur, a Scottish-born businessman, the “Association”, supported financially by five wealthy financiers from New York and North Carolina, was organized with the express purpose of: acquiring coal and iron properties located in the United States; establishing any relationships with local governing authorities that would be deemed conducive to the company’s plans; and purchasing or taking on real or personal property.1

Taken as a whole, this three-part plan indicated the overwhelming concern of the

American Association to ensure stable centers for capital exports and easy access to

1 John Gaventa. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982).

affordable fuel supplies. Indeed, were it not for the vast mineral resources located beneath the soil of the Central Appalachian valley, it is possible that the small rural communities of the region would have remained largely undisturbed. While “Appalachia” as a peculiar place was certainly lodged in the national imagination by this time, we cannot discount the impact that industrialization had on the area. Indeed, as industrialization expanded the economic needs and desires of an increasingly mechanical mode of production a significant shift in the

“national attitude” towards Appalachia occurred.

Whereas previous generations had seen the region as a barrier to overcome in the process of western expansion, numerous individuals – particularly those located in centers of financial and industrial power – now saw Appalachia in a new light. Rather than a place to avoid, bypass, or ignore, these individuals saw a potential investment, an empty space of vast potential, which only needed a program of civilization to make a profit and improve the lot of its primitive residents. Through a variety of tactics – manipulation, deceit, and coercion – industrial agents were able to exploit the mountaineers” relative lack of knowledge regarding the value of their land and acquire vast tracts of “property” throughout Yellow Creek Valley.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the company’s future profits was the topography itself, specifically the mountain ridges that encircled the valley. While technological innovation had certainly made it easier to export resources out of the region – railroad lines had increasingly opened the valleys and hollers to the outside world – the natural topography remained a significant “problem” to surmount. It was almost impossible for trains to pass over the Cumberland Gap and, from the American Association’s perspective, it would have been neither cost efficient nor expedient to develop a way around or over the mountain. In order to maximize their profits, the American Association would have to go through the mountain, core it out from both sides, and run a railway through its center. Doing so would

open up the valley to the modernizing and civilizing processes of industrialization. In turn, the American Association would facilitate a fundamental transformation in the daily life of the valley’s people.

John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness details this transformation, describing the process as a historical-material embodiment of a “new industrial, humanist ideology” that promoted the vague idea of “civilization” for the rustic mountaineers of Appalachia.1

Gaventa’s analysis provides a clearer impression and understanding of the depth and degree in which the process of industrial resource extraction changed Appalachia. And while his work echoes that Ronald Eller’s Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, David Whinsant’s

Modernizing the Mountaineer, Ronald Lewis’ Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, and Wilma

Dunaway’s The First American Frontier, Gaventa’s analysis is unique in its appeal to a

Gramscian- infused Marxism to explain the apparent passivity of the Yellow Creek inhabitants in the face of capitalist production.2 Further, each of the aforementioned authors work to examine the transformation of industrialization on the daily lives of

Appalachian inhabitants, and yet, aside from Gaventa, few incorporate the valuable insights of critical social theory and continental philosophy, particularly those figures seeking to understand the importance of space. Consequentially, these histories have inadequately addressed the industrialization of Appalachia as a dimension of a broader process of urbanization. The emergence of industrial resource extraction is thus not simply an economic transformation, but impacts the entirety of Appalachian everyday life and as

1 Ibid, 56. 2 Ronald Eller. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Modernization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982); David Whisnant. Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power, and Planning in Appalachia. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); Ronald Lewis. Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroad, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Wilma Dunaway. The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

absentee landowners initiated the movement away from pre-industrial, subsistence economy, they began a steady process of regional urbanization.

This chapter focuses on the industrial transformation of Appalachia in the late 19th- century as an embodiment of abstract urbanization. If the previous chapter was concerned with articulating a theoretically broad argument for “rural space,” here I narrow my focus to a specific region with a specific history. To this end, I join a conversation very much already in process. Engaging a selection of key texts from the field of Appalachian Studies, I approach this subject – the historical transformation of Appalachia through urbanization – by focusing on the introduction of new technology and the mechanization of labor, specifically in the form railroad lines and company towns. In particular, I focus on how these processes were integral components in transforming the region into a conceptualized space of resource extraction. That is, while pre-industrial Appalachia’s agrarian way of life was in many respects emblematic of the rural spaces of representation outlined in the previous chapter, the introduction of an industrial economy and urban ethos marked a fundamental shift in the region’s culture and its inhabitant’s self-consciousness. A land of homesteaders quickly became a space of “technocratic subdividers and social engineers.”3

Consequently, the opening of the region via railroad lines and the demographic concentration of the company town entailed a fundamental consolidation of everyday life into the space(s) of capital exploitation.4

As my dissertation addresses the process of modern capitalist urbanization and industrialization, particularly its impact on rural spaces (broadly) and Appalachia (specifically),

I have chosen the following texts because each of them, in specific ways, are essential in my effort to introduce an explicitly theological perspective into Appalachian Studies and

3 Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 38. 4 Henri Lefebvre. Metaphilosophy. (Brooklyn, NY: Verso Press, 2016), 107.

subsequently expand the scope of the field. My work in this chapter is therefore an

“opening move” in pursuing a space for a constructive theology in Appalachian Studies.

I begin this chapter with a discussion of Rodger Cunningham’s Apples on the Flood.

Perhaps the most influential work of Appalachian Studies for my own research and intellectual perspective, Cunningham’s literary-philosophical genealogy of the psychosomatic peripheralization of Appalachia is crucial in understanding the historical and contemporary marginalization of Appalachians. Furthermore, his work draws our attention beyond the

19th century to a deeper and more insidious process of cultural and political peripheralization. In focusing on Appalachia’s pre-modern experiences of urbanization,

Cunningham’s work supports my argument regarding the “ancient” roots of urbanization discussed in chapter one.

Section two provides a detailed discussion of Appalachia’s agrarian past. Focusing in particular on Donald Davis’ Where There Are Mountains and Ronald Eller’s Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, I consider how the culture and economy of pre-industrial Appalachia provide a particular example of the rural spaces of representation discussed in the previous chapter. In these two works we are able to present a clearer picture of pre-industrial

Appalachia while also establishing a concrete historical context within which to locate and understand the urbanization of the region.

In the penultimate section, I discuss the process by which these rural spaces of representation were impacted by the imposition of an abstract ideology that rendered the uneven topography of and dispersed communities in the mountains measurable, quantifiable, and subsequently more susceptible to capitalist exploitation. As railroads cut through the mountains, they not only brought the industrialist, financier, local color essayist, and home missionary into the region, they also introduced and imposed an ideology of homogeneity,

fragmentation, and hierarchization.5 Furthermore, as they facilitated the construction of company towns, they helped produce an acutely concentrated form of urbanization’s bureaucratic ethos.

II. An Ancient Fringe: Peripheral Identity and Pre-Modern Urbanization

According to Cunningham, one of the most significant mistakes in understanding the political and culture oppression of Appalachia is the failure to adequately understand the commonplace belief that Appalachia was settled by “Celts” of “Scotch-Irish” origin.6 While this assumption has been criticized by developments in Appalachian Studies that emphasize the ethnic diversity of Appalachia, Cunningham notes that the lack of attention from serious scholars to the “Celtic” sources of Appalachian culture and identity is indicative of a broader dismissal by scholars of the serious and real connections between the Celtic nations of western Europe and Appalachian mountaineers.7 More importantly, in ignoring the “Celtic” dimensions of Appalachian culture, scholars fail to account for how examining the oppression of the “Celts” might illuminate the mystification of Appalachian oppression.8

Consequentially, he describes his argument as an exploration in the “psychological heredity” of the Appalachian people:

My project sets out to take the “Scotch-Irish” and “Celtic” aspect of the Appalachian people backward in its history and outward in its implications in ways which…have not previously been attempted on this scale…I shall show that the core of the Appalachian people was essentially formed by events which took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which to some extent were prepared for by repeated patterns of events going back to the first agricultural settlement of Britain, five thousand years earlier.9

Cunningham’s work is important for its interdisciplinary methodology and theoretical

5 Henri Lefebvre. Critique of Everyday Life: The One Volume Edition. (Brooklyn, NY: Verso Press, 2016), 757. 6 Ibid., xv. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., xvi.

framework. With regards to the former, he utilizes the fields of literature, existential psychology, and philosophy to draw analogies between group and individual experience and social, cultural, and ethnic and intrapsychic boundaries in order to “connect unstable frontiers with insecure ego-boundaries, cultural invasion with intrusiveness, [and] cultural stereotyping with false and labeling interpersonal perception.”10 Theoretically, he draws on the peripheralization model and addresses a series of symbolic dyads – “civilization and savagery,” “humanity and nature,” and “order and chaos” – in order to examine the relationship between three distinct regions – metropolitan core, barbarous outside, and ambiguous periphery; it is the latter region that forms the basis of Cunningham’s study.11

We should note here that Cunningham’s focus on the “Celtic” or “Scotch-Irish” origins of

Appalachia are not primarily concerned with cultural content. While he provides sufficient detail in the historical development of peripheralization, he is explicit in defining this as a

“cultural process.”12 Accordingly, to refer to the “Celtic” or “Scotch-Irish” origins of

Appalachian culture are not grounded in a kind of reductionist ethnicity, but rather regional relationality.13 In short, Appalachia’s cultural identity cannot be detached from its material space.

Taken together, Cunningham’s methodological and theoretical approaches not only deepen our understanding of Appalachian exploitation and oppression, in drawing on his work, we are able to recognize the psychological and existential dimensions of Appalachia’s urbanization. If, as Lefebvre argues, “urbanization” is fundamentally intertwined with the production of abstract space and the “fusion of the intelligible with the political…of knowledge with power” we cannot fully understand the process in Appalachia apart from its

10 Ibid., xxi. 11 Ibid., xxi-xxii. 12 Ibid., xxvii. 13 Ibid., xxiv.

effect on the mountaineer’s self-perception and imagination.14

In this section I address two of the key dimensions of Cunningham’s argument.

First, I discuss his concept of “peripheral identity.” According to Cunningham, the

Appalachian exists in “the between” of an artificially constructed civilization and barbarism.

Here, Appalachian “space” and “identity” are intertwined such that their sociocultural and intrapsychic boundary status are mutually constitutive.15 This point is primarily diagnostic and represents Cunningham’s deepening of the “Appalachian perspective.” I then engage

Cunningham’s brief, but substantive, discussion of pre-modern urban spaces and their impact on the Celtic/Scotch-Irish consciousness. Here, the development of urbanization is placed in a broader historical context and reveals the extent to which this process has pre- capitalist origins.

A. “Peripheral Identity”: Ego-Boundaries and Liminal Spaces

The peripheral region, as situated between “civilization” and “savagery,” is subject to a subtler, yet thoroughly pernicious, process. The peripheral community is an essential part of the “metropolitan core dweller’s” fear of his/her own “savagery.” Cunningham writes

They are identified with the unstable, violent ego-boundary. Since their whole being is identified with another’s boundary, they are not seen in all their dimensions; and since they are specifically seen as something violent and unstable, they are under pressure to let violence and instability permeate their whole psyches vis-à-vis the universe. The metropole then encourage them to take out this violence on the ones next in line, the “savages.” Thus they are manipulated into carrying out the metropole’s genocidal program while being culturally and socially destroyed themselves. They are encouraged to see themselves as the representatives of “civilization” against “savagery,” while the metropolitan in fact looks on them as little, if at all, better than savages themselves. And they are seen in this way precisely because of that violence which the metropole itself has instilled in them by undermining their sense of autonomous identity and independent self-worth. They are never themselves but always versions of another, and always in a

14 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 308. 15 Cunningham, xxii.

negative sense.16

“Peripheral identity” is thus inherently schizoid, a victim of the “metropolitan dyad’s” manipulation and exploitation.17 What occurs therefore is psychosomatic transformation of the peripheral dweller self-identity. S/he is never seen as “herself” but rather always as the projection of multiple ego-boundaries. To the “metropole” the “peripheral” represents a tripartite violence: 1) of the savage; 2) of the self; and 3) of the peripheral dweller herself.

To the “savage,” the “peripheral” represents the threat of the “metropole,” the constant possibility of non-existence. And within the “peripheral” there exists a violent dissonance, which s/he must continually navigate.

Again, we must note Cunningham’s emphasis on peripheralization as the process of coercion, manipulation, exploitation, and alienation. 18 As Cunningham describes it, “The real contrast…is between, on the one hand, processes of change which operate within a culture’s inherent structures of meaning under conditions which respect human autonomy and integrity, and on the other hand processes of change which disrupt those structures and ignore those meanings under conditions of misperceptions, invalidation, and false justification of illegitimate power.”19 This does not mean that there are no “core traits or consciousness” to the “peripheral community.” Rather, within the cultural processes of

“peripheralization” there are two bases: 1) a regional environment having a constant nature

16 Ibid., xiii. 17 Cunningham notes that this “trauma” can occur in numerous forms, from “forcible feudalization and anglicization” to “modernization, industrialization, and regional development (xxiv, 33).” 18 This would be one of my questions regarding Cunningham’s work. Not primarily because I feel it would be have made his argument stronger, but rather because I think it would have made it more interesting. Indeed, it is not as if Cunningham does not attend to the content of “Celtic-Scotch-Irish-Appalachian” peripheral communities. Rather, he does so selectively such that it would make, for example, his discussion of the shift from “Celtic” religious forms to “Roman Catholic” one all the more interesting. In the focus on cultural processes over cultural content – as markers of identification – Cunningham helpfully guides Appalachian Studies away from a reactionary “Scotch-Irish essentialism.” I would merely caution that we not ignore the unique cultural content of “Scotch-Irish/Celtic Christianity,” primarily as they aid us in articulating a more ecologically oriented religious imagination and practice. 19 Ibid., xxvii.

and 2) a structure of meanings with a capacity to accommodate changes in traits.20 What then is the actual historical process that led to the “peripheralization” of Appalachia?

Simply put, the cycle of Celtic and Roman invasions established the paradigm in which a “metropolitan core (Romans),” “peripheral (Celtic invaders)” and “savage (pre-

Celtic peoples),” which would be subsequently re-constituted in the paradigm of

“metropolitan core (Britain),” “peripheral (Scottish-lowlanders),” and “savages

(Irish/Ulsters),” which would be repeated in America as “metropolitan core (middle- class/industrial/corporate cities),” “peripheral (Appalachian mountains)”, and “savages

(Native Americans).”21 As the metropole expanded its ideology the peripheral dweller was confronted with an overwhelming power that reduced her identity to a chaotic force. In turn, they were manipulated into enacting a double genocide: against the wild other (pre-

Celtic peoples and Native Americans) and the self.22 He writes, “Peripheral dwellers…are subjected to forces which tend to shatter their own sense of identity. They are seen by core dwellers not as beings in their own right, but as aspects of the latter’s own selves – and of the most confused aspect of those selves, the insecure boundaries. Thus the peripheral dweller suffers not only insecure boundaries but an insecure sense of self of fundamental individuation – at least (an important qualification) insofar as he or she accepts the identity, or lack of it, imposed by the metropole.”23

We should note the psychoanalytical dimensions of Cunningham’s argument, particularly

20 Ibid., xxix. 21 Ibid., 49. Cunnignham writes, “In the Roman attitude toward Celts and other ‘barbarians’ we see reflections of the Romans’ own pervious existence as simple Italian villagers, beyond the western edge of what had been the civilized world, as the Celts later stood in relation to them. But as we also see, conditioning the Romans’ views of their own history as well, reflections of the backward depths of individual existence in childhood. The Romans’ harsh child-rearing practices were notable even in their own time, and the Romans were aware themselves of the connection between these and their urge to conquer their neighbors…Normally, the Empire was identified subconsciously with the Good Parent and the barbarian with the Bad; thus the Roman pattern of conquest provided a resolution of conflicting attitudes toward the parents – a false resolution, of course, and an unstable one which constantly demanded new world to conquer – one which broke down when the Empire’s frontiers reached their natural limit at the edge of intensive agriculture (Ibid).” 22 Ibid., 43, 135, 139. 23 Ibid., 43-44.

with regards to the near constant “infantilization” of the peripheral dweller.

Here, the fears and insecurities of the “core dweller” are projected onto both those along the periphery and outer edges. Thus, if we trace this pattern of experience back to the

Roman conquest of the British Isles, we can identify a strong ambivalence in their encounter with the perceived “barbarian natives.” The “Celtic people” were therefore seen, paradoxically, as the epitome of a bloodthirsty race and a breed of noble saves; this paradigm would be repeated in the conceptualization of Appalachians as both violent primitives and vestiges of the country’s Anglo-Saxon heritage.24

The violence imposed and projected onto the identity peripheral dweller thus reveals the psychological and existential dimensions of urbanization. The pattern of peripheralization that characterizes the transhistorical experience of the Appalachian people is indicative of the violence and destruction of abstraction. As imposing a “representation of space” onto the region’s everyday spaces of rurality, the “slice and cut” of the railroad and company town carry out an urbanization that is psychological and existential in its materiality.25 Indeed, as Cunningham notes, urbanization entailed the repression of the symbolic and imaginary mode of thought that establishes the possibility of detachment and desacralization of the mind, wherein “the human psyche was restricted to the function of cognition [and] the other functions of the organism – not only sensuous, but emotional and

24 Ibid., 11-12. Within this framework, the “core dweller” is represented as a parental authority helping a group of coarse children achieve maturity. Indeed, the abstraction inherent in the urban Roman culture – here identified with the anonymity of bureaucratic power – embodies what Lefebvre describes as the world-forming power of the Roman Pater-Rex: “The Father predominated; he became what he was: chief, political soldier, and hence Law or Right (as imposed on the vanquished in the ordering of victory: the sharing-out of booty and the reassignment of places – primarily land…The Pater-Rex, later Imperator, at once magistrate and priest, thus reconstituted the space around him as the space of power…Abstraction was introduced – and presupposed – by the Father’s dominion over the soil, over possessions, over children…Patriarchal power was inevitably accompanied by the imposition of law of signs upon nature through writing, through inscription (Production of Space, 243).” 25 Ibid., 289.

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imaginative where relegated to demonic status.”26 In short, the Appalachian experience of urbanization was psychosomatic phenomenon that predated the growth of modern capitalism. Here we must turn to Cunningham’s discussion of the Scottish Lowland and the

12th century development of feudal towns.

B. Feudal Urbanization: Lowland Burghs and the Bureaucratic Ethos

Following the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066, Malcolm III Canmore’s Scottish court became a refuge for the Anglo-Saxon nobility. Roughly fifty years prior, the last native king of Strathclyde, the lone remaining “Celtic” kingdom, died and Duncan expanded the reach of the Scottish throne. Now, having deposed MacBeth – who had murdered Duncan in 1041 – Malcolm began a process by which English power and influence would fundamentally transform the Scottish Lowlands. The importance of Queen Margaret and her desire to purge Scottish culture of its Celtic features and influences cannot be overlooked; Cunningham notes that having been raised in Hungary, Margaret did not speak

Gaelic, only interacted with Scottish nobility and bishops through her husband, and refused to give her children Gaelic names.27 As part of this burgeoning Anglicization of Scotland,

Malcolm also facilitated a shift in the centers of power and authority. The court was moved to the English speaking Edinburgh and the Church was moved to St. Andrews, where the

Gaelic Columba was abandoned as the patron saint of the kingdom.28 However, while

Duncan and Malcolm were key figures in the abandonment of Scotland’s Celtic and Gaelic culture, it would be Duncan’s grandson David I that truly reshaped the region.

While Malcolm III may have provided the Scottish nobility with a level of protection from Norman colonists, David fully embraced the “Norman ethos” of a civilizing feudalism

26 Cunningham, 39-40. 27 Ibid., 30. 28 Ibid., 31.

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and “set out to make Scotland over into an ‘effectively organized’ state on the Norman model…[imposing] feudal sheriffdoms on the old Celtic tribal districts…[and changing] the principle of church organization from the monastery-based Celtic system to the Roman diocesan system.”29 Perhaps most importantly, David’s adoption of the Norman motte-and- bailey castle model initiated a fundamental transformation of Scotland’s physical spatiality.

In order to construct the motte-and-bailey, typically unskilled laborers were forced to dig a deep circular ditch and build two artificial hills from the “earthen residue.” They built a wooden or stone keep upon the higher hill (the motte) while an enclosed courtyard with outbuildings (kitchen, chapel, barracks, storage, workshops) was built on lower hill (the bailey).30 From a practical standpoint, the defense and security of the inhabitants were, as with most medieval/feudal castles, the primary function of the motte-and-bailey. However, unlike other pre-feudal defensive structures, which sought to protect the wider community, the motte-and-bailey was a small refuge for the elite from the people.31

The motte-and-bailey castle model was not the only “spatial innovation” that David, and later his son Malcolm IV, introduced to Scotland. While geographical sporadic, towns

(burghs) were often built near the castles. Cunningham notes that in contrast to French bourgs, which arose somewhat spontaneously around the castle, the Scottish burgh “was a deliberately founded and chartered entity from the beginning – a planned ‘growth center’ – and was sometimes built simultaneously with the castle.”32 As the production of a new space, the motte-and-bailey and accompanying burghs facilitated a fundamental shift in the social relationship and social arrangements. As Lefebvre argues, as new spatial product the

29 Ibid., 32. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 33. 32 Ibid.

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town established “accumulation” as the central axis of social interaction and control.33 He writes, “Money and commodities…were destined to bring with them not only a ‘culture’ but also a space…the medieval revolution brought commerce inside the town and lodged it at the centre of a transformed urban space.”34 Indeed, the importance of the Scottish burgh stems in large part from its function as a foundation for commercial towns; Cunningham notes that the first coinage in Scotland bore the image of David I, his income from the burgh was physical cash, and the emerging “burgh-er” class embraced the power of economic rationality and calculation.35

As process of uneven regional development, the feudalization of the Scottish

Lowlands represented a profound development in turning the region into a source of material supplies. Consequently, the imposition of a feudal system fundamentally transformed the old “Celtic” system in which land and leadership was located in a free peasantry. Cunningham writes,

Throughout lowland Scotland the old systems of “Celtic” law, dating back to the unwritten judgments of pre-Christian times and the frontier regulations of the Romans, were replaced by the European feudal law, administered in the burghs by sheriffs who were largely of Norman extraction and who conducted their proceedings in English. The “natives” were thus force to learn English in order, literally, to defend themselves, and in order literally to learn to think in terms of a new value system that had declared their own laws worthless. Furthermore feudalization and agricultural development brought a growth in trade, and the burghs became commercial towns with legally defined marking territories….The budding money economy of the burghs...meant that newly enserfed peasant could escape serfdom in the burghs, but only by moving “forward,” not “backward,” and thus by paying a double cultural and psychic price.36

Cunningham’s description of the Scottish Lowlands could as easily describe the experiences of Appalachians during industrialization, for just as the Scottish Lowlands provided the

33 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 619. 34 Ibid., 265. 35 Cunningham, 34. 36 Ibid., 34.

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material resources for England’s civilizing efforts, so Appalachia rapidly became the nation’s suppliers of raw material. As the Scottish Lowlander had to learn “English” in order to survive, the Appalachian mountaineer was forced to learn the “new language” of the industrial economy. As the Scottish Lowlander was relocated to the burghs and towns, the

Appalachian mountaineer was forced into a “new space” of the company town. As the

Scottish Lowlander was voided of her culture, the Appalachian mountaineer was violently denied the validity of her “traditional (backward) culture” and forced to participate in the

“progress (modernization) of America.”

I have focused on the motte-and-bailey structure and accompanying burghs because they reveal the extent to which the ideology of urbanization was, as I discussed in the previous chapter, operative prior to the ascendancy of capitalism. Furthermore, when placed in the context of Cunningham’s discussion of “peripheral identity” and “psychological heredity,” this specific form of “feudal urbanization” indicates the extent to which the metropolitan exploitation of the countryside was woven into Appalachia’s history. The

“peripheralization” of the Scottish Lowlands and its inhabitants cannot be adequately understood apart from our previous discussion of urbanization. To live along or within a spatial periphery – that is a physical boundary – is to occupy a psychological periphery – that is a psychological boundary. In short, the intertwining of the spatial and psychological peripheralization of “experiences” point to the process of centralization, bureaucratization, displacement of people from the land, and delegitimation of a “native culture” – the very process that occurred in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in America.

Whether called “feudalization” or “industrialization” or “modernization,” the process is fundamentally the same: a community and culture on the “fringes” of the civilization are imagined as fundamentally “other” in relationship to the hegemonic “core” and are therefore

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instrumentalized as a collection of resources (people and natural minerals) to be extracted for the benefit of the metropole.

Cunningham’s work on the psychological heredity of Appalachia convincingly demonstrates the historical depth to which “urbanization” has been and remains a factor in the region’s consciousness and experience. To this end, his argument is consonant with my previous claim, from chapter one, regarding the “ancient” dimensions of urbanization. And while the differences in forms between ancient Rome and medieval England should not be ignored, they reveal an analogous process: the exploitation of a predominantly rural/marginal region by a predominantly urban/centralized core. However, at present we need to make a brief historical pause. If the experiences of what would become, for many,

Appalachia’s ancestors reveal the power of urbanization, it is equally important to note the extent to which certain elements of “Celtic” or “Scotch-Irish” traditions, particularly with regards to human interactions with the land, combined with European and Native American ways of life to create a dynamic form of mountain rurality. In the following section I discuss the pre-industrial history of Appalachia.

III. Pre-Industrial Appalachia: Agrarianism in the Mountains

In this section I provide an overview of pre-industrial Appalachian culture. Drawing primarily on the field of Appalachian Studies, my argument has two primary points of emphasis. One, I locate Appalachian agrarianism and rurality within a deeper historical context, focusing primarily on the work of Donald Davis and orienting the reader to the various ways in which the geography and topography were deeply influential on the particular cultural practices that developed in the region. Specifically, Davis’ emphasis on the intersection of “nature” and “history” provides a more expansive historical framework to locate the region’s agrarian culture. Additionally, his discussion of pre-European peoples,

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specifically the Mississippian cultures, and the impact of Spanish immigration throughout the area, reveals the extent to which “Appalachian culture” was/is not solely an Anglo-

European/Celtic phenomenon. Rather it is the product of cultural diversity.

In the second subsection, I discuss Appalachia’s rural culture more concretely.

Engaging the work of Ronald Eller, I consider some of the particular features of pre- industrial Appalachia’s communal life and agricultural practices. In particular, I focus on the

(relatively) egalitarian social structures that characterized the region as they were embodied in kinship networks and family homesteads. My goal here is to provide a thick description of the reality that was pre-industrial Appalachia. Accordingly, while the symbolic dimensions of rural space are important it must be situated in contact with or reference to a way of life that actually existed in history. If, as I argued in the previous chapter, rural space and rurality should be understood as representations of space, the value of remembering Appalachia’s pre-industrial/rural history lies as much in its symbolic power as its historical actuality. Pre- industrial Appalachia therefore offers us a resource to reimagine the future, of which I discuss more fully in chapter three.

A. Appalachian Roots: Donald Davis and Bioregional History

I begin with Donald Davis’ Where There Are Mountains: A Natural History of the Southern

Appalachians for two primary reasons.37 One, as the subtitle states, his study focuses on how the history and culture of the Appalachians is influenced or shaped by the region’s unique topography. That is, in his attention to cultural developments, Davis seeks to discover how the natural environment of the region both affected and was affected by human communities in their creation of specific cultural practices. To this end, he displays a concern for ecological preservation, contending that “because culture in the southern

37 Donald Davis. Where There Are Mountains: A Natural History of the Southern Appalachians. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005).

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Appalachians is the product of both social and environment forces, environmental preservation and cultural preservation are closely linked. When the mountains are preserved, so is Appalachian culture.”38 To this end, Davis’ argument is unique among Appalachian

Studies text in its perspective precisely because he so explicitly connects Appalachian identity to the intertwining of topography and culture. In making this connection so central to his thesis Davis reinforces the extent to which the “concreteness” or “actuality” of Appalachia’s history is indelibly tied to nature.

Two, Davis begins his study earlier in history than most Appalachian Studies scholars, (with the possible exception of Rodger Cunningham), and thus expands the chronological scope of the field. Whereas, as we shall see in the following subsection,

Ronald Eller focuses his attention on the late 19th/early 20th centuries, Davis opens with a detailed examination of what he terms “pre-contact” Appalachian culture. Lamenting the historical temptation to focus primarily on the impact of Anglo-European settlement in

Appalachia, Davis provides a detailed discussion of both Native American and Spanish interaction with the land in order “to provide a more detailed discussion of the precontact environment as well as document the social and environmental effects of Spanish presence in the mountain region.”39 Consequently, he challenges certain assumptions or beliefs about what was indigenous to Appalachian culture and ecology. Through his detailed analysis of how Mississippian and Spanish communities interacted with the land, Davis provides the reader with a fuller understanding of “Appalachia” before the idea of Appalachia as the

“strange land” or “obstacle to civilization.” Let us begin with his etymological study of the word “Appalachia.”

The word Appalachia is actually a derivative of the Native American tribe,

38 Ibid., xiv. 39 Ibid., xi.

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Apalachee, a people that did not live in the southern mountains, but rather inhabited “a forty-square-mile are of the central Florida panhandle, from the western bank of the Aucilla

River to the lands just west of the Ochlockonee River.”40 Indeed, it was only with the work of French artists Jacque Le Moyne in 1564, that the term “Montest Apalatchi” was used in reference to a geographical space.41 However, while La Moyne’s map describes “a place of great mountains,” consensus opinion is that his reference point was not the contiguous mountain chain running parallel to the eastern coast. It would be another five years, with

Gerard Mercator’s map in 1569, until the term “Apalatchi” or “Apalachen” was applied to the mountain region. Moreover, Davis indicates that while derivations of the term were used sporadically in the seventeenth-century, “by the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the term and its various derivations were used with less frequency on most maps…By the end of the eighteenth century, the area originally known as the Appalachian

Mountains was more frequently referred to as Alleghenia or the Allegheny Mountains.”42 It would not be until roughly 1910 that “Appalachia” was once again used to designate the mountain region; here, Arnold Henry Guyot is credited with re-introducing the term. Even more importantly, as Davis notes, echoing in part Henry Shapiro’s argument concerning the cultural construction of “Appalachia” as a distinct place, geographers, sociologists, local- color essayists, and missionaries were influential in naming of the region as “Appalachia.”43

While the “naming” of the region is an important part of Davis’ argument, if primarily in understanding why he chooses to focus on the southern core of Appalachia – whether called

“Apalatchi,” “Alleghenia,” or “Appalachia” – the focus of his study is on the particular interactions between “human” and “environment” that developed over a five-hundred year

40 Ibid., 3. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 4. 43 Ibid., 6.

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period, specifically with regards to how particular human communities (“culture”) interacted with, depended on, and ultimately shaped the ecosystem (“nature”).

According to Davis, the first “culture” that emerged in the southern core of the

Appalachians was the Mississippians, a predominantly agricultural people located in the fertile soils of the Tennessee and Cumberland River valleys.44 Evolving over a three- hundred year period between 900 and 1200 CE, Mississippian culture reached its apex in

1300 and exhibited remarkable social and religious organization. One of the central features of “pre-contact” Appalachia was the willingness of the people to adapt their cultural practices to the landscape. He notes that Mississippian agriculture “was a cultivation system embedded in a diverse and dynamic local ecology.”45 And while Mississippian attitude towards the land varied – from the utilitarian to the reverent – it is clear that, in general, the people approached the land with a deeper sense of respect than the absentee landowners of the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth centuries. This of course does not imply that

Mississippians did not alter the landscape of the local habitats.

For example, the cultivation of corn – a staple crop among Mississippian communities – required large tracts of land to be cleared, often by fire. This process, while selective and concentrated within narrow parameters, nevertheless altered the landscape of the mountain region; Davis estimates that it is possible that in one village alone 2000 acres of land could have been cleared.46 Nevertheless, this process should not be understood as substantially changing the topography of Appalachia. Davis writes, “Because their

44 Ibid., 15. Concentrated along the river flood plains of meander-belt river bottoms, Davis notes that the floodplain “provided convenient access to three of the Mississippians’ most important natural resources: river cane, used for dwelling construction, tools, and basketry; water, used for ceremonial bathing, transportation, cooking and drinking, and rich tillable soil, the medium in which they grew their most important crops – maize, beans, and squash (15).” According to Davis, the core of Mississippian culture was Cahokia, a large and densely populated city in North America during the pre-Columbian period, which at its height supported more than forty thousand people (19). 45 Ibid., 26. 46 Ibid., 27-28.

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subsistence practices were narrowly prescribed around seasonal patterns, the Mississippians of southern Appalachia were largely restricted in their ability to radically alter the larger mountain landscape. The Mississippians had, in short, patterned their lives around the rhythms of a unique physical environment that for centuries remained largely unchanged.”47

What we see in “pre-contact” Appalachia was therefore a distinct culture in which the ecosystem exercised a significant degree of agency in the development of Mississippian culture. Indeed, the subsistence lifestyle extant in the region was a delicate balance of give- and-take between humans and environment.

With the arrival of European explorers, this “pre-contact culture” began a gradual process of transformation. While the European settlers in the region – primarily Spanish,

French, and English – would selectively appropriate “native culture” throughout the 16th,

17th, and early-18th centuries, their presence in the area would lead to significant transformations of the mountain landscape. Moreover, what we witness in this process is the increasing influence of “culture” on “nature.” Consider how Spanish trade changed both Mississippian culture and the rhythms of the land. While “trade” had existed between the various native communities prior to European contact, it was limited in scope.

However, beginning in the mid-17th century, the Spanish settlers and native populations intensified their trading practices, particularly with regards to animal furs and skins. As natives began to hunt more frequently and for larger numbers of desired pelts, they significantly affected the wildlife population in the surroundings woodlands. Such practices, in turn, altered the ecosystem. For example, the overhunting of beavers “allowed sloughs and marshes created by the beaver’s industrious dam-building efforts to return to woodland

47 Ibid., 34.

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forest and allowed stream courses to once again flow freely and unobstructed.”48 What we have then, in the cultural interaction between Mississippian and Spanish peoples, was the initial steps of European altering of the mountain ecosystem. This process of gradual alteration would continue throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

According to Davis, it is with the arrival of Anglo-Europeans that the Appalachian landscape entered periods of more significant change. Embracing a “frontier logic,” which saw the region as something to be “conquered” for “civilization,” Anglo-Europeans transformed both Appalachian culture and nature. This is not to say that these groups did not adapt to the land; Davis notes that the mountain topography of Appalachia “allowed for the direct transference, with notable modifications, of the field, fallow, and forest agricultural cycle” of the Scots-Irish.49 He writes that, as with the Mississippians, “mountain farmers would have allowed the local landscape or even the availability of tools to dictate what land- use techniques might be appropriate in a given area.”50

And yet, he asserts that much more than Mississippian subsistent agriculture and

Spanish cultivation of foreign crops, the Anglo-European pioneer “created recognizable, even dramatic changes in the surrounding mountain landscape.”51 Indeed, within the context of a conquest narrative, the technological power of the axe and construction of the log cabin figure prominently. According to Nye, for the 19th century American pioneer, the

48 Ibid., 40. Other examples of European influence on the Appalachian environment include the introduction of foreign crops such as peaches, watermelons, grapes, wheat, sorghum, and castor beans (46), an “event” that changed both cultivation and dietary practices (52) and increased buffalo migration during the seventeenth century, the result of both Mississippian and Spanish deforestation and overhunting of the buffalo’s natural predator. As a result, these buffalo herds “had considerable impact on the growth of small plants and shrubs and would have created numerous wallows and trails…which often became the roadbeds of settlement trails and nineteenth-century transportation routes (54).” 49 Ibid., 99. 50 Ibid., 107. For example, Davis contends that the particular landscape of Appalachia contributed to livestock selection, with hogs quickly adapting to the region. From the abundant supply of nuts to the farmers’ willingness to rely on seasonal signs to determine butchering times, the hog was emblematic of the reciprocity between humans and nature. 51 Ibid., 115.

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axe and log cabin were fundamentally intertwined in the settler imagination. In this paradigmatic narrative the

settler enters the vast primeval woods [and] using a new technology, the American axe, he transforms the forests into field and meadow, allowing it to be farmed for the first time…the pioneer did not wield the axe merely to carve out a clearing in the trackless forests and build there a cabin. He may have opened the way for an abstract future civilization, but more immediately he created a safe haven, an opening, a release from the wild. The story of building the cabin is quite literally a foundation narrative, an account of how civilization confronts and overcomes solitude in a new place, and it is imagined on a personal level.52

Within this context, the “settling” of the forest is a precursor for the establishing of civilization’s centers. As Nye writes, “the American axe made the grid real. It translated the surveyor’s lines into a clearing in the forest, where it inscribed the nation’s birthplace: a log cabin.”53 Consequently, this particular form of technology and space, along with the introduction of foreign grasses and weeds and the overhunting of “big game” wildlife, contributed to changes in the southern Appalachian ecosystem that would reverberate for decades.54 The 1795 founding of Yellow Creek was necessary for the creation of

Middlesboro.

And yet, such a narrative of conquest does not exhaust or fully explain the Anglo-

European encounter with the land and forest. Assuredly, the “mountaineer as settler”

52 David Nye. America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 58. See also, Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). In his analysis of the cultural symbolism of “the forest” Harrison makes a similar claim. Focusing specifically on the Homeric myth of Odysseus and the Cyclops, he writes: “Lucus, clearing, eye. This is the eye, or burnt-out clearing, whose poetic character was already corrupted by the time it reached homer. By a paradoxical reversal of poetic logic, Homer places this eye in the middle of the Cyclops’s forehead and has Odysseus blind it with the burnt tip of an uprooted tree trunk, thus bringing the forest’s darkness back upon the Cyclops’s eye again. The master of technical skill, Vulcan is the one who opens the eye. He sets fire to the forest in order to be able to see the direction of the lightning bolt, that is, to read the auspices. Fire itself came from this divine celestial source. Technology appropriated its uses for the purpose of deforestation (10).” 53 Nye, American as Second Creation, 70. 54 Ibid., 120. For example, Davis notes, “The introduction of the Scots-Irish herding system to the region is…striking evidence that many of Southern Appalachian ‘balds’ [exposed rock along mountaintops] were created by human disturbance. Once an ecological mystery, the presence of mountaintop balds is now largely attributed to this once common cultural practice [of salting ridgetops in order to contain grazing herds] (101).”

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transformed the land. Affirming this point, however, does not entail a tacit omission of cultural conquest or violent imposition, although assuredly such attitudes and actions were apart of Appalachian history. Rather, in many respects, mountain farmers willingly adapted to the environment while at the same time making subtle, yet important, alterations to the bioregion; even within this era of significant change, most mountain farmers left as much as

90 percent of their farms as woodlands.55 Contrary to the contention that the Appalachian mountaineer ignorantly abused the soil, exhausting it of all nutrients and forcing him to clear cut ever-greater tracts of forest, Davis argues that prior to the advent of industrial modernization, the mountaineer farmer practiced a limited, sustainable form of subsistence agriculture. Indeed, as Ronald Eller demonstrates, the rural culture of pre-industrial

Appalachia was dynamic and vibrant.

B. Mountain Agrarianism: Ronald Eller and Pre-Industrial Appalachia

Eller’s Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-

1930, is important for three primary reasons. One, his historical narrative of the region at the turn of the century offers a detailed comparison of pre- and post-industrialized

Appalachia. Eller begins his history in the years prior to the first advent of industrialization within the region and describes a “native culture” that is a vibrant and dynamic alternative to the industrial-capitalist order. For example, as opposed Harry Caudill’s assertion that the cultural paucity of pre-modern Appalachia contributed to its eventual impoverishment and dependency, Eller asserts that “the coming of railroads, the building of towns and villages, and the general expansion of industrial employment greatly altered the traditional patterns of mountain life.”56 So great was this transformation that an independent mountain culture characterized by open-country settlements, kinship networks, and a barter economy of

55 Ibid., 99. 56 Ibid., xix.

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subsistence agriculture quickly became a powerless society dependent on an increasingly absentee power-structure for its survival.57

Two, Eller’s focus on the impact of modernization and industrialization of

Appalachia allows him to analyze specific, concrete economic practices within the region as causes of poverty. Whereas other histories briefly mention the negative consequences of industrialization and modernization, Eller attends to specific actions of the coal and timber industries. In doing so, he contends that the “persistent poverty of Appalachia has not resulted from the lack of modernization. Rather it has come from the particular kind of modernization that unfolded in the years from 1880 to 1930.”58 The entrance of the timber and coal industries, as representative of the broader industrial economy, into the region served to transform Appalachia into a more faithful representation of an increasingly incorporated American society.

Finally, Eller’s analysis of the modernization of Appalachia is situated within a general narrative American transformation. That is, his use of the concept “modernization” is itself reflective of a broader economic and cultural process. He writes, “modernization” refers not only to the transition from a traditional to a modern society but to a specific set of changes that have accompanied that transition in American since the later nineteenth century: the growth of urbanization and industrialization, the rise of corporate capitalism and the bureaucratic state, the development of a national market economy, the concentration of political and economic power, and a weakening of cooperative life and work in local communities and family life.”59 The advent in Appalachia of a modernized economy and political structure did not occur in a vacuum, but was rather one step in the broader

57 Ibid., xii. 58 Ibid., xxiv (emphasis mine). 59 Ibid., xxv.

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expansion of an industrial, corporate power structure throughout the nation. This is not to say that examples of Appalachian industrialization represent a facsimile of development in the Northeast, Midwest, or Deep South. Indeed, the transformation that occurred in

Appalachia was unique to the region and should be examined as such. Rather the unique experience(s) of the Appalachian south “raises the fundamental questions of our time – questions of power, greed, growth, self-determination, and cultural survival.”60

As one reads Eller’s description of “pre-industrial Appalachia,” it is difficult to see the picture of fatalism, primitivism, and cultural impoverishment that many consider emblematic of the region. Rather, we see a picture of a unique culture, a weaving of both human agency and landscape into a distinctive way of life. Eller writes,

The land itself shaped the development of culture and social patterns in the mountains. Each community occupied a distinct cove, hollow, or valley and was separated from its neighbors by a rim of mountains or ridges. Land ownership was terminated at the ridge top, reinforcing the community’s identity and independence, but the hillsides were generally considered to be public land open for use by all members of the community…The loose clusters of farms allowed mountain settlers to maintain a certain level of independence while retaining social contacts and community life.61

Contrary to the assumptions that the southern mountaineer fiercely protected his/her independence, to the detriment of communal life, Eller contends that mountain independence and community were of the same piece. Furthermore, in contrast to accounts of Appalachia that locate its peculiarity or otherness in its “isolation,” Eller contends that 1)

Appalachia was no more isolated than the rest of the rural South and Midwest and 2) such isolation actually increased with industrialization.62 Accordingly, Appalachian society prior to industrialization should be recognized as embodying a distinct socio-cultural character, with a distinct social structure (kinship networks), economy (subsistence family farms), and

60 Ibid., xxvi. 61 Ibid., 8. 62 Ibid., xiii, 6.

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material culture.

Structurally, Appalachia exhibited a comparatively open and democratic social order.63 While pre-modern mountain society was not without its social distinctions, such divisions were based more on “status” than “class.” Eller contends that the determinative criteria for such “status distinctions” were grounded in the value system of the mountain community. Consequently, privilege or social status was based not on economics (here defined as wealth, land ownership, and/or control of resources), but rather on “kinship ties, personality characteristics, and oratorical abilities.”64 Organized primarily around the family, this pre-modern Appalachian society was marked by a communal life that was “enmeshed in a larger network of kin relationships that formed the substance of community life.”65 This communal pattern affected a distinctive cultural ethos. Attitudes toward the land and its resources eschewed the acquisitiveness of the burgeoning capitalist order and class- consciousness was, according Eller, non-existent because it was affirmed within the mountain communities that everyone had equal access to the resources necessary to support his/her family. Consequentially, pre-modern Appalachian communities were markedly egalitarian and democratic.

While individuals were free to pursue their own interests, they were not allowed to ignore or disrupt the collective needs of the community.66 Participation in community life – from church service and singings to quilting bees, harvests, and community dances – was open to all, independent of social or moral status. The belief that “I’m as good as you are, and you’re as good as I am” was a frequent refrain in this culture.67 And while the famialism

63 Ibid., 9. 64 Ibid., 12. 65 Ibid., 28. 66 Ibid., 29. 67 Ibid., 33, 35.

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of Appalachian culture was assuredly patriarchal, “the woman was the most important figure in the basic social unit, the family.”68 While the adult male held the greatest “power, privilege, and freedom” the woman’s “role and responsibilities within the domestic realm granted her significant authority over the household, respect in the community, and a strong sense of identity and personal gratification.”69 Moreover, it was the isolation – the very trait lamented by Caudill, the local-color essayists, and home missionaries – provided by the landscape that allowed pre-modern democratic values to persist: “The relative isolation of

Appalachian communities from the centralizing forces of the larger society sustained this democratic dream in the mountains long after the passing of the frontier, and the leveling tendencies of the mountain economy made the idea of equality appear to be as much reality as value.”70 The Appalachian landscape thus contributed to the development of a distinctive communal system – one based on intimate networks of nuclear families and affirmation of egalitarianism. Additionally, the prominence of subsistence family farm created a unique

“mountain economy.”

Whereas the industrial order established a centralized economy, embodied most clearly in the company town, pre-modern Appalachian economics were characterized by decentralized, relatively self-contained family farms.71 Again, such “isolation” did not preclude economic interaction; the transportation network of trails, rivers/streams, and dirt roads contributed to a backcountry market system.72 While significantly limited in its scope, this simple transportation network nevertheless provided a point of contact between communities, enabling mountain farmers to sell their surplus produce. However, even this

68 Ibid., 32. 69 Ibid., 31-32. 70 Ibid., 11. 71 Ibid., 16. 72 Ibid., 14.

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simple regional market system, was subordinate to the mountain economy of self-sufficient farming. In comparison to Midwest and Deep South farming communities, the Appalachian mountain farm was characterized by its independence and diverse polyculture. The family farms in Appalachia, because they were the main source of “income” did not rely on a single

“cash crop.” While corn served as staple crop, mountain farmers also cultivated oats and wheat, potatoes, a simple quantity of vegetables and fruits (including green beans, pumpkins, melons, and squash, as well as hay, sorghum, and rye). Additionally, many farms maintained a beehive and subsisted on the abundant wild game in the outlying woods. Indeed, while mountaineers “cleared” a portion of the land for cultivation, a majority of farm and the surrounding public land remained woodlands. Emblematic of the cultural egalitarianism that characterized the region, the cultivation of the family farm was done by all members of the family, father, mother, and children all contributed to the work. And while most farms used horse or mule drawn plows, the majority of the planting, cultivating, and harvesting was done by hand.73

Finally, it should be noted that while many farmers participated in the regional market system, “they seldom received cash for their surplus livestock, roots and herbs, or other products.”74 Mirroring other rural regions throughout the country, Appalachian farmers did not have access to a stable banking system and as such relied on a barter economy in which commercial exchanges were made on a product-for-product basis.75 This system reinforced local networks of exchange and “provided mountain communities with considerable freedom from the fluctuations of the national cash economy.”76

In addition to serving as the “economic center” of pre-modern Appalachian society,

73 Ibid., 18. 74 Ibid., 22. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid.

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the family farm also embodied its unique material culture. It is here that Eller provides a clear counter to Caudill’s insistence on Appalachia’s cultural dearth. Whereas Caudill argues that the severe isolationism of the pre-modern mountain communities contributed to its general lack of material culture, Eller asserts that the particular mountain environment of the region yielded a unique culture “with strong attachments to the land and profound sense of place.”77 Accordingly, the mountain homestead “reflected a society that had adapted to and harmonized with its surroundings by making effective use of local resources and by altering traditional cultural patterns to fit new physical conditions…The land, the homestead, one’s kin, and one’s neighbors formed the matrix for the daily lives of most mountaineers.”78 It is important to note here that, according to Eller, pre-modern Appalachian culture was inherently adaptive. Rather than seek to coercively re-shape the landscape to make it fit a prefabricated cultural form, the mountaineer developed a unique culture that reflected partnership with the land.79

The mountain homestead was neither monotonous nor dreary; colorful quilts and coverlets, flower gardens, and even the occasional piano or organ, displayed the simplicity, yet vibrancy, of pre-modern Appalachian culture. In this, it reflected the cultural values of the people: an intimate connection with the land and an embrace of the simple. Eller writes,

The close relationship to the land that evolved as a major cultural trait among mountain people was reflected in the construction and environment of the house as it was in no other aspect of their material culture. The cabin helped to shape and strengthen the basic unit of social life – the family. The coming of industrialization, with its introduction of a new material culture and an urban form of life in company towns, brought dramatic changes in the living

77 Ibid., 23. 78 Ibid. 79 Consider for example the mountain cabin. While it did not represent the only type of housing in the region, it was the predominant form used by most mountain communities. Moreover, in many respects, the mountain cabin represented an extension of the land. Built entirely of natural materials – timber, mud and limestone mortar, and native stone – the cabin was a simple and plain structure, but uniquely sturdy and durable. Consisting primarily of one large room with a loft above, the space limited individual privacy, but strengthened the connection within the family (24).

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patterns of many mountaineers and resulted in adaptations and adjustments in the family and the traditional culture.80

In short, prior to “industrialization” Appalachian communities developed and maintained a verdant native culture and the greatest impact on the Appalachian ecosystem developed from industrial manufacturing, primarily iron, coal, and timber.81

While the work of Davis and Eller are limited in their scope, they offer the reader with a detailed and substantive picture of pre-industrial Appalachian culture. Mountain homesteads were rooted, literally and figuratively, into the topography. For example, the

(relative) egalitarian qualities of their communities can be understood/explained in connection to the geographical dispersion of peoples in the area. Because the topography prevented the centralization of power on a broader scale (apart from as we shall see the introduction of newer mechanical technologies), Appalachian communities were more decentralized and thus potentially more democratic. Perhaps more importantly, as we shall see, the dispersed nature of Appalachia’s topography and communities was a profound obstacle to the capitalist and industrialist and urban expansion into the region. Indeed, as

Lefebvre writes, one of the clearest alternatives and threats to centralized power comes from plural and local powers:

The only possibility of…altering the operation of…centralized [power]…as to introduce (or reintroduce) a measure of pluralism lies in a challenge to central power from the “local powers,” in the capacity for action of municipal or regional forces linked directly to the territory in question.

80 Davis, 27-28. 81 Iron manufacturing was one the first industrial practices introduced into the region. Stretching across a broad geographical expanse, from West Virginia to northern Alabama, the iron industry made indelible changes to the mountain landscape. The process of manufacturing required vast amounts of natural resources – hematite, limonite, magnetite, and limestone – and an inexhaustible supply of hardwood trees (147). Acquiring these resources involved intensive alteration to the land. Davis writes, “By the early 1840s, the iron industry was having a noticeable effect on large portions of the mountain landscape. Clear-cutting of timber left entire hillsides devoid of vegetation, making them less desirable for agricultural pursuits. The continued use of specific sites for charcoal production [the primary fuel used for smelting] drastically decreased soil fertility, resulting in the creation of sterile patches of ground that, for decades, supported little or no plant life (151).” In addition to deforestation and the denuding of the soil, iron manufacturing dammed local waterways, leading to intense flooding of valuable farmland, and open expansive swaths of wooded areas for roads and housing.

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Inevitably such resistance or counter-action will tend to strengthen or create independent territorial entities capable to some degree of self-management. Just as inevitably, the central state will muster its own forces in order to reduce any such local autonomy by exploiting isolation and weakness.82

As we will see in the following section, the history of industrialization in Appalachia demonstrates this point clearly. As railroads opened the area to development and coal companies sought to exert their power, Appalachia’s decentralized democratic sensibilities were replaced with concrete representations of urban exploitation.

IV. Civilization Comes to Appalachia: Railroads, Company Towns, and

Late Nineteenth Century Urbanization

Whereas most studies on industrialization and Appalachia focus on coal mining,

Davis identifies the greatest environmental and cultural impact with the timber industry. He argues, “During the four-hundred-year history of land use that this book chronicles, the single greatest human activity to affect environmental and cultural change in the southern

Appalachians is industrial logging.”83 To be sure, other Appalachian scholars, specifically

Eller, note the impact of logging on Appalachia, but do so within a broader context that still emphasizes coal mining as the greatest change. Davis’ argument then provides a valuable addition to the history of industrialization in Appalachia.

The devastation of the timber industry was simultaneously expansive and intensive.

Financed primarily by northern and foreign investors, the logging boom between the 1880 and 1910 irrevocably transformed the mountain ecosystem. As Davis writes, “Backed by teams of sawyers, locomotives, railroad lines, and steam-powered sawmills, the industrial loggers soon began removing the biggest and oldest trees from the mountain forests with

82 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 382. 83 Davis, 166.

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unparalleled speed and efficiency.”84 The consequences of this rapid deforestation included increased soil erosion, uncontrollable forest fires, and massive flooding. The picture that

Davis presents is one of careless, avaricious industrial loggers carelessly clear-cutting the mountain forests, leaving a barren, denuded landscape in their wake. He writes,

The loss of topsoil due to timber cutting prohibited appreciable amounts of rain from soaking into the ground and water table, causing stream courses to run dry during the summer months and flood excessively during winter and spring months…As could be expected, increased outputs also increased environmental damage to the mountain ecosystem, leaving many to question the extent to which the hardwood forest would, if ever, recover. Industrial logging cleared entire mountainsides of trees and undergrowth, favoring the regeneration of fast-growing, shad-intolerant species such as white and short- leaf pine.85

Industrial logging also affected people. Davis notes that subsistence agriculture in

Appalachia was dependent on the forests and its trees. Serving as fuel for heating homes, shade and food for livestock, habitat for wild game, and a check on soil erosion, the

Appalachian hardwood forest was integral to the lives of its mountaineer-farmers. Indeed, the ecological conscious practices of Appalachian farming represent one of the clearest examples of human dependence on and respect for nature. From crop rotation to forest fallowing, the nineteenth-century mountain farmer exhibited awareness that abuse of the land was suicidal; the destruction of the natures inevitably lead to the destruction of culture.

Unfortunately, that devastation of industrial logging, particularly in its focus on the chestnut trees, was in many ways, irreversible. Indeed, the death of the chestnut tree signaled the death of an entire way of life. Davis writes,

The loss of the tree no doubt gave additional advantage to the forces of industrialization that were gaining a stronger and stronger foothold in the regional and local economy. No longer able to range hogs and cattle in the woodland commons, trap fish in free-flowing streams, or gather chestnuts on the hillsides, the rural mountaineers turned increasingly to milltowns and

84 Ibid., 167. 85 Ibid., 169-170.

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urban centers for economic salvation. The environmental abuse of the mountains, along with the residents’ permanent removal from their traditional land bases made it extremely difficult for mountaineers to continue a semi- agrarian and intimately forest-dependent way of life. With the death of the chestnut tree and entire world did die, eliminating cultural practices that had been viable in the southern Appalachians for more than four centuries.86

There are five critical dimensions of Appalachian industrialization that must be emphasized.

First, it must be understood that the development of an industrial corporate economy in the mountains was reflective of the national culture. That is, corporate industrialism was quickly becoming the normative economic form throughout the country, and as such, the transformation of Appalachian culture was part of a broader phenomenon.87 Two, the individuals leading the charge into the mountain represented the “centralization” of the industrial economy.88 Three, the leading prospectors and capitalists of industrial centers were non-natives.89 Four, the non-native speculators and capitalists frequently relied on local residents to represent their interests.90 Fifth, the expansion of the industrial core into the

86 Ibid., 198. 87 Eller writes, “As technological development increased the productive capacities of urban centers in the Northeast, South, and Midwest, capitalists began to turn to surrounding rural areas for the human and natural resources to undergird expansion. The exploitation of peripheral rural areas for the benefit of industrializing urban centers became a requisite of industrial growth, resulting in unequal economic development and prolonged social tension between urban and rural communities. Appalachian, being one of the most rural areas of eastern America and rich in natural resources, provided a stage upon which much of this great social drama was played out. In a rapidly industrializing society, the wealth of the Appalachians became a passkey to affluence and power (42). See also Alan Trachtenberg. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982). In many ways, Eller’s description of this process parallels Trachtenberg’s analysis of what he terms the “incorporation of America” consisting in “the emergence of a changed more tightly structured society with new hierarchies of control, and also changed conceptions of that society, of America itself…such as the rise of the metropolis, a revolution in transportation and communications, and the processes of secularization, bureaucratization, and professionalization (Trachtenberg, 4-5).” 88 Consider the example of William Mahone – conservative politician, railroad president, and newspaper publisher. According to Eller, through his paper the Richmond Whig, Mahone promoted railroads, mining, and timber interests throughout the Virginias. Combined with Henry Watterson’s Louisville Courier-Journal and Henry Grady’s Atlanta Constitution, Mahone represented a Southern media triangle that advocated for the industrial expansion of the “New South (57).” 89 Richard M. Broas, the pioneer coal prospector in eastern Kentucky was originally from New York City and represented the interests of Nathaniel Simkins of Massachussets (57). 90 As the mountaineer communities began to resist the manipulation of “foreign speculators,” the “native middle-class entrepreneurs served as effective brokers for absentee investors.” Individuals like Rufus Ayers and John C. Calhoun Mayo were key figures in wresting away ownership from the mountaineers (57). As Eller writes, “By purchasing land and mineral resources from local residents for minimal accounts and transferring

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mountain periphery relied on the penetration of the railroad into the region. Indeed, it was only with the expansion of the railroad into the region that the absentee landowners were able to extract the timber and coal from the mountains.91

Equally important though, it was only with the growth of the railroad that the industrial capitalists were able to produce new kinds of spatial configurations. Having penetrated the mountains through the laying of tracks, coal companies were left with the task of establishing centralized manifestation of their power within the region. The railroad and the company town were both a matter of expediency and efficiency. And while a number of Appalachian Studies texts provide invaluable insight into the industrialization of the region and address the creation and character of company towns, they have not, as of yet, adequately placed this process within the broader context of urbanization. The company coal town is assuredly an emblematic of company control and the power of the industrial ethos over the lives of miners and their families. But it is equally a profound example of

Lefebvre’s “representations of space.”

In this section I discuss the urbanization of Appalachia by focusing on the railroad and the company town. In connecting the region to metropolitan centers of wealth, railroads not only facilitated the transportation of “goods” or “products” out of Appalachia, they were also critical in bringing a metropolitan ethos to the mountains. In large part,

Yellow Creek Valley becomes Middlesboro and Appalachia’s rural space(s) of representation become urban representations of space through the power of the railroads. In order to more fully explain this point it is important to expand on the historical and theoretical perspective of this chapter. Here I turn to David Nye’s cultural histories of technology and

them to outside corporations at a profit, they accumulated great personal wealth, but they handed over the region’s economy and its future to absentee control (63).” 91 Ibid., 65.

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power.

Focusing specifically on the intersections of American socio-cultural history and technology, Nye’s work is especially important in helping us place Appalachia within a national historical context. For example, his book Consuming Power: A Social History of

American Energies charts the development of America’s energy consumption and cultural practices, assuming in turn that “as Americans incorporated new machines and processes into their lives, they became ensnared in power systems that were not easily changed.”92

Technology represents a type of cultural choice that both reflects and shapes energy demands and subsequently normalizes consumption patterns.93 As regards the Appalachian context, Nye helps us recognize the extent to which the railroad (as technological innovation) was fundamentally connected to the economics of coal mining (as energy demand) and ideology of the company town (as urbanization). In this subsection, I turn to

Nye’s American Technological Sublime and America as Second Creation, both of which offer detailed discussions of the railroad’s place in the national consciousness.

The second subsection focuses on the development of the company town. A rather practical development in the industrialization of the region, this particular space represented a concentration and centralization of the company’s power. One of the key pieces in a coal company’s penetration and transformation of the region was the cultivation of a readily available and pliable source of labor. Dispersed through the hollers and valleys of the mountains, Appalachian homesteaders were not easily drawn from their farms and land.

92 David E. Nye. Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), 1. While Nye rejects determinist readings of technological development, he does note the extent to which the socially constructed forms of technological innovation can become “stiff and unyielding” in their transformation of daily life and culture (3). Accordingly, his narrative focuses on how new technologies and energy demands produce distinct social worlds (5-6). Thus he writes, “Various large systems…(have) been central to a larger set of social constructions, because the shape of a home, a factory, or a city is inextricably connected to the dominant energy system. The steam railroad and the networked nineteenth-century city emerged together (5).” 93 Ibid., 7-8

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Consequently, through a combination of overt coercion and subtle encouragement, men and women were overtly coerced and/or subtly encouraged to leave their homesteads and live in company towns, wherein they were forced to participate in a microcosm of a metropolitan civilization. Indeed, the company town was the concentration of urban power and embodied the ideology of representations of space.

A. To Unite a Nation: Moral Development and the Railroad Sublime

Following the collapse of the Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke Company in 1901, industrial speculator George L. Carter committed himself to addressing the most drastic need for expanding the industrial prospects of Northeast Tennessee. While capitalist financiers and coal prospectors had successfully opened Appalachia to industrialization, their ability to efficiently transport their “resources” out of the region was limited by natural topography. As historian Tom Lee notes, the Blue Ridge Mountains in particular proved a significant obstacle to connecting eastern Tennessee to metropolitan centers along the east coast. Funding his enterprise with a settlement won against his former company, Carter established the South and Western Railway Company and purchased the remaining track lines of the failed Charleston, Cincinnati, and Chicago Railroad in 1902. Connecting

Spartanburg, South Carolina to Elkhorn City, Kentucky, Carter’s newly formed railroad spanned 277 miles, crossed through 55 tunnels, and as opposed to a number of other regional lines, went through the mountains not around them.94

Due to the high cost of maintaining and consolidating the rail line, Carter followed the plan of numerous other Appalachian industrialists and pursued financial support from individuals outside the region. Working with New York utility speculator Thomas Ryan,

West Virginia banker Isaac Mann, director of U.S. Steel Norman Ream, lumber baron

94 Tom Lee. The Tennessee-Virginia Tri-Cities: Urbanization in Appalachia, 1900-1950. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2010), 69-70.

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William Ritter, and New York financier James Blair, Carter incorporated the Clinchfield

Corporation and rechartered the railway into the Carolina, Clinchfield, and Ohio Railroad.

According to Lee there remained two obstacles that Carter had to address, particularly with regards to the cost. The first was cultivating a steady stream of profit to support the railroad. The Corporation’s investments in timber and coal addressed this need, while strengthening the company’s ties to the region.95 However, while Carter and his associates could rely on the mineral resources of Appalachia to support their enterprises, they needed to established permanent industrial centers along the CC&O route. Lee writes,

Carter and his backers…had the coal, the prospect of a completed railroad, and the insight to integrate their business enterprise into a mutually supportive web of interest. They lacked only an industrial city. After considering sites in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, Carter and his backers chose a location along the Holston River in Sullivan County, Tennessee – the site of present-day Kingsport. As a consequence of their investments in the raw materials of the mountains and a railroad, they had become the founders of a city.96

He notes that Carter’s investment in the urban centers of northeast Tennessee – he invested in real estate, established flour mills, and founded a newspaper – were ultimately designed to support his industrial interests and if he recognized the importance and necessity of the city, it was primarily for the development of natural resources. And while Carter would resign as president in 1911, eventually relocating to Coalwood, West Virginia to manage his property, the efforts of Clinchfield Corporation in establishing a permanent rail line through and an urban center in eastern Tennessee would impact the region for decades to come. In helping to establish the Tri-Cities as a central hub in a broader network of connected urban centers,

Carter simultaneously changed the demographic makeup of the area, bringing “a number of individuals [engineers, surveyors, clerks, title lawyers]…who would shape economic and

95 Ibid., 70. 96 Ibid., 70-71.

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urban development after his departures.”97 Perhaps one of the most important was his brother-in-law J. Fred Johnson, whose urban planning designs would transform Kingsport into an efficient, orderly, and aesthetically pleasing space that could attract potential investors.98

Lee’s narrative is an invaluable resource for understanding some of the specific dimensions of Appalachian urbanization. In analyzing the historical processes of early 20th century urbanization, he demonstrates the extent to which the efforts of later 19th century industrialists were merely the beginning of a fundamental transformation of the region’s space and culture. In demonstrating the importance of the railroad in this process, Lee’s argument resonates with what David Nye describes as the technological sublimity of the railroad. For both, the railroad necessitated a topographical and cultural change, and perhaps more importantly, it was as fundamental piece in the burgeoning capitalist and bureaucratic ideology of the late 18th century. Indeed, it is on this last point that we must focus our attention. The power of the railroad was centered in its ability to facilitate the expansion of the metropolitan core’s dominion over the margins or peripheries. The railroad was, for Appalachia, the means by which the spaces of abstraction were made possible.

Nye analyzes the development and impact of the railroad on American culture in two distinct, yet overlapping contexts. From one perspective, this particular piece of technological innovation is integral to an origin story that conceives of America as a second

97 Ibid., 73. 98 Ibid., 76. Lee writes, “Fed by roots in Appalachia’s past and guided by its infancy by New South progressivism’s twin aspirations of efficiency and profit, Kingsport reflected the growing interdependence of industrial recruitment and the urban environment. Within a decade, ten factories, all subsidiaries of northern firms, located in the new industrial town, but concentration on industrial recruitment in Kingsport hardly kept Clinchfield investors from attempting to bring industry to other locations along their railroad’s route (77).”

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creation.99 Here, the railroad is grouped with the axe, mill, canal, and irrigation as examples of technological innovations that fundamentally reshaped the American landscape and culture. According to Nye, from the perspective of land developers and hopeful industrialists, the railroad (along with the canal) was bound to a 19th century desire to unite the nation through a series of internal improvements.100 Perhaps more importantly, it was grounded in an ideological narrative that conceived of (natural) space as something to be conquered and technological sophistication as indicative of humanity’s fidelity to divine will.

The railroad was the means by which civilization would spread from its metropolitan cradle(s) throughout the backcountry and hinterland.101 In this, it was a fundamental dimension of an American technological sublime.

The notion of an “American sublime” is complicated, specifically in the contrast between the 16th century Enlightenment emphasis on scientific reasoning, objectivity, and control of “natural forces” and an American view “that the sublime was not of a static view of the world, nor was it part of a proto-ecological sensibility that aimed at the preservation of wilderness. Rather, to experience the sublime was to awaken to a new vision of a changing universe. The reemergence of the sublime was part of a positive revaluation of the natural world that by the eighteenth century had become a potential source of inspiration and education.”102 Moreover, the Burkean notion of the sublime as “a healthy shock” and an

“awakening [of the] sensibilities to an inner power” as the primary framework within which the American sublime was constructed and experienced, was incorporated into an increasingly bureaucratic, technologically oriented society.103 Nye writes,

99 David Nye. America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003). 100 Ibid., 145. 101 Ibid. 102 David Nye. American Technological Sublime. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999), 6. 103 Ibid., 23, 28, 37-39.

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The sublime was inseparable from a peculiar double action of the imagination by which the land was appropriated as a natural symbol of the nation while, at the same time, it was being transformed into a man-made landscape. One appeal of the technological sublime in America was that it conflated preservation and the transformation of the natural world…In fact, most Americans of the Jacksonian period…were swallowing the world not through language but through direct action. They were assaulting the natural world with axes, shovels, plows, and railroads, literally reworking the landscape, usurping the place of natural things with man-made objects. They were vigorously projecting themselves into the world, mixing their labor with it, and building internal improvements.104

As the means by which the nation could unify itself, the railroad embodied this ethos. It was the literal and symbolic machine of progress and western expansion, and should be considered “part of a sublime landscape.”105 For example, Nye notes the extent to which owners and managers of the railway intentionally appealed to and commissioned works of art that placed the new technology within a pastoral setting, such that the beauty of “nature” and “technology” was mixed and the evocative power of the latter was reinforced. Indeed, the “railroad as technological sublime” justified the conquest of nature, an action that was both material and symbolic.

In fact, it was the symbolic – the psychological and religious – dimensions of

America’s technological sublime that contributed to its uniqueness. Assuredly, traditional understandings and experiences of the sublime as a psychological and emotional awe are consonant with a kind of religiosity. What set the American variation apart was its location of this experiential awe in technological achievement and innovation:

The American sublime fused with religion, nationalism, and technology…It ceased to be a philosophical idea and became submerged in practice…Rather than treat the sublime as part of a transcendental philosophy, Americans merged it with revivalism. Not limited to nature, the American sublime embraced technology…The American sublime transformed the individual’s experience of immensity and awe into a belief in national greatness.106

104 Ibid., 37. 105 Ibid., 59. 106 Ibid., 43.

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It is this religious dimension that reveals the depths to which the railroad transformed the

American conception of nature and the land. Here, the railroad as guarantor of prosperity and stability cannot be considered apart from the railroad as cause of moral development; hence the enlistment of the clergy by railroad owners. Consider the following from a sermon given by S.C. Aiken:

In a moral and religious point of view, as well as social and commercial, to me there is something interesting, solemn, and grand in the opening of a great thoroughfare. There is sublimity about it, indicating not only mark of the mind and a higher type of society, but the evolution of divine purposes, infinite, eternal – connecting social revolution with the progress of Christianity and the coming reign of Christ.107

Aiken’s religious interpretation of the railroad is certainly remarkable, but altogether indicative of a common mood among many 19th century ministers. Here we see the intertwining between the conquest of space and valorization of the human mind. As Nye notes, if the European sublime emphasized the encounter between humanity and nature, in

America “the ‘dialogue’ was now…between man and the man-made.”108 As an experience of the sublime, the railroad was a celebration of human reason as it provided a means of transcending the limitations or obstacles of the natural landscape.109

The connection between reason and the railroad is important. For example,

Timothy Walker declared that in the products of technological innovation the “mind has become the powerful lord of matter. Having put myriads of wheels in motion by laws of its own discovery, it rests, like the Omnipotent Mind, of which it is the image, from its work of creation, and calls it good.”110 It is important to note here the parallel between Walker’s claims and what Lefebvre describes as the “logico-mathematical” point of view and

107 Ibid., 58. 108 Ibid., 60. 109 Ibid., 60. 110 Ibid., 46.

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“philosophico-epistemological” understanding of space. Walker’s argument is only understandable within a socio-cultural ideology that privileges the power of abstract thought and detached speculation. Indeed, despite the railroad’s indelible physicality, its presence cannot be limited to the iron and wood vertebrae that were imprinted on the American landscape. Rather, the “railroad” was also a sign, a regulation of conduct and behavior that facilitated the corrosion of Appalachia’s rural symbolism.111 Railroad cars not only carried industrialists, financiers, engineers, and bureaucrats into the region, they also brought with them a new space; indeed, the engineer in particular was valorized as the embodiment of reason’s power and the spirit of the age. His mastery over new machines gifted him the knowledge and skill required to traverse the expanse of a divided nation. Dwelling the space of mental or theoretical abstraction, the engineer was not hindered by the physical limitations of nature, but rather in the power of his scientific knowledge, enabled humanity to slip bonds of time and space. Indeed, we can legitimately claim of the railroad that it enabled industrialists to “mould the space it dominates (i.e. peripheral spaces), and…to reduce the obstacle and resistance it encounters there.”112 Accordingly, the engineer’s technological “gifts” were imbued with a salvific meaning: “[Robert] Thurston…valued ingenuity, efficiency, and elegance in solving practical problems, but [he] also inscribed their pragmatic values in a spiritual order, and…often yoked machines to millennial hopes.”113 If, as Nye contends, the American technological sublime drew on a revivalist spirit and mentality, it also transformed the sense of what constituted a revival.

Within the framework of the American technological sublime, the railroad was worthy of religious enthusiasm and the engineer properly romanticized because they enabled

111 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 594-595. 112 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 49. 113 Nye, 91.

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an overcoming of the physical limitations to national progress and prosperity. As the railroad opened up the natural spaces of America, it also transformed the nation’s collective consciousness. The mountaineer did not enter the region in a train car nor did she necessarily enjoy its luxury (or sublimity), but in its transformation of her home she was indelibly marked by its power. The rhythms of her rural life, marked as they were by the cyclical time of the seasons and deliberate pace of agrarianism, were disrupted by an altogether different conception of reality and being. Consequently, introduction of this new mechanical technology yielded a substantive transformation of the self and space. Here we must note the degree to which the railroad was essential for the coal industry. As it facilitated both the extraction of the resource from the region and the concentration of power within the company town, the railroad provided industrialists, prospectors, and financiers with the technological means of establishing their power. Indeed, as railroads branched outward from their metropolitan cores, they facilitated the domination of nature and rurality by abstraction. In this, the railroad fragmented the space(s) of Appalachia and in so doing made possible the production of abstract spaces. This is perhaps most evident in the company town.

B. “Machines to Live In”: Company Towns and the Power of Urban Capital

To claim that the company town is emblematic of conceived space (a representation of space) is to emphasize the extent to which this new type of space initiated a fundamental transformation of how Appalachians understood and practiced space. Here, we must approach this specific construct as a product of history and instantiation of a particular ideology. The concrete forms and practices integral to this unique type of space both reflect and embody what Lefebvre describes as the “dehumanizing brutality” of the capitalist

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alienation of everyday life.114 Within this context, alienation is not merely the consequence of economic specialization or fragmentation and the accumulation of private property.

Rather, it is the fundamental transformation of everyday life that induces “man to obliterate his living existence in favour of absolute truth, and to define himself by a theory or reduce himself to abstractions.”115 For the Appalachian, this alienation was experienced most directly in the company town. In this subsection I offer a detailed discussion of the company town (or coal camp), particularly as it is represents the concentrated hegemony and dominion of urbanization. In describing the particular features of this space, I also seek to detail the extent to which it is emblematic of an abstract space. Accordingly, the company town is identified as a local instantiation of a growing bureaucratic technocracy, intentionally designed and constructed so as to facilitate the discipline and control of miners.

In many respects, the company town was a concrete response to the perceived isolation and geographical dispersion of mountain communities. John Alexander Williams writes, “The remote and thinly populated character of the Appalachian coalfields virtually dictated the building of company towns to house the workforce, while the marginal position of many operators increased their temptation to lower overhead costs at the mines by exploiting these captive communities.”116 Williams’ language provides us with a number of clues as to the character and purpose of the company town, specifically as it pertains to urbanization. One, it acknowledges the “problem” that the environment and topography presented to hopeful industrialists. The technological development of the railroads had solved one aspect of this issue. However, while coal companies could now more efficiently transport coal out of the region, mountain communities remained dispersed throughout the

114 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: The One Volume Edition. (Brooklyn, NY: Verso Press, 2014), 186. 115 Ibid., 187. 116 John Alexander Williams. Appalachian: A History. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 259.

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hollers and valleys. In order, therefore, to secure a cost effective and readily available labor pool, they carved an artificial space out of the bedrock that would control and discipline their workers.

Two, his use of the word “captive” to describe the company town evokes the near hegemonic power that coal companies exerted over the miners and their families. Indeed, as

Lefebvre notes, the company town embodied the company’s absolute rule.117 He writes, “To the extent that capitalist enterprises create enclaves of complete dependence and subjection of workers, these remain isolated even within the space where the ‘freedom’ of the individual and that of (commercial and industrial) capital itself, hold sway. But to the extent that these enclaves tend to link up, they constitute a fabric well suited to the emergence of a totalitarian capitalism.”118 As opposed to the urban laborer, who retained a certain degree of freedom or

“measure of democracy,” the daily life of those living in the company town was thoroughly determined. These towns were in effect “closed communities” that physically manifested capital’s growing dominion over the mountaineer.

Owned entirely by the company and controlled by the mine operator, this new space required the independent mountain-farmer to abandon the family farm and enter into a state of economic dependency. And while each town was unique, with some offering more material prosperity than others, their effect on the Appalachian people was nearly uniform: the founding of “a unitary and exploitative system of power that affected all aspects of

[their] lives.”119 They were “the site of one’s residence, the source of one’s income, and the location of one’s residence.”120 Housing was primarily constructed according to a “Jenny

Lind” blueprint – a one story boxlike structure resting on a post foundation – and were

117 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 318. 118 Ibid., 318-319. 119 Gaventa, 87. 120 Eller, 162.

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frequently placed against railroad tracks.121 Less than a third of these houses were plastered inside and less than a tenth had shingle or slated roofs; board and batten were frequently used as siding and tarpaper covered the roof.122 Often located in the narrow spaces of valley floors, the towns were cramped and frequently unsanitary; Eller notes that only 14% of houses in Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia contained in-door plumbing.123

Consequently, residents suffered from diseases such as hookworm, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, smallpox, and intestinal diseases, the consequence of living in polluted spaces and surviving on unbalanced diets of processed foods.124 Ecologically, pollution from human waste and acid runoff was so extensive that the surrounding streams were almost void of animal life.125 Efforts to address disease and pollution were infrequent and half- hearted.

There was also an overwhelming absence of privacy, due both to the company store and the constant presence of mine security, particularly the Bluefield, WV based Baldwin-

Felts firm. With regards to the latter, Williams notes that while many of these security agents spent their time focused on gossip and assumed threats, a number of them willingly, and perhaps gleefully, exercised their authority.126 Indeed, as representative of the company’s authority and almost complete control over their lives, mine security were among the most hated men in the camps. Williams writes, “At best, they were symbols of the miner’s almost complete lack of control over his working and living conditions. At worst, they were swaggering bullies who tyrannized the camps.”127 Likewise, the company store integrated the miners into a market-based economy and provided the company with a further means of

121 Ibid., 184. 122 Ibid., Williams, 261. 123 Ibid., 185-186. 124 Ibid., 233. 125 Ibid., 186. 126 Williams, 261. 127 Ibid.

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control and supervision.

Placed at the center of the town, the company store typically contained a commissary, barbershop, post office, and company business offices. Here the miner and his family could purchase anything from groceries to furniture. However, while the store offered the benefits of convenience and the miner was not required to shop there, its presence in the community was a “subtle means of coercion.”128 Absent any other options to provide for his family, including the ability to move back to their farm, miners were inevitably forced to purchase goods that were often priced 5 to 12 percent higher than those at independent stores.129 Indeed, as the vast majority of miners were paid in scrip, a form of currency produced by the company and only valuable at company stores, they were left with few options to escape the company’s control and supervision.130

As Eller writes, “The coal towns were new communities imposed upon a region in which formal social ties were few. They provided an expedient means of urban development but created a system of closed, artificial communities.”131 If the company town helped establish a “hegemony of industrial economic interests” that shaped the consciousness of the workers, what thus appeared as “consensus” was in fact the effect of an imperialistic power structure.132 Indeed, this is precisely why we must connect industrialization to urbanization. The company town was one of the clearest expressions of industrial culture in the mountains – a space of social stratification and dislocation, economic

128 Eller, 188. 129 Ibid. 130 John Gaventa writes, “The exit to farming, even in the rural Appalachias, was blocked: for in the case of the American Association, the corporations throughout the region owned not just the mines but also the land…Thus a fundamental discrepancy existed between what the miners might want to do (escape) but could not (no exit) (87).” 131 Eller, 198. 132 Gaventa, 80-81. He writes, “The establishment of power mean the installation of an ideology that would more permanently serve to shroud the inequalities and help to ensure non-challenging participation by the non- elite in the new order…Their silence cannot be assumed to be consensus, nor inherent in their nature as peasant-like mountaineers or members of a working class (81).”

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exploitation and inequality, and economic and cultural poverty.133 In the spatial configurations and structures of this particular place, we see the “reduction of the ‘real’ to a

‘plan’.”134 As mountaineers entered the company town, the encountered not only a concentrated form of urban power, but equally so a “moral discourse on straight lines, on right angles and straightness in general.”135 Given the “curvature” and “depth” of the mountain topography, the “straightness” of the company town was as figurative as it is literal. Concerning the latter, a number of images reveal the kind of “structural grid” that companies built into the land. Houses were frequently placed in rows, the company store was placed at the center or entrance, and a railway line either cut through the town or marked its border. Such a rectilinear model, while never perfect, was a clear indication of the company’s rejection of topography and attempt to turn the land “into a free-market landscape.”136 For the industrialist and the engineer, the company town was a civilizing force, a means of lifting the mountaineers out of their moral depravity, economic stagnation, and cultural barbarism. In this, its architecture was ideological and in its repressive fragmentation of pre-industrial Appalachia, the urbanization of Appalachia not only entailed a physical transformation of the topography and mountain communities, it initiated a fundamental shift in the mountaineer’s self-understanding.

133 As Eller writes “The migration from the family farm to the mining camp…was for many mountaineers a difficult and traumatic move. The noise, congestion, and filth of the industrial communities was in striking contrast to the environment of the mountain farm, and the sultry, thin-walled company houses were hardly an improvement over many mountain cabins. On the farm, the womenfolk had made the cabin bright with coverlets, patchwork quilts, and dried vegetables. Grass and wildflowers grew in the doorway, and trees provided shade from the summer’s heat. In the company towns, the house was often dull and lifeless, surrounded by dust and trodden dirt. Cheap metal beds and other furniture replaced the handmade things on the farms, and the women gave up their handicrafts as the family purchased garments and other goods from the company store or mail-order catalogues…Health and social problems which generally accompanied urban life were magnified in the company towns (232-233).” 134 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 285. 135 Ibid., 361. 136 David Nye, America as Second Creation, 25.

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V. “Where There Were Mountains”: Mountaintop Removal and Urban

Extremity in Appalachia

When considered as separate but overlapping technologies in the expansion of metropolitan capital, the railroad and the company are a clear demonstration of the coal company’s power and influence. The development of Middlesboro discussed in the opening vignette of this chapter would have been impossible without the technological power inherent in the railroad. Accordingly, while this particularly social space was not an actual company town, it did embody the company town ideology that demanded worker obedience and passivity. Thus, the damage to both land and people that industrial resource extraction cause was immense. For example, deep mining weakened the stability of the mountains and contributed to the pollution of the region’s ecology. Long days spent within the mountain, breathing coal dust without proper ventilation or safety regulation, proved to be a grave threat to the miner’s health. Stop collapses, flooding, methane explosions, malfunctioning equipment – the near constant possibility of death surrounded the miner. Perhaps more insidiously, the threat followed miners home, extended beyond the depths of the mine and into the depths of their body. Indeed, pneumoconiosis (black lung), which sent and continues to send, thousands of men to early graves, can be seen as a physiological manifestation of industrial exploitation. As miners inhaled coal dust, their lungs slowly came to resemble the very rocks they mined. Mountain and mountaineer manifest internal scars of development and civilization, in short, the scars of urbanization.137

137 The horror of black lung disease not only indicates the depth in which the miner was affected by his occupation, but rather perversely the porosity between “lung” and “world.” See also Elizabeth Povinelli. Geontologies: A Requiem to Later Liberalism. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016) Commenting on this point, particularly within the context of climate change/global warming, Povinelli writes: “Animals and minerals, plants and animals, and photoautotrophs and chemoheterotrophs are extimates – each is external to the other only if the scale of our perception is confined to the skin, to a set of epidermal enclosures. But human lungs are constant reminders that this separation is imaginary. Where is the human body if it is viewed with the lung? The larger, massive biotic assemblage the lungs know intimately – including green plants,

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And yet, despite this lasting damage, despite the pollution and poverty that coal mining has done to Appalachia, its most extreme form would not emerge until the late 20th century with the development of mountaintop removal. If urbanization entails a fundamental detachment from nature and the land, the MTR represents the apex of its impact on Appalachia. It is the epitome of what Lefebvre describes as the “economic wish to impose the traits and criteria of interchangeability upon places [wherein] places are deprived of their specificity – or even abolished.”138 As we have seen in this chapter, the

“economic wishes” of the industrialist and mining company were frequently limited or circumscribed by the region’s topography; hence the need to tunnel through the mountain of

Yellow Creek Valley. Railroads and company towns were two of the most important means of producing “interchangeability” in the region, but even they were limited in their scope and impact. Indeed, if we consider the mountain(s) as the ultimate barrier to a profitable bottom line, the historical narrative of Appalachia’s industrialization is an appeal to technological power at the service of urban capital and it is perhaps inevitable that coal companies would resort to literally “removing” this obstacle.

Let us consider the historical development of this practice. As oil increasingly became the primary fuel for civilization, coal companies responded as any capitalist organization does – find a more cost effective method to maintain a steady flow of capital.

“Deep mining” consumed too much time, required too many men, and was technologically limited. Rather than send the miner to a coal seam, it was easier, cheaper, and conceivably safer, to bring the seam to the surface. And while “surface mining,” or “strip mining” was

photosynthetic bacteria, nonsulfur purple bacteria, hydrogen, sulfur and iron bacteria, animals, and microbes – is now what is thought to produce the metabolism of the planetary carbon cycle, which may be on the verge of a massive reorganization due to human activity (42).” 138 Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 343.

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practiced as far back as the colonial period, it was relatively circumscribed with minimal environmental impact. Chad Montrie writes,

One of the earliest references to a form of surface extraction refers to this [near the James River] and was made by Dr. Johann D. Schoepf upon his visit to Richmond Virginia, in the winter of 1783. Twelve miles outside of the city, south of the James River, the wind had blown a tree over, exposing white clay-slate, a black-clay slate, and a coal bed. This afforded an opportunity for people to mine the sulfur-laden coal, which they sold at the river for one shilling per bushel. Such early surface mining was typically done by farmers and common town dwellers for local exchange and use. Yet the pick and shovel, which were the miners only tools, limited their efficiency and destructiveness. Coal was mined where it could be seen, and removal of any part of the surface over-layer by miners themselves was minimal. In most cases, some type of natural perturbation or weathering exposed parts of a bed and very little further excavation was necessary to bring the mineral out or up.139

Montrie’s reflections are important in helping us contextualize the development of late-20th century strip mining. Indeed, his attention to the limitations that “colonial technology” reveals the extent to which advancements in industrial machinery coincided with more extensive (and violent) forms of surface mining.140 While practiced in limited forms throughout the mid-20th century, the severity of surface mining would not emerge until 1977 and the passage of the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act. Initially passed out of concern regarding the environmental impact of surface mining, the act focused on the regulation of active mines and reclamation of abandoned ones. The motivation behind the legislation was admirable, but its ambiguous language created a loophole that the coal industry used for its benefit. According the bill, coal companies were required to restore the area to an approximation of its original contour so as to be dedicated to “a higher and better use.”141

Regarding this provision, Ronald Eller notes: “The coal industry was quick to recognize the potential of mountain top removal as a cheap and efficient way to create level land for

139 Chad Montrie. To Save Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 18. 140 Ibid., 23. 141 Ronald Eller. Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945. (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2013), 227.

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economic development, and in an area when policy makers were feverish for industrial recruitment, the promise of a flat, developed land in the mountains was enough to ease mining permits through the state regulatory agencies and the Army Corps of Engineers.”142

Visions of economic prosperity were illusory and insincere, as they frequently have been throughout Appalachian history. Aside from shopping centers and prisons, not much has

(or can) be built on an abandoned surface mine; Erik Reece notes that subsidence caused instability and prevented any sort of sustained or permanent development.143 Non-profit activist group Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW), estimate that in West Virginia alone, the number of men employed decreased from 143,000 in 1950 to 13,653 in 2002. Further, mining accounts for only 3 percent of West Virginia jobs, down from 9.5 percent in 1979.

This decline in employment has been accompanied by a steady increase in coal production, roughly 37 percent from 1987 to 1997.

From the perspective of the coal company, the loss in jobs due to increased mechanization was simply the cost of doing business. Indeed, the development of mountaintop removal as the preferred mining practice was directly correlated with the industry’s growing concern over profitability. Accordingly, mountaintop removal reveals the extent to which the economic, cultural, and environmental catastrophes of Appalachia intersect. In an effort to maintain an acceptable level of coal production, while cutting costs and labor, coal companies within the past three decades have increasingly relied on mechanical power. As the name implies, mountaintop removal consists of five key steps.

Upon identifying a potential coal seam, (1) the trees along the mountainside are cut and explosive charges are used to loosen the soil and rock, (2) after mechanical shovels move the

142 Ibid. 143 Erik Reece. Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness – Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia. (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2006), 36.

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resultant debris into trucks. Next, (3) a dragline, weighing up to 8 million pounds and rising

20-stories, exposes the coal. Having dug out the coal, (4) the remaining refuse of topsoil and rock, are deposited into nearby valleys. Coal companies conclude their excavation and extraction with the legally required, but frequently ignored, process of reclamation (5).

Culturally and economically, the impact of mountaintop removal extended beyond the loss of jobs. Permitted to blast up to 300 feet from homes, the practice has resulted in the decrease in property values, the pollution of food sources, and the physical destruction of buildings. Scott Williams writes, “Dynamite blasts needed to splinter rock strata are so strong they crack the foundations and walls of houses. Mining dries up an average of 100 wells a year and contaminates water in others. In many coalfield communities, the purity and availability of drinking water are keen concerns. Blasting and shearing mountains have added to the damage done to underground aquifers by deep mines.”144 For many, this experience does not merely damage material property; it annihilates a particular way of life.

According to CRMW, “As coal companies chew up ever-expanding tracts of land, community residents lose access to the forests where they traditionally hunt and gather plants such as ginseng, mushrooms, and ramps. And the destruction of the mountains themselves, objects of great reverence and spiritual attachment for people in West Virginia

[and throughout Central Appalachia] is an indescribable blow to the hearts of folks who have spent their entire lives nestled in these protecting hills.”145 Indeed, despite the vast amount of wealth accumulated through the extraction of coal, the economic vitality of

Central Appalachia has precipitously declined in the years following the beginning of MTR.

Despite the relative progress achieved in the last forty years – 2,300 miles of roads and

800,000 more houses with indoor plumbing – the median poverty rate of Central Appalachia

144 Williams, 213. 145 Facts About Mining in Central Appalachia. Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW). www.crmw.net

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hovers at thirty-one percent, the same as it was forty years ago.146 Further, the ostensible progress of roads and plumbing does not explain why during a four-year period, between

2000 and 2004, of 57 Central Appalachian counties, only one exceeded the national infant mortality rate.147 Nor does such “economic progress” explain why, in Wise County, VA, only 10 to 19.9 percent of its residents age 25 years or older are pursuing a college degree.148

What is more perplexing about this last statistic is that Wise County has a population of 59,

415 (according to a 2009 Census estimate) and two institutions of higher education.149

Indeed, all of this indicates the extent to which the economic and cultural destruction of coal mining, in particular mountaintop removal, yields.

Ecologically, MTR has irrevocably transformed the diverse eco-system of the mountains. A mix of hard and softwood trees, the mountains of Central Appalachia are home to maples, oaks, tulip poplars, sumacs, pussy willows, walnuts, hemlocks, spruce, and numerous flowering trees such as the dogwood.150 Along the forest floor one finds a bed of leaves, soil, and decomposing wood of such fertility that ferns, thistles, wildflowers, sassafras, ramps, goldensal, ginsing, and rhododendron all thrive; the botanist Lucy Braun described the Appalachian forest as a mixed mesophytic community with no dominant species so that we should recognize the depth and fragility of Appalachia’s floral diversity.151

The wild life is equally diverse with black bears, white-tailed deer, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, woodchucks, possums, foxes, rattlesnakes and copperheads, bats, frogs, and

146 Reese, 52. 147 Kathy, Miller. Wealth and Prosperity in Central Appalachia. (New York: Columbia Rural Policy Research Institute, 2010), 14. 148Ibid., 16. 149 2009 United States Census. (Washington, D.C.: United Census Bureau, 2009), http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/48497.html 150 Rebecca Scott. Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 21. 151 Reece, 33.

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numerous species of birds all living under and above the mountain canopy.152 According to

Erik Reece, the Appalachian Mountains exercise a unique type of “agency”:

The forest certainly demonstrates an intelligence, one it has been honing for 290 million years. Its economy is a closed loop that transforms waste into food…A forest…can store twenty times more carbon than cropland or pastures. Its leaf litter slows erosion and adds organic matter to the soil. It dense vegetation stops flooding. Its headwater streams purify creeks below. A contiguous forest ensures species habitat and diversity. A forest, in short, does all the things that the mining and burning of coal cannot – that is its intelligence.153

I will return to this point in the final chapter. For now, I want to simply emphasize the extent to which mountaintop removal fundamentally alters this diverse ecosystem. Soil and rock debris are frequently dumped into creeks and streams, leading not only to excessive sedimentation and loss of vegetation and increased flooding, but the disappearance of the stream itself.154 Shirley Stewart Burns writes, “The loss of intermittent streams…cause the rivers of Appalachia to die.”155 The life cycles of aquatic insects are disrupted by increased frequency of stream flows, in turn increasing the amount of times it takes for leaf cutter insects to break down maple leaves.156 As MTR changes the Appalachian forest from a mesophytic ecology to a grassland habitat, native bird populations are displaced and rodent populations increase, further contributing to the arrested re-forestation so common of reclaimed mine sites.157 Coal sludge and “black water” – water containing the excess chemicals from coal runoff – threaten communities with the constant threat of pollution.

CRMW highlights a particularly devastating accident in the town of Inez, KY in October of

2000. An impoundment ruptured “spilling 250 gallons of slurry and waste-water (more than

152 Scott, 21 153 Reece, 25. 154 Shirley Stewart Burns. Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal Surface Coal Mining on Southern West Virginia Communities, 1970-2004. (Morgantown, WV: University of West Virginia Press, 2007), 121. 155 Ibid., 128. 156 Ibid., 121. 157 Ibid., 131-133.

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20 times the amount of oil lost by the Exxon Valdez in the nation’s worst oil tanker spill…[killing] all aquatic life in more than 70 miles of West Virginia and Kentucky streams.”158 The EPA declared the “accident” the worst environmental disaster in the South

East. It does not strain credulity to consider it an inevitable consequence of a century’s worth of violent exploitation. Throughout the process, a living, active eco-system is displaced and dismantled.

In the pursuit of profit, MTR destroys the mountains. It is destroyed by the innovation of “brutal technology” and an “economic wish” that deprives and abolishes a place’s material specificity.159 And despite industry claims to the contrary, the artificially constructed zone of a reclaimed MTR site in no way resembles the original eco-system prior to its destruction. After the trees have been cut down, the mountain demolished, the rubble deposited into the valleys below, it is impossible to restore the original contour of the landscape and life of the ecology. Images of abandoned MTR sites resemble not so much green pastures or cropland, but the desolate topography of the moon.160 Indeed, according to study published by researchers at Duke University, mountaintop removal lowers the median slope of the topography by nearly 10 degrees and raises the surrounding surface area by 3 meters.161 According to the report, the topographical and ecology impact of MTR is so massive that “the physical effects of mountaintop mining are much more similar to volcanic eruptions, where the entire landscape is fractured, deepened, and decoupled from prior landscape evolution trajectories, effectively resetting the clock on landscape and ecosystem

158 CRMW, Facts About Coal Mining in Appalachia. 159 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 343. 160 Scott Williams. “Alien Landscapes: Christianity and Inevitable Violence.” Wendell Berry and Religion: Heaven’s Earthly Life. (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 2009), 212, 161 https://thinkprogress.org/scientists-have-now-quantified-mountaintop-removal-minings-destruction-of- appalachia-101971e1465c/

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coevolution.”162 The destruction of 2,000 miles of streams, 800,000 acres of forest, and 470 mountain tops, is one of the clearest demonstrations of the abstract spatial ideology of urbanization.163

If pre-industrial Appalachia should be seen as a particular embodiment of lived space/spaces of representation, which are themselves embodied in the spaces of everyday rurality, then it is incumbent upon us to recognize the extent to which urbanization as producing abstractly conceived spaces/representations of space yields an emptying of life’s depth.164 The land had been taken from the mountaineer, the agricultural economy had been significantly dismantled, and the Appalachian people had been “abandoned by the wayside and left to their own resourcefulness.”165 The mountaineer found herself adrift, caught between the memory of a traditional mountain culture and the reality of an urban hegemony.

Perhaps most insidiously, this displacement from the rural homestead was, as I shall argue in the following chapters, an anthropocentric disembodiment.166 However, despite the hegemony of the urbanization and the difficulty of offering a counter narrative, the relatively archaic symbolisms of mountain kinship and homestead democracy “bursts” through the

“codifying signs and signals of industrialization.”167 As Lefebvre argues, in the proverbs, fables, and ancient wisdoms of archaic peasant communities – or as we shall see late 18th century Appalachian culture – the affective expressivity of symbolism are often woven into the everyday communications and gestures of rural life. Indeed, as I shall argue in chapter 3, the imagery and imagination of Appalachian mountain religion offers an invaluable resource for cultivating/returning to a bodily intimacy with the land. By way of conclusion, I want to

162 Ibid. 163 http://www.plunderingappalachia.org/theissue.htm 164 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 372; see also Production of Space, 287. 165 Ibid., 237. 166 Cunningham, xvi. 167 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 594.

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return once more to Rodger Cunningham’s argument, focusing specifically on his discussion of myths and the development of an authentic resistance to exploitation.

VI. Conclusion

Throughout this chapter I have sought to apply my previous argument concerning rural space to the particular historical and cultural context of Appalachia. As an exposition of Appalachian history, I have focused specifically on the process of industrialization, in turn framing it as an element in a broader urbanization of the region. To this end my argument has proceeded in three primary moves. In the first section I expanded and deepened our sense of what constitutes Appalachia’s marginalization. Drawing primarily on the work of

Rodger Cunningham, I discuss how the processes of “peripheralization” and “urbanization” should not be limited to the late 19th century. Rather, the introduction of an industrial economy into Appalachia represents a specific instantiation of an epochal process.

However, similar to my argument concerning the importance and vitality of “rural space” as a critique of capitalism and urbanization, the exploitation of Appalachia by absentee industrialists, local color essayists, and denominational missionaries did not occur in a vacuum. That is, just as my appeal to rural space is in some sense an appeal to history, so likewise Appalachian history contains within it the imagery, symbolism, and narratives that offer us resources to challenge its continued marginalization. Indeed, a significant element of my argument is that Appalachians must embrace the periphery or margins in order to challenge their exploitation.

Accordingly, I discuss two specific elements of pre-industrial Appalachia that represented an alternative and challenge to late 19th century industrialization: 1) importance of “nature” and “ecology” in understanding Appalachian history and 2) the distinct form of agrarianism present in the mountains. My intention here has been to provide the reader with

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concise, detailed discussion of Appalachia as an example of the rural space described in chapter one. To this end, the “rurality” of Appalachia cannot be limited to its agrarian past, but must evoke the “marginality” of its topographical uncivilization. Indeed, the industrialization of the region was in many respects a direct response to the perceived barbarism or primitivism of both the people and land. Efforts to transform the culture and economy of the mountains were thus a rejection of an already existing way of life that brought humanity into intimate contact with nature. Railroads and company towns were two of the clearest ways in which an urban and urbanizing ethos was brought into the region. I discuss these two points in section three, ending with a brief, but substantive account of the industrial apotheosis of mountaintop removal.

If the railroad represents the ingress and the company town signals the concentration of urbanization, mountaintop removal should be considered its logical conclusion. The

American Association’s attempts to “civilize” the Yellow Creek Valley was, as I discussed at the beginning of this chapter, limited by the mountainous terrain and thus “necessitated” its penetration. Mountaintop removal represents the apex of this ideology: why go around or through when you can simply disappear the problem. And so, in blowing up the mountains, coal companies are not only “erasing old residents’ rights to create its wild...spaces,” but they erased the wildness of the space itself.168

And so we return to Cunningham. There is a profoundly ecological scene in the middle of Apples on the Flood. Cunningham is reflecting on the relationship between the mountaineer and the land. In the midst of discussing the false sense of “fatalism” and

“submissiveness” to nature ascribed to Appalachians, noting in particular that it is based on false dichotomy wherein that which is not “dominating” must be submissive, Cunningham

168 Anna Tsing. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2005), 68.

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includes a selection from Robert Coles’ observation of an interaction between a mother, her child, and the land.169 Cunningham offers the following quote from Coles:

From the first day of life many of the Appalachian children I have observed are almost [?] symbolically or ritualistically given over the land. One morning I watched Mrs. Allen come out from the cabin in order, presumably, to enjoy the sun and the warm, clear air of a May day. Her boy had just been breastfed and was in her arms. Suddenly the mother put the child down on the ground, and gently fondled him and move him a bit with her feet, which are not usually covered with shoes or socks. The child did not cry. The mother seemed to have exquisite control over her toes. It all seemed very nice, but I had no idea what Mrs. Allen really had in mind until she leaned over and spoke very gravely to her child: “This is your land, and it’s about time you started getting to know it.170

Coles comments that, as this was a particular mother playing with her child, perhaps “not too much” should be made of this moment. Ostensibly, it was an effort of one woman to incorporate the wider world into her child’s experience, something she had done with each child in a variety of ways.171 And yet, he gradually comes to realize the importance of the land in Mrs. Allen’s self-understanding. He writes, “I could argue that the land around the cabin helped her mind achieve a certain…pattern to what I suppose could be called motherhood. From the first months of the child’s life right on through the years, she as a mother never lets it be forgotten what makes for survival, what has to be respected and cared for and worked over if life is to continue.”172 Indeed, despite their very real economic struggles and material needs, Mrs. Allen’s intimate connection to and affinity for the earth beneath her feet created a deep sense of pride in both herself and her children. She recounts to Coles a moment with another one of her sons:

The other day I was trying to get my oldest boy to help me and he was

169 Cunningham, Apples on the Flood, 94, 95-97. A Harvard trained psychiatrist, Coles’ work with and among Appalachians were recorded in his five-volume study of children Children of Crisis. 170 Ibid. 171 Robert Coles. Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers: Volume II of Children of Crisis. (Boston, MA: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1967), 204. 172 Ibid.

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getting more stubborn by the minute. I wanted him to clean up some of the mess the chickens make, and all he could tell me was that they’ll make the same mess again. I told him to stop making up excuses and help me right this minute, and he did. While we were working, I told him that the only thing we had was the house and the land, and if we didn’t learn to take care of what we have, we’d soon have nothing, and how would he like that. He went along with me, of course. But you have to keep after the child, until he knows what’s important for him to do.173

According to Coles, Mrs. Allen’s account is emblematic of the Appalachian encounter with the land. Through their daily contact with the earth the mountaineer “takes on a particular and characteristic quality…that has to do with learning about one’s roots, one’s place, one’s territory, as a central fact, perhaps the central fact of existence.”174 Like the Celtic peasant’s association between nature and maternal support, the Appalachian receives nourishment and security from the land. Accordingly, Cunningham contends that the idea of “Appalachian distinctiveness” should not be abandoned or denied, but rather defined in terms of the mountain experience as a cultural structure of meaning.175 The land as a space of representation constitutes both the material and symbolic heart of Appalachian identity.

Here we might look at Cunningham’s argument and Coles’ account in broader framework.

Assuredly, as a piece of sociological or ethnographic research, it offers a compelling picture of both an individual mountaineer’s daily life and a regional pattern of contact with the land. To this end, it is a powerful reminder of the vibrancy of pre-industrial Appalachian culture described by Ronald Eller. Additionally, it provides an example of the

“psychological heredity” that connects the “Celtic/Scotch-Irish” experience with the

Appalachian mountaineer, particularly as a counter to the distorted sense of self projected onto the peripheral dweller. These points are crucial, but I believe that the work of Coles and Cunningham contain within it a deeper, and potentially more subversive, significance.

173 Ibid., 207. 174 Ibid., 208. 175 Cunningham, Apples on the Flood, 94.

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What if we consider this specific moment of an encounter with the land as a piece of a deeper, more expansive “rural Appalachian mythology?” What if, in addition to recognizing an agrarian culture and simple way of life, we see Mrs. Allen’s interaction with her child and land as evocative of a peculiar existential sensibility? What if, in telling her boy that the land was his, she was also telling the land that he belonged to it? What if Mrs. Allen embodies a profoundly ecological attitude that subverts the disembodiment and displacement inherent in urbanization?

To be clear myth here refers not to the fantastical nor the false, the individualistic nor the internalized. Rather, as Cunningham notes, “myth in general, and especially mythologems of personhood, are collective and social, and give life to the search for social solutions – indeed express the essential content of what those solutions aim at. Myth is not the enemy of reason, only of instrumental rationality.”176 Myth is an important story that provides a “symbolic expression so as to set up a paradigm and found options in life by which the human situates herself in the world.”177 As a “potentially transexperiential, intersubjective” phenomenon, it offers the individual and community a means by which they can “know [their] own story [and] remember who [they] are.”178 Indeed, while myth and myth making has frequently been employed for reactionary ends, they contain within them the potential for revolutionary practice. In offering the individual and community an alternative language and imagery, the myth enables the embodiment and expression of an

“unutterable future.”179 Moreover, as Lefebvre notes, the mythic narrative is fundamentally connected to the agro-pastoral space of “archaic” or “primitive” peoples.180

176 Ibid., 161. 177 Andre LaCocque. The Trial of Innocence: Adam, Eve, and the Yahwist. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 13. 178 Cunningham, Apples on the Flood, 160, 147. 179 Roland Boer. In the Vale of Tears: On Marxism and Theology V. (Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), 92. 180 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 193.

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For the Appalachian therefore, the attraction of the mythic narrative lies in its ability to evoke the materialist imagery or concrete symbolism of a forgotten and evacuated rurality.

Forgetting the experiences of Mrs. Allen, and the tradition she embodies, produces the kind acquiescence to the urban ideology imposed on the region by men like Arthur Alexander and

George Carter. Consequently, as Cunningham writes,

What is necessary to overcome ‘dreaminess” is not rationalistic denial (which merely takes for granted the terms of the dichotomy [between reason and myth], but reintegration…The myth is not about the value of dreaming in itself but about the hidden wellsprings of critical consciousness and creative action – about the necessity of knowing who, and what, and that one is, so that one may come to consciousness of one’s own interest and develop plans of action to achieve it…All action in the world comes forth from the wellspring of the creative. The embodiment of the creative has been banished to his seacave, in the realm of possibility…The myth, to be sure, does not more than point to this, for the means of realization lied beyond the vision-quest in the world which is returned to but which appears transfigured…Not in some imagined future, for that would be to defeat the purport of the myth…but rather in the present life of everyone who is in touch with those currents.181

The mythic narratives of Appalachian rurality assuredly draw us into an altogether different sense of our existence as inhabitants of a periphery. Indeed, as I argued in the previous chapter, while one’s location along the margins or fringes of “civilized society” certainly open an individual to exploitation and oppression, they also provide an alternative space within which to critique and subvert that domination. Put otherwise, the “Appalachian demand for existence” is fundamentally rooted in the concrete symbolism or material imagery of its rural spatiality. Indeed, as the example of Mrs. Allen indicates, the “who” of our “critical consciousness” need not, and should not, be limited to the “human.” The child’s contact with the earth is an encounter of difference which reveals that “our humanity is incomplete until we have established our kinship…with the larger natural world and so

181 Cunningham, Apples on the Flood, 170-171.

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satisfied our longing to feel at home in or at peace with the cosmos as a whole.”182 Or as

Cunningham writes in the epigraph above, the mountaineer’s “identity is not located inside [her] skin…[but rather] in the world with which [she] shares [her] being.”183 In this “expanded ontology” we see an opening for a theology of creaturely flesh.184

182 Andy Fisher. Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), 64, 122. 183 Cunningham, Apples on the Flood, 94. 184 Fisher, 122.

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CHAPTER THREE

ALONG THE VEGETAL MARGINS: EDNA ALEXANDER, URBAN

EVANGELIZATION, AND THE ELEMENTAL IMAGINATION OF

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN RELIGION

“As for imagination, it knows how to use the past in order to invent the future. It projects what it has acquired through experience towards the future, and frequently starts from something extremely archaic to represent the farthest realms of the impossible/possible.” - Henri Lefebvre

“Am I not…leaves and vegetable mould myself?” - Henry David Thoreau

I. Vignette – Eastern Kentucky, Mid-Twentieth Century1

Born and raised in Eastern Kentucky’s mountains, Edna Alexander lives in a cabin near her childhood home along the Jackson-Madison County border where she farms the land with her husband, raising livestock and growing crops, curing their own meat and making their own lye soap. The cabin is devoid of electricity, running water, and a telephone and the Alexander’s do not have a mailing address or social security numbers. And while they sell the small amount of tobacco they harvest, they genuinely live off the proverbial

1 The following is adapted from Deborah Vansau McCauley Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). This text was published in 1995 and McCauley mentions at one point that Alexander was in her “early sixties.” Unsure of whether or not she is still alive, I have chosen to use the present tense in writing about Alexander.

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“grid.”1 They are, in many ways, an embodiment of a forgotten way of life, for while there have been and continue to be individuals and families who live as subsistence farmers, particularly in non-industrial regions across the globe, the Alexander’s, particularly Edna, are unique for two reasons.

One, the Alexander’s lifestyle is peculiar not only for its content but for its temporality as well. Certainly the content is important, but what makes this particular example unique is that the Alexander’s were not living in the 18th or 19th, but rather the 20th century; at the time when McCauley wrote and published Appalachian Mountain Religion in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Sister Edna was in “her early sixties.”2 Of course the Alexander’s are not the only examples of a subsistence lifestyle in the 20th century, particularly when we expand our perspective beyond American borders. And yet their presence in Appalachia does mark them as a unique reminder of its past.

Two, and far more importantly, are the ways in which Edna Alexander explains the motivation and reason for her agrarian simplicity. According to McCauley, “Sister Edna consciously and emphatically equates simply living with God’s will for her and her family.

She believes that such a lifestyle is God’s manifest will, not for all people but for most, if they would but listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Close ties to the earth open wide channels to God.”3 That Alexander connects her subsistence lifestyle to a religious sensibility is of course important, particularly as an example of the cultural and economic dimensions of Appalachian mountain religion. And yet, for the present purposes, this is not the most important aspect of Edna Alexander’s religiosity.

1 Ibid., 165. 2 Ibid., 62. 3 Ibid., 166.

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Edna Alexander once had a vision about the seemingly mundane particularities of her everyday dress, wherein she saw “a woman…dressed in clothes like I had never seen before…her hat and her clothes…the color of rotten grass and leaves. Not like fresh dead ones, but darker.”4 According to a typed testimony that she photocopied and made available as an explanation for those questioning her appearance, Alexander believed the woman to be a prophetess – “the pattern and the way” – and determined that she should conform her life to this model.5 According to her statement, Sister Edna did not immediately dye her clothes brown; rather she entered into an intense and deliberate period of prayerful discernment.

During this three-year period, she continued to experience the vision until one day while she

“was deep in the Spirit the Lord said to dip my clothes in brown dye. So I did.”6 Alexander would eventually have two more similar visions in which she saw both Elijah and Jesus dressed in dirt-brown cloth. In her statement, Sister Edna offers little in the way of systematic explanation or interpretation of her vision, but we should not ignore and/or dismiss the rich theological imagery evoked in this vision, particularly as it serves as a resource for understanding the possibilities for a distinctively Appalachian theological sensibility. As I will argue in this chapter, Edna Alexander’s vision is a potent example of what made (and perhaps can make) Appalachian mountain religion both a problematic to and resource to challenge the homogeneous and abstract theology of 19th-century denominational Christianity.

This chapter marks a shift in perspective. Chapter one appropriated Henri

Lefebvre’s heterodox Marxism, specifically his arguments concerning the production of space and urbanization to articulate a philosophical argument for rural space. I argued that

4 Ibid., 164. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.

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rural spaces offer a critical location within which to resist and/or subvert capitalist urbanization. In chapter two, I turned to Appalachia and provided a detailed examination of how the process of industrial resource extraction represents one of the key processes of urbanization in the region. While primarily descriptive and expository, I concluded that chapter with an appeal to what I described as a kind “ecological becoming of Appalachia.”

The previous chapters have therefore provided the necessary spatial context within which to make the present constructive move. Following the epigraph from Wendell Berry at the beginning of chapter one, I believe that the constructive theology of creaturely flesh that I make in the following chapters can only be pursued after establishing the importance and centrality of the particular space(s) in which such a theology emerges and dwells. In other words, and as I detail below, the religious/theological sensibility in Appalachia cannot be understood apart from the region’s topographical particularity.

I expand on this argument by focusing on two primary points: 1) the specific religious and theological tradition of Appalachian mountain religion and 2) the role of the imagination and its ability to, as Lefebvre asserts in the above epigraph, “invent the future.”

This turn overlaps with my turn to the rural, for both have, within the overarching framework of western thought, been frequently relegated to the margins. Indeed, the marginalization of Appalachia’s rural culture occurred simultaneously with the denigration of a distinctively place-based, nature-oriented religiosity. Consequently, if, as I have argued, rural space lends itself to what Lefebvre calls “spaces of representation” – spaces of symbolism and lived experience – then the imagination becomes an invaluable resource to appropriate certain elements of Appalachian mountain religion, a practice that would help us

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not only know, but live, otherwise.7 This chapter intentionally does not abandon a historical focus in favor of an analytical philosophical or systematic theological discourse. Rather, we enter a subaltern historical stream, so as to perhaps once again look upon a pile of dead leaves and see the self and its connection to a particular place.

Due to both historical circumstances and methodological tendencies, most of the scholarship on Appalachian religion focuses primarily on ethnographic and/or historical description. Indeed, I want to pause, briefly, and explain my selection of these sources.

While a number of Appalachian colleges and universities contain valuable archival sources for the study and analysis of Appalachian history, I have chosen to focus primarily on the secondary historical texts which describe the character and development of Appalachian religion. Moreover, within these sources, I emphasize a particular kind of example: that which illuminates the intersection between religious sensibility and environmental topography. Here, I must note a certain lamentation regarding the language and symbolism of these sources. Due both to the impact that urbanization (in the form denominational home missionaries) had on late 19th century Appalachian religion and the emphasis on orality within this tradition, there is an absence of explicitly systematic theological to retrieve.

Regarding the former, and I will discuss this in more detail below, the work of denominational home missionaries must be seen as successful, particularly to the extent that they were able to effectively incorporate Appalachian Christians into the theological logic and institutional structures of their ‘metropolitan based’ denominations. That is, we do not have substantial access to the primary sources of late 19th century religion in large part because these traditions have, if not completely, disappeared and did not leave extensive textual traces.

7 Anthony Godzieba, “Knowing Differently: Incarnation, Imagination, and the Body.” Louvain Studies 32, no. 4 (2007), 361.

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Regarding the latter point, it is important to note the absence of systematic theological reflection developing within Appalachia. Assuredly, the individuals and communities examined below express their beliefs and describe their practices in connection to Christianity’s scriptural grammar and in my re-imagining of the religious tradition I do not seek to dismiss or reject this point. Rather, the dearth of explicit theological reflection provides an opening to engage in a creative interpretation of specific aspects of Appalachian

Christianity. The specific examples that I emphasize in this chapter, whether explicitly religious or not, are chosen because the offer an opportunity to articulate a specifically

“spatial” analysis. Thus for example, I begin and conclude this chapter with Edna Alexander precisely because her religious vision is indelibly grounded in an intertwining of Appalachia’s particular religious (cultural) and material (topographical) context. Assuredly, the her vision is explicitly theological – the figures of Elijah and Jesus are central – but its distinctiveness lies in the depth to which it not only associates them, but Alexander herself, with the particularly topographical space and creatures of Appalachia. It is this connection that has been lost in the process of urbanization and denominalization and serves as the focus of my own constructive theology. In choosing to emphasize these particular features of

Alexander’s vision and subsequent explanation, I do not seek to disregard her explicitly

Christian beliefs, but rather reveal their connection to the spatial rurality of Appalachia. To this end, I propose an alternative perspective – what I will describe below as an “elemental imagining” – that might allow us to not only recognize such connections, but employ them for a constructive theology of creaturely flesh.

The secondary sources that I draw on primarily are Deborah Vansau McCauley’s

Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History and Loyal Jones’ Faith and Meaning in the Southern

Uplands, both of which offer a rich description of religious belief and practice in Appalachia,

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particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century. 8 More specifically, both provide an account of the Appalachian religious history that emphasizes the conflict and tension between mainline denominational Christianity and the region. Catherine Albanese’s survey of American religious traditions, in which she sites Appalachian religion as a paradigmatic example of a regional religion, and Richard Humphrey’s analysis of Appalachian religion as a form of cultural adaptation to the region’s environmental topography, examine the intersection between religious identity and environment or landscape.9

Exceptions to this trend are the two pastoral letters – This Land Is Home to Me and At

Home in the Web of Life – offered by the Catholic Bishops of Appalachia.10 As a unique combination of theological reflection, scriptural exegesis, liturgical poetry, and cultural commentary, these documents come closest to providing a theological argument from and about Appalachia that root the experiences and history of Appalachia in the biblical narrative and Catholic tradition. Concluding with a “process of dialogue,” the letters call upon the

Catholic Church to listen to the people, critically engage scientific inquiry, and open itself to the movement of the Spirit.11 And yet, even this example, rich and dynamic in its engagement with the region’s history, does not provide a constructive theological argument and is somewhat limited by its pastoral form.

Despite the limitations of these sources, they are important for understanding the place of religion in Appalachia and provide the historical context for my argument. As we will see, the historical conflict between “popular” mountain religious traditions and metropolitan missionaries that characterized the evolution and shape of religion in

8 Loyal Jones, Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). 9 Catherine Albanese, America: Religion and Religions. (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 1981); Richard Humphrey, “Religion and Place in Southern Appalachia” in Cultural Adaptation to Mountain Environments, ed. Patricia Beaver and Burton Purrington. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). 10 Catholic Bishops of Appalachia, This Land Is Home to Me. (Martin: Catholic Committee of Appalachia, 1975); Catholic Bishops of Appalachia, At Home in the Web of Life. (Martin: Catholic Committee of Appalachia, 1995). 11 Ibid.

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Appalachia is a key factor in many local people’s suspicion of systematic/intellectual theology. Predominantly an oral, experiential, and non-rational religious sensibility, inhabitants of the region were suspicious of the dogmatic orthodoxy represented by the numerous home mission groups entering the region since the late 19th-century in large part because the missionaries insisted that “Appalachian Christianity” was not really Christian. In this respect, the perceived anti-intellectualism and absence of systematic theology emerging from the region is partially explained by this historical conflict. As a constructive project, my argument resists this assumed incommensurability. That 19th-century Appalachian Christians were victims of economic and cultural conquest is not in dispute, rather my contention rests on the assumption that the religious identity articulated during this period is somehow wholly incompatible with an academic argument. The history presented in McCauley’s narrative offers a picture of Appalachian religion that stands in stark contrast to the ill- informed assumptions and distorted representations produced by 19th century denominational missionaries. Moreover, re-imagining of this theological imagination will enable us to recover and expand on some of the lost and forgotten symbols and practices of

Appalachia’s religious past, a task I believe will help us sow the seeds for a more environmentally oriented Appalachian theology.

The following chapter is divided into three primary sections. Section one provides a detailed discussion of religion in Appalachia during the nineteenth century. As we saw in the previous chapter, the 19th-century – particularly the decades following the Civil War – was one of the most transformative periods in the region’s history. With the influx of outside capital, the growing power of absentee corporate ownership of land, the ascendancy of mechanical technology, and the concomitant shift from a predominantly agrarian to industrial economy, the culture of Appalachia changed dramatically, and to a certain extent,

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irrevocably. In the previous chapter, I described this shift in explicitly spatial terms, arguing that it was a process of urbanization, and focused on its economic and cultural effects.

Here, I noted the shift away from a predominantly “everyday rurality” to an increasingly urban(ized) space, wherein the introduction of an industrial economy in the region enticed/forced people off their farms and placed them in a social space organized according to the ethos of commodity exchange. Through the imposition of a “new industrial humanist ideology,” financial metropoles sought to dismantle and erase any vestige of Appalachia’s agrarian past. An important part of this past was a distinctive religious sensibility, a style of everyday religious imagination and praxis that permeated the mountain ridges and hollers and its inhabitants. The first section of this chapter offers a detailed exposition on

“Appalachian mountain religion.” Focusing primarily on the work of Deborah Vansau

McCauley, I describe the particular beliefs and practices that characterized this religious tradition, specifically as they are intertwined with the region’s physical topography.

Section two discusses ways in which this religious tradition was represented, and subsequently distorted, by two central figures of late-19th century metropolitan culture: local color essayists and denominational home missionaries. Appropriating the work of cultural historian Henry Shapiro, I argue that the disappearance of “Appalachian mountain religion” over the past century was a direct result of the imposition of an “urbanized” theological ethos. Consequently, the absence of a robust religious and theological criticism of the ecological devastation occurring throughout Appalachia must be seen within the context of the denominational home missionaries “religious colonization.” As we will see, the urbanization of Appalachia not only changed the economic and cultural patterns of

Appalachian life, it similarly dis-enchanted the religious (and as I will argue) theological imagination of the region.

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The final section focuses on the imagination and the constructive re-imagining of

Appalachia’s religious history. I return to the Henri Lefebvre, specifically his association of poiesis and the imagination and his contention that that the former offers a critical subversion of abstract thought and exposes the self to that part of existence which evades systematic explanation. Here the “imagination” is that type of practice that is not simply (or at least not primarily) concerned with fanciful notions of incredible possibilities, but rather is a thing of responsibility for the past, the self, and the other. Perhaps more importantly, as an act of responsibility, the imagination can be one of the most powerful tools to challenge and dismantle the power of urbanthropocentrism. However, while Lefebvre’s discussion of the imagination offers an incisive rebuke to intellectual abstraction, he retains an emphasis on the human subject that in many ways repeats the limits of anthropocentrism. For while his argument for a “poetic imagination” draws us into greater intimacy with alterity, it likewise limits our understanding of such otherness to humanity. Consequently we must insist on an altogether deeper sense of otherness, one that decenters human subjectivity and draws us towards that which is even more unlike the self. To this end, I supplement his argument with John Sallis’ appeal to an “elemental imagination,” wherein we might root the imagination in not only the body but in nature and the land.

In this section, we return once more Edna Alexander and her vision of leafy entanglement. The imagery of her vision – “the color of rotten grass and leaves”, “clothes in brown dye”, “Elijah and Jesus dressed in dirt-brown cloth” – is not just an expression of

Christianity, but the holler within which she dwells and of an environment of “the disruptive…the eruptive, heterogeneous microclimates, inhumanly vast or tiny scales of being and time, the mixed spaces where the separation of nature and culture are impossible

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to maintain.”12 While Edna Alexander clearly connects her mystical vision of the prophetess dressed in brown to the figures of Christ and Elijah – and thus to the theological language of

Christian doctrine – she also understands and explains this vision through an encounter with a pile of dead leaves. Accordingly, if the vision of Christ and Elijah provide a confirmation or support for her decision to clothe herself in brown, the pile of dead leaves draws her (and us) towards the environment/land. Alexander is therefore emphasized precisely because she explicitly situates and explains her own Christian religious imagination in reference to vegetal life. Here we begin the process of re-imagining Appalachian religion in a more eco-critical frame, whereby the pile of dead leaves that inhabits Alexander’s vision is emphasized. For while she appears to see the pile of leaves as a natural reference point to the color of her dress – “I am so much the color of the leaves” – we might approach the vision from a slightly different perspective, one that that would not only acknowledge the importance of the color, but the leaf itself.13

Doing so would push our theological reflection to the margins of systematic thought and dogmatic language. This is not necessarily a rejection of traditional Christian concepts and imagery, but rather an expansion of what might count as theological. More importantly,

I contend that it is necessary to emphasize these “spatial” elements so as to critique and construct an alternative to the spatial transformation instantiated by urbanization; indeed, the elision of Appalachia’s particular expressions of Christianity by denominational missionaries necessitates such an approach.

12 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. “Introduction: Ecology’s Rainbow” in Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond the Green, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), xvi. 13 McCauley, 164.

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II. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A Religious Sensibility of Mountaineers and

Mountains

This section will analyze how historians and scholars have approached the connection between Appalachia’s unique environmental topography and its religious traditions. In offering a detailed account of how the geographical and cultural particularity of Appalachia as a place of mountains is reflected in its religious values and practices, I seek to establish the theological context that both shapes and is embodied by Edna Alexander.

Such an account is critical in not only grasping the distinctive religious beliefs and practices of Appalachian mountain religion, but equally so in re-imagining them in a more ecological frame.

While I draw on a number of scholars, the primary resource for this section is

McCauley’s Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History. A sweeping account of Appalachian

Christianity, McCauley’s narrative focuses on the conflict that emerged between

Appalachians and denominational home missionaries in the late 19th century. Of particular significance is her rejection of traditional interpretations that view Appalachian religion as a compensatory response or reaction to regional poverty or moral weakness. McCauley’s narrative is thus indicative of a broader trend within Appalachian Studies that seeks to deconstruct a “culture of poverty” sociological model in favor of a historical narrative that account for the exploitative impact that capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization have had on the region’s land and people.

Accordingly, she sees Appalachian religion as a fundamentally creative expression of

“the power of self-definition for individuals within their church communities, as well as for individual church communities and the church traditions of which they are a part, [which] directly contradicts interpretations of Appalachian mountain religion rooted in functionalist

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notions of compensation for alienation and powerless.”14 As a distinctive ethos that permeated Appalachian culture, mountain religion “shifts the locus of power in religious self-definition directly into the hands of mountain people themselves, creating a status order that embodies a different system of values (and moral obligations) and a different worldview from that of the nation’s dominant religious culture and its prevailing power structure.”15

Reading Appalachian mountain religion as a distinctive style of life (defined here as the intertwining between identity and action) that subverts the pretense towards religious hegemony that characterized the home missions movement, the encounter between

Appalachians and home missionaries was fundamentally about the power of mainstream

American Protestantism to exert its authority over Appalachians.16

While Appalachian religion/Christianity is diverse, with varying articulations of faith and practices, there are two elements that differentiate it from other religious traditions: the impact of the place and the centrality of experience. Critical here is the role that pneumatology has in Appalachian religion, such that the presence and action of the Holy

Spirit is fundamental to this distinctive religiosity and provides an essential framework for its theology. As Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen succinctly argues, for Pentecostal or Holiness traditions

14 Ibid., 206. 15 Ibid., 211. McCauley’s analysis of Appalachian mountain religion as a “status order” draws substantially on J. Stephen Kroll-Smith’s sociological analysis of “revival religion” as a response to authority and status in colonial Virginia. Focusing specifically on the Baptist churches of the 18th-century, Kroll-Smith contends that the revivalist dimensions of Baptist theology and ecclesiology were fundamentally rooted in the effort of a particular group of people to achieve and assert agency in their creation of a distinctive style of life (status movement). In opposition to the power and authority enjoyed due to the gentry’s hereditary nobility, 18th- century Baptists re-located religious meaning and value away from an institution and towards personal conversion and moral conduct. Accordingly, McCauley contends that, “As they gained self-sufficiency through ability rather than privilege, the eighteenth-century Virginia middle class also wanted control over social definitions of who they were, a social control maintained by the gentry despite economic shifts. Religion was a key component in self-definition. Whoever controlled religion, controlled self-definition in its most potent symbolic form (207-208).” Within the broader context of her argument, McCauley’s appeal to Kroll-Smith’s work and the narrative of 18th-century Baptists provides a heuristic model for discussing the creative power of Appalachian mountain religion. 16 Ibid.,, 206-207, 204-205, 208. See also Shapiro, 118, 135.

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“experience came first; theology followed.”17 “Experience” is fundamental to Appalachian mountain religion because it is the “medium” through which God’s living presence is manifest. Accordingly, opening oneself to the free movement of the Holy Spirit, an individual embraces a life of grace and forgiveness, of the vulnerability and powerlessness of the Incarnation.18

Equally important though, and distinguishing Appalachian mountain religion from other pneumatological traditions is the importance of topography. While the personal and communal experience(s) of the Holy Spirit is essential for understanding the theological values and practices that define Appalachian Christianity, this pneumatology is consonant with what Mark Wallace terms “green pneumatology” – a “model that understands the Spirit not as divine intellect, nor the principle of consciousness, but as a healing and subversive life- form – as water, light, dove, mother, fire, breath, and wind – on the basis of different biblical figurations of the Spirit in nature.”19 Intertwined in the development of a uniquely pneumatological religious sensibility, the mountain topography and experience are thus integral to Appalachian mountain religion. McCauley writes,

The two characteristics that differentiate this type of region [Appalachia] from others are the great variety of ways in which it manifests itself on the landscape (e.g., house type, religion, dialect, dietary preferences) and the self- consciousness on part of the participants. Cultural “landscape” and individuals’

17 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission. (Lanham: University Press of America, 2002), 6. Kärkkäinen’s text is a valuable contribution in understanding the distinctiveness of pneumatology as it relates to Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism: “When Pentecostalism was birthed it existed on the fringes of the society and ecclesial spectrum. Pentecostals were both rejected and eschewed by those who had power. In order to improve their status, Pentecostals sought for more respected colleagues in society. Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism were natural friends although the courtship was not self-evident. All Fundamentalists and most Evangelicals looked with suspicion at Pentecostals but they were wise enough not to turn Pentecostals down. Soon it became clear that the courtship was beneficial to both. To Fundamentalists and Evangelicals it gave more influence because of rapidly growing number of Pentecostals, and for Pentecostals it meant entrance to a more respected company (6-7).” 18 Rowan Williams. On Christian Theology. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 124. 19 Mark I. Wallace. “Earth God: Cultivating the Spirit in an Ecocidal Culture” in The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Graham Ward. (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 213.

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cultural “self-consciousness” combine with geography to create the identity and character of Appalachian religion as a regional religious tradition.20

Topography and experience are therefore “the key unlocking the motivating power of mountain religion as a distinctive style of life [and] the locus was the conversion experience, both personal, especially within a communal context, and as a communal and collective event.” 21 In discussing these two elements, I have divided this section into two parts. In the first, I focus on the impact of place, here understood in terms of both the land/environment and specific community structures. The second part explains the particular values and practices that characterize Appalachian religion, specifically the importance of humility and grace. Here I discuss in particular the role of dreams or visions as expressions of a distinct kind of Appalachian mysticism and the importance of specific practices – footwashing, oral preaching – as indicative of the religion’s experiential character. Note that while I have separated these elements they are inherently intertwined and mutually constitutive.

A. Multiplicity of Equals: Place and Community

Some interpretations of Appalachian mountain religion emphasize, justifiably we must note, its spiritualist and “other-worldly” dimensions. The emphasis on the heart and spirit can be read as privileging the inner experience of the believer and transcendence of material reality. Consequently, such religious spiritualism, as a response to denominational efforts, has been considered the font of political quietism or conservatism. Appalachian

Studies scholar Helen Lewis writes,

The church resisted the social consciousness, which was being promoted by outside religions institutions; therefore, the church became more fundamental and rigid in doctrine. It saw the establishment churches as supporting a system, political and economic, which was destroying a way of life. Its best defense was to become less worldly…But while helping to preserve certain aspects of indigenous culture, the native church refused to

20 McCauley 3; emphasis added. 21 Ibid., 210, 212.

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become involved in politics or to be critical of the economic exploitation of the area; this fact work against change in the status quo.22

Here, the perceived rejection of the world and its ancillary political quiescence are considered characteristic of the region’s religious ethos. Of course this was true of many churches and individuals throughout the region, particularly with regards the religious communities in the company towns and coal camps; John Gaventa notes that company churches were essential in facilitating individual and collective values that perpetuated with the interests of the industrialists and often promoted a fundamentalist, other worldly religious sensibility.23

And yet, despite the strong sense of detachment or even disembodiment prevalent in many Appalachian churches, there is an equally pervasive religious materialism woven throughout mountain religion. By “materialism” I refer primarily what Manuel Vasquez describes as non-reductive materialism in which religion is “the open-ended product of the discursive and nondiscursive practices of embodied individuals.”24 Certainly, the “matter” of

Appalachia is evident in its distinctive religious practices: oral preaching, immersive baptism, hymn lining, love feasts and foot washing; the latter for example is a symbolic embodiment of humility and expression of the egalitarian ethos that characterized the tradition. More importantly, such practices point to the kinetic tangibility, the bodily and communal tactility of those “social actions that have a profound power to form us as persons.”25 Indeed, as we will see in the following section the accusation of religious and political quietism is

22 Helen Lewis, Sue Kobk, Linda Johnson. “Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia” in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, ed. Helen Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins. (Boone: The Appalachian Consortium Press, 1979), 135. 23 John Gaventa. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 92. 24 Manuel Vasquez, More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 8. 25 Vince Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005), 22.

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significantly dependent on an urbane or metropolitan perspective, wherein religious vibrancy or practice and political engagement are tied to a specific ideology and ethos.26 In its own unique material practices, Appalachian mountain religion became a religious sensibility that was “at once more prosaic and more dramatic than that of the speculative intellect” that characterized the home missionaries.27

However, while the materiality of religious practices are essential in understanding

Appalachian mountain religion, the “topographical matter” of the region is perhaps most important:

The “materialism” of Appalachian mountain religion is encountered most clearly in its topographical eponym. The tradition’s distinctive character is directly attributable to its environmental context. Dispersed, although not isolated, along the ridges, hollers and valleys of the mountains, individuals and communities were free to create a unique religious culture that was “in” and “of” the region.28

The ecstatic experiences of the Spirit, the prophetic witnesses of the plain folk camp meeting, and the mystical moments that connected the sacred and profane are unintelligible apart from the concrete environmental context within which they occur. The mountains are constitutive of the region’s theological character and “sacredness” as a religious attribute

26 Dwight Billings. ‘Religion as Opposition: A Gramscian Analysis.’ American Journal of Sociology. 96:1 (1991). In his Gramscian reading of Appalachian religion, Billings notes that in many areas, Appalachian miners actively abandoned and resisted company churches, He writes, “Utilizing tactics that resembled those of the radicalized peasants and artisans known as ‘Ranters’ in the English social revolution, miners disrupted services in the company churches and discredited company pastors…More important, however, miner-ministers arose from within the ranks of militant miners to conduct alternative religious services at the beginning and end of work shifts, at picket lines, and at clandestine meetings in the tent colonies that housed evicted minders. Their authority was rooted in frontier religious traditions that recognized the legitimate role of lay ministers. Outside official channels, and along with other independent ministers, these miner-ministers helped imbue the miners’ struggle…with religious legitimacy…The miner-ministers and other clergy, functioning as the ‘organic intellectuals’ about which Gramsci theorized, waged a long-term ‘war of position’ by helping create an oppositional religious culture in Appalachia that influence many working miners…For miners raised in this religious culture, the acceptance of a politicized theology that viewed salvation as being collective as well as individual, material as well as spiritual, was truly a conversion experience (17, 18, 19).” 27 Henri Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 100. 28 McCauley, 5.

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cannot be detached from geography or topography.29 They are not simply the spatial location in which the small churches and meetinghouses stand erect. Nor are they an unfortunate genetic defect, as if being born in the region were a curse, religious or otherwise, or a natural barrier that must be demolished in order for the progressive culture of

“mainstream Protestantism” to exert its benevolent influence. They are what make

Appalachian mountain religion.

According to McCauley it is imperative to distinguish “those church traditions that are in the Appalachian region but not largely of it, mostly the denominations of America

Protestantism, and those church traditions that exist predominantly – or almost exclusively – in the region and are very special to it.”30 Appalachian mountain religion is unique (and to a large extent definitive) because it is a religion of people living in the mountains. As a kind of theo-topographical metonym, Appalachian mountain religion is a religious embodiment of the unique relationship(s) between the land and people. The distinct religious culture that differentiates the area from the rest of the United States is only intelligible if one accounts for the topographical peculiarity of the region.

Accordingly, we cannot conflate Appalachian mountain religion with the broader cultural phenomenon of Southern religion. McCauley acknowledges certain similarities between the regions but asserts that the geographical distinctions point more to differentiation than unity. The popular associations of “southern denominationalism” and

“religious evangelical fundamentalism” that characterize much of Southern Protestantism are not accurate descriptions of Appalachian mountain religious traditions and for many mountain Christians, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell are not authorities on what it means to

29 Richard Humphrey. “Religion and Place in Southern Appalachia” in Cultural Adaptation to Mountain Environments, ed. Patricia Beaver and Burton Purrington. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984), 124. 30 McCauley, 1.

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be Christian. She also criticizes the tendency among some to conflate the Appalachian region of West Virginia with the buckle on the Protestant Bible belt.31 Equating

“Appalachia” with the “American south” reveals a predominantly external perspective and represents a compulsion to categorize and compartmentalize what many consider to be a

“foreign land.”32

While McCauley focuses on the religious/political conflict that shaped Appalachian mountain religion, she is not the only scholar to examine Appalachian religion through the lens of regionalism. For some it is important to recognize the shared religious values and traditions between Appalachia and the broader Southern United States. Emphasizing the significant impact that religion has on southern culture, Bill Leonard writes, “Religious life was, and to some extent remains, a primary source of identity for many southern and

Appalachian people. It provided a place, a source, of security in the face of poverty, disease, and the many unpredictable elements of life.”33 In both the “South” and “Appalachia”, religion serves a constitutive role in personal and communal identity. Participation in religious practices, an assent to traditional Christian beliefs, and a relatively conservative social stance are considered defining features of Southern and Appalachian religious life.

And yet, it must be remembered that even these commonalities are colored by the

31 Ibid., 467. 32 A brief note concerning historiography and methodology: While McCauley’s text rightfully occupies a central importance in the field of Appalachian Studies, there are debates concerning the accuracy of her description, particularly as it relates to her rather dualistic framework. Specifically among religious and cultural historians, there are questions concerning the validity of McCauley’s binary between “mainstream Protestant denominationalism” and “Appalachian mountain religion.” Certainly there is little dispute regarding the existence of distinctive religious practices within the region, yet questions abound as to whether these practices establish an identifiably Appalachian religious culture. Methodologically, these questions concern the tension in how a particular scholar defines “Appalachia.” The issue at hand concerns McCauley’s claim that Appalachian mountain religion cannot be conflated with the broader religious culture(s) of southern evangelicalism and fundamentalism. While she acknowledges certain similarities between the regions, she contends that the geographical/topographical distinctions point more to differentiation than unity. For McCauley, viewing Appalachia as a subset of southern Protestantism is indicative of the extent to which the denominational homogeneity of the late 19th-century continues to affect our understanding of religion in Appalachia. 33 Bill Leonard. “Introduction” in Christianity in Appalachia: Profiles in Religious Pluralism ed. Bill Leonard. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), xix.

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“peculiarity of Appalachia.” That is, while numerous historians see Appalachia as “part” of the south, it is simultaneously treated as an outlier, something “other” than what is considered the traditional south.

For example, in her historical-sociological analysis of religion in America, Catherine

Albanese employs “Southern Appalachia religion” as paradigmatic of a “regional religion” in the United States. A significant component of her argument is the treatment of Appalachian mountain Christianity, which she discusses within the frame of “ordinary” and

“extraordinary” religion. According to Albanese, regional religion is most accurately understood as a religio-cultural identity

shaped by people who live together in a certain geographical area. It is born of natural geography, past and present human history, and of the interaction of the two. In such regionalism, the common landscape becomes not just an external condition but also an internal influence, transforming the way people view both ultimate and everyday reality. In other words, religion in some measure becomes a function of the spatial location of people and the history of that spatial location together.34

Albanese’s definition parallels McCauley’s approach and provides a valuable lens to understanding Appalachian religion. She presents the interaction between human agency or action and topography as one of reciprocation, rather than mutual antagonism. Further, she offers a picture of “regionalism” that accounts for the physically distinctive features of a region. As such, she demonstrates an awareness of how the geographical features of a region – whether or not there are mountains or prairies, urban or rural landscapes – affects the development of religion. Indeed, Albanese contends that the mountains in Appalachia contribute to the development of a unique form of Christianity because they provide a natural “inside” against a broader cultural backdrop.35

34 Albanese, 325. 35 Ibid. While Albanese focuses on the distinctive “region” of Appalachia, she acknowledges that they (regions) are everywhere. Here she draws attention to the Hispanic Southwest, the variety of Native American

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The physical features of the region created a distinct character in the people and the mountaineer viewed his/her natural landscape as sanctuary and source of spiritual power.36

She writes, “People grew up with a sense that they belonged to the mountains, even more to their particular mountain hollow with its creek bed and its wall rising like boundaries between sacred and profane worlds…the relationship of mountain people to their landscape was close. In an expression of the culture of contraction, the hills had become necessary in a spiritual and emotional sense to their survival.”37

Consequently, when Hapner Mullins, an elder in the Old Regular Baptist Church defines salvation and conversion as “a deep reaching and transforming experience…[which] alone is possible in the Spirit, might, and power of God,” it is important to remember the physical place within which this occurs.38 The practice of baptism in running waters as “the point of entry into mountain people’s earthly pilgrimage of salvation” is indicative of the extent to which the region’s theology is bound, both materially and symbolically, to the land.39 Here, a creek or stream is fundamental to the “internal” experience of baptism as a beginning of the salvific experience of a new life, such that one does not enter into a different understanding and experience of life apart from the topographical features of place.

Indeed, Loyal Jones offers the following illuminating anecdote regarding the importance of immersive baptism in “natural waters.” An Old-Time Baptist preacher was, from the perspective of his congregation, incessantly preaching the necessity of baptism by immersion as necessary for salvation. They requested he preach on something else and “the

reservations, immigrant enclaves of urban centers. She focuses on Appalachia because it provides a dramatic picture of “regional religion,” wherein the distinctive topography contributes to its striking physical separation and isolation from the rest of the country. In short, Appalachia represents a regional religion because of the Appalachian Mountains. 36 Ibid., 331. 37 Ibid. 38 Jones, 139. 39 McCauley, 87.

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preacher said he would preach in the old tradition of letting the Bible fall open wherever it would, and take the first passage his eye lighted on as evidence that the Lord wanted him to preach on that text.”40 Jones writes,

So the next Sunday, he let the Bible fall open, and he read, “And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” He studied a minute on the text and commenced. “This morning as I was a-crossing the creek on the way to church, I saw an old mud turtle a-sunning hisself. When he saw me he went ker-plunk into the water. Now, he didn’t reach down there and get a little bit of water and sprinkle it on his forehead. No! When he went in, he went all the way in, and there you have your doctrine of total immersion!”41

In many respects, this example encapsulates the uniqueness of Appalachian mountain religion. The sermon is extemporaneous, open to the inspiration of the Spirit and the spontaneity of the preacher’s style. Indeed, it is important to note that the text which the preacher turned to, Song of Solomon 2:11-12, does refer to a “turtle” but only as a shorthand for “turtledove.” Consequently, the preacher’s example of a “mud turtle” is perhaps not entirely appropriate and would be, from the perspective of a home missionary, indicative of his lack of training. However, such a perspective does not take into account the value of freedom and importance place has in Appalachian mountain religion. His argument for “immersive baptism” is of course grounded in the scriptures, but his interpretation of the biblical text is informed by his “placed experience.” In fact, it is entirely natural that this preacher would not only reference a personal experience, but in so doing

“exegete” this particular passage in light of the region’s flora and fauna. Here, the “natural” and “spiritual” is intertwined such that a sunning mud turtle’s immersion in a creek is pointed to as an embodiment – “there”, that turtle in that creek – of immersive baptism.

The life of the mountaineer conformed to the patterns of nature and both the temporal and spatial orientations of mountain communities are affected. With regards to

40 Jones, 148. 41 Ibid.

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time, Albanese contends that mountain people lived “in the present…slow and rhythmic…in which people dwelled within the moment, not looking to the future and turning to the past only to support the way the present was lived.”42 Attitudes toward the actual space of life emphasized the particular over the abstract as a “specific place where concrete events occurred and concrete persons or objects were prized.”43 The mountaineers of Southern Appalachia were rooted in their particular place; it shaped their identity, contributed to their moral formation, and was reflected in their religion.

Rooting one’s sense of community in the physical land, this potent religiosity was also reflected in the particular agrarian practices that developed in the region; here Albanese points to a unique synthesis of Christianity and naturalistic mysticism. She writes:

Many sowed their crops by an intricate method based on the signs of the zodiac, justifying their efforts by reference to the biblical account of creation: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Gen. 1:14). Yet the appointed days and years of Genesis expressed not so much biblical religion as the harmonial religion of nature. Mountain people often followed ancient horoscopes that correlated the stars with the twelve signs of the zodiac and with corresponding parts of the human body. Based on these sources, planting calendars plotted out each month according to the zodiacal signs.44

Accordingly, mountaineers sought to discern the optimal conditions for planting their crops based on what they saw as an indelible connection between the cosmos, nature, and human action. This belief extended beyond planting practices.

In addition to shaping the daily contours of Appalachian life, the mountains shaped the structure of human relationships. Here, Albanese juxtaposes the emphasis on individual independence with an awareness of dependency within community. She writes, “Just as

42 Albanese, 332. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 340.

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mountaineers felt subject to nature and to God, they were also subject to one another.”45

Accordingly, this sense of interdependence affected the character of mountain communities, including churches. Cognizant of the threat that authoritarian leadership structures represented against this dependency, the basic structures of Appalachian communities was fundamentally egalitarian and the relationship between people, while oftentimes small or circumscribed, was viewed as sacred. Within this interpretive frame, human relationships were characterized by a fundamental unity between God, nature and human. While there is certainly a tradition of profound individualism in Appalachian Christianity, this value was balanced by an awareness of how dependent people are upon each other.

The emphasis given to the autonomy of the individual and his/her community challenges the hierarchical model of leadership and authority represented by denominational institutions. For example, the ability to preach was not dependent on ordination from an institutional leadership, but rather on the individual’s calling and inspiration from the Holy

Spirit. Individual churches did “ordain” their own preachers, primarily for the purposes of issuing marriage and baptismal certificates (a document that was historically the only legal proof of a birth) and obtaining access to hospitals and accident scenes.46 Moreover, while many congregations remain uncomfortable with the idea of female preachers, this form of gender hierarchy is not emblematic of Appalachian Christians as a whole. Ruby Dotson, a

Free Will Baptist from Dickenson County, Virginia argues:

There’s a lot of people who don’t believe in ladies speaking in church. They always say that if they want to know anything, they should ask their husbands at home. Well, if he isn’t a Christian, he couldn’t tell them. I think when the Lord tells you to speak, to speak. If the Lord calls on her to testify and she doesn’t, she’s quenching the Spirit. If we fell led to pray and we fail to do that, we’re quenching the Spirit…I think we should be led by the Spirit. Christ’s first message after the resurrection was by Mary [Magdalene], and if

45 Ibid. 46 McCauley, 10-11.

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he hadn’t aimed to use women in His work, He wouldn’t have sent the message by Mary when there were other apostles close by.47

The freedom afforded individual members and their communities was never understood as justifying any kind of atomistic social structure. Rather, freedom and autonomy were fundamentally connected to equality and humility, and in many ways, the latter took precedence. Indeed, “church leaders” were expected to guide the entire community in the recognition and cultivation of their spiritual gifts. In the mountain church “the role structures and social distinctions of everyday life are purposefully negated through role reversals…Now clergy are equal to laity and women to men and children to adults, and in this way the experience enacts a vision of what heaven looks like.”48 This cooperative spirit in which the church is understood to be an embodiment of a “multiplicity of equals” was threatening to the denominational ethos of centralized organization. 49 Certainly, many mountain churches failed to fully and/or consistently embody this value; indeed Edna

Alexander referred to herself as a prophetess because she was not allowed to preach.50

However, even within this tension between ideal and practice, Appalachian mountain

47 Jones, 31. Jones provides a number of other examples of individual women challenging/rejecting the prohibition against female leadership. Anna Mae Cook, a African-American preacher in the Church of God Militant Pillar and Ground of Truth framed her own ministry around the figure of Mary Magdalene. She contends that much of the resistance to women preachers stems from scriptural ignorance: “They don’t read – they read but they don’t understand what they read. It’s in the Book. It has to go back to Mary when Jesus rose [from the tomb]. Mary was the one that brought the first message when Jesus rose. He gives the first message to Mary. He said, ‘You go tell my disciples.’ (31).” 48 Ibid., 109. See also Mary McClintock Fulkerson. Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). Fulkerson elaborates on this point: “The Spirit-authorized character of the system levels access to the privilege of preaching; its rules about who can speak and who can interpret have been unusually egalitarian…If God is to be the speaker in worship, then anyone, not simply the educated or the male adult, can be God’s vessel or mouthpiece (253).” 49 Ibid., 211. 50 Fulkerson writes, “In contradiction with its openness, the Pentecostal system [of which she considers Appalachian mountain religion] entails explicit acknowledgment of the place of women. Women and men alike accede to the ‘biblically based’ view that men should have authority over women. In the early defense of women’s preaching…we find the argument for submission couched in the language of gender complementarity…The discussion of proper masculinity and femininity are very important in the construction of subject positions for Pentecostal women…The chain of command – God over Jesus, over man – continues in the male-headed household, where the husband has authority over the wife and children (Changing the Subject, 255).”

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ecclesiology sought to combine an explicit emphasis on individual freedom and communal equality that challenged the centralized structure of American denominations.

Further, while Appalachians valued their independence and considered family to be the primary social unit, mountain churches did not exist in complete isolation from each other, but rather were understood to members of what McCauley describes as a grassroots network of loosely centralized communities.51 Here the practice of “fellowshipping,” in which people frequently traveled to worship at each other’s churches, helped cultivate a common religious sensibility. The emphasis on the family as “the most important religious and social institution,” with the institutional structure of the church coming second should not be interpreted as a form of anti-institutionalism or rejection of “formal church worship.”52 Rather, the emphasis on the family as a religious community is indicative of the extent to which religious beliefs and practices permeated everyday life. Moreover, one’s

“membership” in both the wider community and extended family offers a “support system

[that] empowers [people] as individuals to become involved in social movements that attack the evils of strip mining and other types of misuse of the environment.”53 Prayer, daily reading of the Bible, and other forms of worship were not compartmentalized into a

“Sunday practice,” but were woven into the daily rhythms of the family and the land.

B. Experience(s) of Grace: Values and Practices

If there is one theological value that defines Appalachian mountain religion it would have to be humility. Humbly submitting to the presence of the Holy Spirit not only reflects the mountain Christian’s understanding of God but equally so shapes the distinctive ecclesial structures that developed in the region. McCauley writes, “An emphasis on

51 McCauley., 66. 52 Ibid., 339. 53 Humphrey, 131.

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humility…makes leadership in church life a highly subtle and extremely differential affair on the part of those who are recognized leaders, both women and men.”54 Connecting mountain religion to a more prophetic than charismatic leadership style, McCauley emphasizes the similarities it shares with Christianity’s “free church” traditions. 55 Of particular importance are the ways in which “autonomy” and “community” intertwine to facilitate distinct expressions of “democratic equality.”56 Indeed, home missionaries saw the informality of mountain churches, the relatively non-hierarchical leadership structures and ad hoc organizational forms, as a clear indication of the tradition’s ecclesiological “chaos.” Yet this is a misreading of the tradition, owing as much to ignorance as to fear.

For the mountaineer, religious authority and meaning are rooted in individual and collective experience(s) and his or her identity as a Christian is more a condition of one’s heart than the knowledge or social status. In the encounter with God, with the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit, the individual and community are convicted by the gracious love of the divine.57 In his study of “Upland Christianity,” Loyal Jones notes that while “humility” is assuredly a religious conviction, it is rooted in a broader “negotiation process of determining whether one is truly wanted for the job at hand…Humility and deference are common both within the church and without…Uplanders want to make sure that they are not accused of acting as if they are better than they actually are. The strong belief in humility and leveling flows out of our view of the human condition based on religious beliefs.”58 Here, the emphasis on “life as gift” is operative.

54 McCauley, 16. 55 Ibid., 16. McCauley does not elaborate on this point aside from connecting it to the ideas of “democratic equality” and the “priesthood of all believers.” 56 Ibid., 16, 66, 68. 57 Ibid., 10-11. 58 Jones, 34. Jones points folk musician and noted guitarist Doc Watson as emblematic of this point. For Watson, fame and stardom has never been his desire: “I don’t care about being a big star. I don’t want people to worship me. I just appreciate people enjoying it if I do a good job – just like you’d compliment a carpenter

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Following after Paul’s injunction to avoid arrogance of spirit, mountain people see humility as the only appropriate response in a grace-centered religious culture that emphasizes a worldview recognizing all the many things or “blessings” that come as an unmerited gift from God.”59 Furthermore, the humble response to the gift of life extends to the environment. Here the intimacy between a community and the land that is inherent in an agrarian culture fosters an indelible sense of one’s dependence on and vulnerability to “a beneficence and grace that they neither understand nor control.”60 Within an agrarian context, “humility” is not only an attitude or response to the grace of God, it is the proper response of living sustainably and appropriately from the land.61

This emphasis on the heart and humility lends itself to a strong emphasis on the movement of the Holy Spirit to such an extent that Appalachian mountain religion is profoundly pneumatological in orientation. Accordingly, the proper response to this experience is a humble recognition of one’s dependence on God’s love. The humility of the believer thus becomes a core value in Appalachian mountain religion, not only with regards to the divine-human relationship but equally so between persons. McCauley writes,

Coupled with placing grace at the forefront, mountain religion pursues a distinctly nonrationalist mode of religious experience and a radical emotional and psychic vulnerability that flies in the face of rationalist, non-emotive traditions of mainstream American Protestantism once characterized as “muscular Christianity.” Mountain religion’s emphasis on the heart guiding the head, rather than the other way around, epitomizes this fundamental divine in basic orientation not only to religion but also to the world itself.62 or plumber if he did a good job…You’ve got to put God in his place and stardom in its place. Nobody is better than anyone else son…that’s what it’s all about. One man might do something better than another man, but that’s no reason for him getting all puffy or self-righteous about himself (34-35).” 59 McCauley., 10. 60 Wirzba, 31. 61 Ibid., 138. For Wirzba, “agrarian humility” requires a balance between human and natural agency, or domestication and wildness. While not denying the impact that people can have on the land, he identifies “humility” with an acknowledgment that “nature is the measure that guides thought and action (138).” Accordingly, industrial agriculture and monocultures are not simply dangerous to the health of a biotic community, they are manifestations of a profound spiritual arrogance that disconnects and displaces the human from the rest of nature. 62 McCauley, 11.

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This explicitly “nonrational” (McCauley is careful to distinguish the nonrational from the irrational) character of mountain religiosity has been a key contributor to the absence of theoretical or conceptual theological reflection within the region. Additionally, the grounding of authority and meaning in experience can be as equally problematic as establishing an overly rationalist system of belief. However, within the context of 19th century Appalachian history, the experiential character of Appalachian mountain religion serves as a fundamental challenge to and potential subversion of religious hegemony. Here, the emotional experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence brings the individual and community into what David Tracy describes as a “fascinating and frightening mystery.”63 Moreover, it challenges authority based in institutional and/or social status and the “legitimacy” or

“validity” of Appalachian mountain religion as a religion is not dependent on acquiescence to “official Christianity” or denominational authority, but rather in an “undeniable power” beyond the control of human knowledge or practice. The movement of the Holy Spirit is free and open to all. For this reason, Appalachian mountain religion emphasizes emotion and experience over rational systematization.

The pneumatological emphasis shapes the mountaineer’s understanding of God’s grace and the agency of the individual. In contrast to the evangelical-revivalist emphasis on

‘making a decision for Christ,” the mountain Christian insists on the spontaneous experience grace as the moment of conviction. Indeed, according to McCauley, the histories of

American Protestantism and Appalachian religion can be charted along the chronology of revivalism. McCauley writes,

With displacement of grace by rational decision in the foreground of the experience of conversion, human initiative and God’s cooperation

63 David Tracy. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 173

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supplanted God’s initiative and human cooperation. The much broader implications of these two very different theological traditions – one centered on grace and the Holy Spirit [Appalachian religion], one centered on free will and rational decision [evangelical revivalism and mainstream Protestantism] – translated into two very different sets of values and worldviews.64

Focusing more on persuasion than conviction, the mountain preacher more readily adopts a prophetic stance. Sermons are directed against the sinful world, calling individuals to repentance and conversion. The preacher not only calls upon the individual to repent of his or her personal sin, but in the process, he offers a judgment upon the perceived religious laxity of the urban/town citizen. Thus, the call to repentance is a call back to the land, to the mountains.

Edna Alexander’s dream/vision indicates the degree to which Appalachian mountain religiosity contained its own kind of mystical tradition. While Mary McClintock Fulkerson refers to a distinct “Pentecostal animism” as a “conviction that the world is saturated with divine presence,” to speak of an “Appalachian mysticism” is an authorial choice intended to more accurately account for those elements of Appalachian mountain religion that might be legitimately called “mystical.”65 While McCauley does not use the terms “mysticism” or

“mystical” in her narrative, she does provide examples of what can be legitimately mystical practices or experiences: dreams and visions, ecstatic camp meetings and oral testimonies.66

64 Ibid., 14. 65 Fulkerson, 257. Of particular importance here is the extent to which this intertwining between the divine or supernatural and ordinary life created a tension between Pentecostalism and mainline Christianity. She writes, “Beliefs about the intersection of the divine with ordinary life not only set Pentecostals off from other mainstream denominational practitioners, but put them at odds with the progressive structures of power in the nation. Such ‘at-oddness’ is important in the social reproduction of the regime. While it cannot be identified simply with class, opposition to modernity is clearly associated with subject positions outside of access to social power. In a world where God and God’s adversary [the devil] can be identified as personally directed every event, one cannot so easily be of the saints and dwell with sinners (256).” 66 Michel de Certeau. The Mystic Fable, Vol. One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). When placed in the context of Michel de Certeau’s historiography of 16th and 17th- century mysticism, these practices echo the “solidarity” and “assimilation” that he considers emblematic of mystical experiences. And while we need not provide a detailed discussion of de Certeau’s work, it is important to emphasize some of the key characteristics that he associates with mysticism. De Certeau writes, “The mystic groups and books…constitute a specific historical reality. Although, from that point of view, they appear in the

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Of particular importance in tracing this point is Michel de Certeau’s contention that

“the mystical” does not represent an abstract set of doctrines but rather is “a heterogeneous ensemble of discursive and experiential practices” and is “irreducible to abstract theorization and is irreproducible through scientific/rational methodology, that ‘only begins when it recovers its roots and experiences in its strangeness in ordinary life’.”67 Indeed, the common interpretation of “the mystical” or mysticism as fundamentally disconnected from the experiences of our daily life is, as Norman Wirzba contends, attributable to a theological ideology that abstracts God from the world to such an extent that a “supernatural” apparatus is required to experience the divine presence.68 Rather, as a “manner of speaking” the mystical is akin to a religious style or sensibility that is intertwined in everyday experiences. 69

This description of “the mystical” provides a helpful context within which to consider the dream visions and oral culture of Appalachian mountain religion. For many

Appalachians, the former “are often the most moving accounts of what God has done in their lives” and they cultivate a fundamentally different experience of time and space, wherein individuals feel as if they are living “in the time of the original creation – the time of

Christ’s creative divine acts.”70 Richard Humphrey notes that for many, dream visions speak

formal guise of absence – a past – they are amenable to an analysis that sets them within a multiplicity of correlations among economic, social, cultural, epistemological, and other data…My work on mystic writings – which began with year of peregrination in French or foreign archives, caverns in which the tenacity of research masks the solitary pleasure of the lucky find – wended its way through the labryinthian detours of establishing critical editions. It comes from many a sojourn in these remote corners of the past that reveal to the historian the infinitude of a local singularity (9).” 67 Marsanne Brammer. “Thinking Practice: Michel de Certeau and the Theorization of Mysticism.” Diacritics. 22, No. 2 (1992), 28, 27, 29-30. 68 Wirzba, 150. 69 De Certeau, 95, 115. 70 McCauley, 84; Humphrey, 126.

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to the possibility of establishing a new heaven and earth in the region and demonstrate the extent to which the sacred (extraordinary) and profane (ordinary) are inextricably bound.71

This religious culture provided a way of life in which the Appalachian mountaineer oriented him/herself to the mysteries of existence. Albanese writes, “They used the system to orient themselves in everyday life, seeking to live in harmony by performing each action at the time when they believed nature decreed it should be done. For them, as for Native

Americans, adherents to Eastern religions, and Western occultists, there was a correspondence between themselves and nature.”72 The appeal to Native American and

Eastern religions represents Albanese’s consideration of Appalachian mountain religion as

“ordinary” or “natural.” To this concept, she juxtaposes the “extraordinary” religious impulses of Calvinistic Christianity.

While Albanese see similarities between Appalachian culture and Native American traditions, she also emphasizes the Christian dimension of the mountaineers’ relationship to nature; this Christian “dimension” is described as “extraordinary.” As a unique manifestation of Calvinist theology, Appalachian religion located the individual within a primary belonging to both creation and its transcendent Creator. This attitude was marked by conformity to God’s will and a passionate embrace of the dramatic. And while

Appalachian Christians affirmed a certain degree of free will, they emphasized God’s control over the lives of people. Albanese writes, “In this view, destiny had been plotted by the divine will from eternity, and just as a person should live in harmony with nature, so he or she should also conform to the designs of God…Divine predestination and redemption were thought to control a person’s destiny, although to some extent human free will entered

71 Ibid., 126. 72 Ibid.

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into the script.”73 Indeed, McCauley is explicit in noting that while “Calvinist theology” – particularly its position on human sinfulness – is influential in Appalachian Christianity, one should not assume a strict adherence to Calvinist doctrine among individuals or communities. Rather, the centrality of “God’s grace” in Appalachian mountain religion provides a mediating position between Calvinism and Arminianism. Pointing to the Old

Regular Baptist tradition, she writes

For Old Regular Baptists, all people are in a state of original sin from which they cannot escape simply by a “decision for Christ,” as evangelical Protestants have come to express it. Instead, all people are personally called to “repentance and belief” and this call constitutes their “election by grace”…Christ’s atonement is for those who, by a movement of the Holy Spirit, respond to that call. No one is excluded by preordained election…This Old Regular Baptist understanding of the nature of grace – of God’s initiative and human cooperation – and the role the Holy Spirit plays in the administration of God’s grace, is therefore, a hallmark not just of Old Regular Baptists but of almost all of mountain religious life.74

Accordingly, this emphasis on God’s authority engendered a certain degree of acceptance for one’s situation, wherein conformity to God’s divine plan was considered the only way to peace in this life. Conversely, Appalachian mountaineers also exhibited a great degree of passion in their relationship to the supernatural. Here, the moment of conversion was considered the most important event in an individual’s life. Paradoxically, the mountaineer was placed on earth to make a decision – “this worldly” comfort and ease or confidence in the promises of eternity.75

Similarly, the Appalachian oral culture that characterized mountain religion, expressed most clearly in its preaching style, is evocative of de Certeau’s emphasis on

“speaking and hearing” and the cultivation of heterological spaces, wherein “spirituals and mystics took up the challenge of the spoken word…[and] formed a solidarity with all the

73 Albanese, 332 & 342. 74 McCauley, 99. 75 Albanese, 332 & 342.

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tongues that continued speaking, marked in their discourse by the assimilation to the child, the woman, the illiterate, madness, angels, or the body.”76 Within the spaces of Appalachian mountain religion, oral preaching functioned as the primary means by which belief and rituals were shared within community and passed throughout generation.77 As affective and performative, this practice was rooted in a participatory and communal model of biblical hermeneutics and worship.78 As a form of communal speech act, oral preaching functioned to “give utterance to the self-consciousness of the people in their…existence.”79 Perhaps more importantly, for the Appalachian the gesticular utterance of the oral sermon, rather than the logical pronunciation of the written sermon, served to more faithfully and fruitfully cultivate an openness to the wild spontaneity of the Holy Spirit.

Certainly, we cannot posit any direct link between de Certeau’s reflections on mysticism and “the mystical” and Appalachian mountain religion; the differences in religious tradition, historical period, and cultural context are assuredly a hindrance. However, this does not so much invalidate as qualify the preceding argument, for whether we call it

“mysticism” or not, the fact remains that Appalachian mountain religion contained a vibrant tradition of dream visions, oral testimony, and ecstatic expressions that represent the kind of heterogeneous practices that kindle the “strangeness” of everyday life and develop

76 De Certeau, 44. 77 Fulkerson writes, “The oral character of the tradition is not only the place to develop hermeneutical insights, but the privileged form of reproduction for these insights. ‘Folk religions’ are identified by the phenomenon of oral traditions, the passing on of skills and knowledge by participation, imitation, and inspiration. This is reproduction in the sense that ‘folk religion’ designates communities whose distinctiveness centers around affective, performed tradition (Changing of the Subject, 257).” 78 McCauley’s description of “singing down” the preacher reveals the reciprocal dynamic between preacher and congregation: “‘Singing down’ a preacher is a competition of sound dynamics, which each expression – the preaching, shouting, and hymn lining – providing a counterforce. It involves an intricate sense of timing…The preacher, who does not merely place himself behind the pulpit but walks continually about the large stand area, keeps up his chanted sermon, now moving from the stand into the congregation, an integral part of this tradition. After all three sound dynamics have subsided, the rest of the service is ideally position for maximum effect centered on the communal experience of conversion…not as an act of individuals ‘getting saved’ in a church service but as a collective experience of what heaven must be like (107-108).” 79 Norman Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 BCE. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979), 78.

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alternative ways of knowing. Edna Alexander’s vision of the prophetess dressed in brown and the evocative dead leaves is therefore emblematic of a theological sensibility that subverts the rationalist pretensions of 19th-century denominational orthodoxy.80

III. “A Peculiar People”: Metropolitan Representations of Appalachia

That the religious and theological imagination(s) of Appalachian mountain religion serves as a foundational source for critiquing urbanization is neither arbitrary nor coincidental, as the image of Appalachia as a unique national problem was/is an idea formulated and propagated by a collection of metropolitan elites, including those representing the authority of mainstream Protestantism. Indeed, the possibility of establishing the region as a “resource colony” rested on a particular representation of

Appalachian space. That such a representation was altogether inaccurate was inconsequential and indeed very much the point. Rather, as Henry Shapiro contends, the image of Appalachia “as a strange land inhabited by a peculiar people…[was/is] not a natural emanation from objective reality but [was/is] the creation of men, and stand between consciousness and reality.”81 These men – industrialists, local-color writers, and home

80 McCauley, 127. 81 Henry Shapiro, Appalachia On Our Mind. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), xvii-xviii. As a native of New York City, Shapiro is himself an “outsider” to the Appalachian region in America. A student of Warren Susman’s at Rutgers and professor at the University of Cincinnati, Shapiro specialized in the fields of American intellectual history and the history of science. While at Cincinnati, he founded, along with Zane Miller, the “Laboratory of American Civilization.” This project, modeled after the Chicago School of Sociology’s “the City as Laboratory,” Shapiro and Miller, along with numerous graduate students, sought to examine and trace the parallels between Cincinnati’s local history and broader currents within the nation. And yet, while Shapiro did not write as a “born-and-bred” Appalachian, his contribution to our understanding of Appalachian history and culture is invaluable, such that he served on the board of the Appalachian Journal and served as editor to numerous volumes on Appalachian history and culture. Furthermore, his work is not a history of Appalachia, but rather a “history of the idea of Appalachia, and hence of the invention of Appalachia (ix).” In this, his work differs from some of the more straightforward historical narratives, like Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands and Ronald Eller’s Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers. Shapiro is not so much concerned with the history of the region, but more so how the region has been written about and subsequently functioned within the national consciousness. According to Shapiro, the book’s central concern is to demonstrate “that the emergence of this idea [Appalachia], between 1870 and 1900, involved an attempt to understand reality, and more precisely reality perceived in a particular way from a particular point of view, and it seeks to explicate the manner in which the idea of Appalachia came to be used as a way of dealing with the ‘strange land and peculiar people’ of the southern mountains. It is thus a history of America and of American

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missionaries – constructed this representation as a means of justifying their efforts to

“integrate the fact of Appalachian otherness into the conceptual schemes by which

American civilization was defined.”82 “Otherness” as an explanation and “Appalachia” as a name function to create a representation out of an aberration.83 Here economic and cultural modernization were intertwined. Industrialization served to address the economic rusticity and primitivism of the region, while the cultural production of local-color writers and home missionaries countered the heterodox religious symbolism and practices that arose among the inhabitants. In all cases, any dissent emanating from the mountaineers themselves was ignored and suppressed.

A. Local Color Essays and Cultural Commodification

While the focus of this chapter is religion and theology, specifically the efforts of home missionaries to convert and civilize Appalachian mountaineers, we should briefly discuss the role of nineteenth-century local-color writers so as to properly contextualize the cultural and historical context within which both groups worked. Indeed, there is a depth of mutual cooperation and influence that marked their efforts.

According to Shapiro, we cannot adequately understand the work of the home missionary apart from the images depicted in the local-color essay:

It was no accident that the northern churches began to work in the southern Appalachian mountains at a time when the popularity of [Mary Noailles] Murfree was at its height, or that In The Tennessee Mountains was used as a first mission-study text for those who wished to understand conditions in the region. The interest in Appalachia generated by the descriptions of the local- color writers was consciously used by the agents of denominational work in the region to support their claim to attention from the churches’ boards and societies, and to financial support from their membership, while the very existence of a substantial body of literature describing a strange land and consciousness, for its concern is with the attempts of Americans to understand the nature and meaning of their civilization, and to develop modes of action which to them seem consonant with this understanding (ix).” 82 Ibid., xiv. 83 Ibid., 68, see also Chapter 5.

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peculiar people in the southern mountains lent credence to their assertions to Appalachian otherness.84

As a literary form, the “local-color essay” emerged in an increasingly competitive market place of the bourgeois literary magazine industry. As such, this particular type of writing was inherently linked to the cultural values of middle-class America, with an emphasis on structure over content, description over analysis, and brevity over holism.85 Perhaps most importantly, the goal of the “local-color essay” was to entertain a middle-class audience, “to give pleasure through its artful reportage of the experiences of a particular person.”86

Pressured by the demands of the economic and cultural marketplace, these essayists were increasingly encouraged to blur the line between journalism and fiction. The entertainment of the audience was central and the essayist needed to make their first-hand accounts of their exotic subjects not only informative, but also, and much more importantly, interesting.

Here, a differential comparison was the primary hermeneutic, particularly as it allowed the essayist to contrast their specific subjects with the normative values of 19th-century bourgeoisie society. Shapiro notes that this specific dimension was an important tool in demonstrating the depth and breadth of cultural progress.87

Consequentially, the picture that emerges from their travels reflects the assumptions of both the essayist and audience, rather than the actual everyday experiences of their subjects. This emphasis on the reporting of one’s personal experiences for the purpose of entertaining one’s audience, made the “local-color essay” similar to popular “travel sketches

84 Ibid., 57. 85 Ibid., 8. 86 Ibid., 10. However, within the context of the “local-color essay,” subject matter was more important than the personality of the writer. According to Shapiro, the audiences of the 1870s and 1880s, “demanded to know about places and events as they might see them, as anyone might see them. In this context, when personality could no longer be counted on to sell magazines, then subject matter became a crucial commodity. During these decades only the most obviously or grossly ‘interesting’ subjects were acceptable to the editors: [including] those picturesque ‘little corners’ of the nation, not yet assimilated into the middle-class, nationally oriented culture which seemed dominant in America (11).” 87 Ibid., 14.

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and descriptions of scenery written by the naturalists and physicians of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.”88 Both literary forms emphasized the “newness” of the subject while establishing an aesthetic distance between author (and by extension audience) and subject. Shapiro writes, “The sketch itself begins…by pointing to the physical, social, and cultural distance separated the locality to be described and the more familiar world which the travelers must leave in order to begin their journey, but in their consciousness continues to reside.”89 This “distance” was essential to the “comparative” dimension of the local-color essay, for “at the heart of local-color writing is…a perception of alternative modes of life, a confrontation between the ‘we’ readers and the ‘them’ read about.”90 As the local-color essayist quickly “discovered” the “Southern mountains” and their inhabitants filled this niche perfectly.

Within this particular interpretive frame, the “otherness” of Appalachia was presented as “proof of the victory of nationalizing and homogenizing tendencies over the resistance of regionalism and diversity.”91 In short, the “exotic” character of the

Appalachian region was only “exotic” in relationship with the “norm” of bourgeois

American culture. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, by presenting Appalachia as

“exotic” or “quaint,” the local-color essayist was able to “diffuse” any potential threat that the “foreignness” of the region might pose to the dominant national culture. The essay thus served a didactic function, teaching their audiences that 1) middle-class American culture was monolithic and normative and 2) the past was truly “past” and did not represent a real threat and/or tangible alternative.92 As Shapiro claims, “At the hands of the local colorists,

88 Ibid., 9. 89 Ibid., 12. 90 Ibid., 14. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., 15.

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the unfamiliar became merely quaint and picturesque, and the familiar normative.”93

However, whereas the “exotic” locales of Creole Louisiana or Majorcan Florida were easier to “explain away,” the Appalachian mountaineers were close enough to the cultural norms and historical experiences of bourgeois America so as to pose a much more intractable problem.94 In the national consciousness, as defined by local-color writers, Appalachians were considered the epitome of America’s Anglo-Saxon, Protestant heritage that, while essential to the progress of American culture, was nonetheless confined to history.

Accordingly, they functioned as a kind of demographic simulacra of the local-color essayist.95

Appalachia as a distinct region presented the essayist with a curious paradox: alien enough to pique the interest of bourgeoisie readers yet similar enough to be understandable.

Appalachia was “in” but not “of” America. Any similarity between two cultures – bourgeois and frontier – was displaced with a representation “of essential otherness.” Here, the

“conceptions” and “assumptions” of the writer and his/her audience were presented as

“real” and thus established as the interpretive paradigm. Mary Noailles Murfree, whom

Shapiro considers the driving force in the literature, wrote of the people as having an expression of “settled melancholy” reflecting a mood with an “indefinable tinge of sadness that rests upon the Allegheny wilds.”96 For her readers, it did not matter that Murfree’s

“knowledge” about Appalachia was miniscule and gleaned primarily from observations made during summer vacations at Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, a resort destination for the state’s gentry. Rather, Murfree’s physical detachment was conducive to the aesthetic distance that allowed her to depict Appalachia as a strange land populated with a peculiar people

93 Ibid., 16. 94 Ibid., 14-15. 95 Ibid., 17. 96 Ibid., 19. Shapiro observes that Murfree’s “entire experience in the mountains, as a civilized lowlander of good family confronting ‘the gloomy primeval magnificence of nature,’ predisposed her to see Appalachia as a strange land, while the mountaineers appeared as a peculiar people if only for their willingness to live in a wilderness (19).”

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voluntarily living in a wilderness “broken by no field or clearing.”97 James Allen Lane, a writer commissioned by Harpers and the Evening Post, approached eastern Kentucky as a literary field to be explored and exploited and did not substantively challenge the

“Appalachian otherness” articulated by Murfree. Rather, what distinguished Lane’s career was his insistence that “the existence of an other and alien Kentucky within the borders of the Commonwealth posed a problem which required a solution, generated a tension which demanded resolution.”98

One solution offered by John Fox, Jr., an aspiring writer, failed coal operator, and admirer of Lane, was to violently impose law and order on the recalcitrance populace.99

Indeed, Fox ascribed to a social theory that associated “blood identity” with the “physical environment” as an explanation for economic and cultural poverty. Little more than a biological variant of “culture of poverty” sociological models, this theory posited a correspondence between “physical destitution” and “mental” or “spiritual” destitution.100

Fox put his theory to practice in establishing Big Stone Gap, Virginia, as a “quiet and respectable outpost of high society.”101 Importing fellow classmates from Harvard, Fox

97 Ibid., 20. 98 Ibid., 28. 99 See also Donald Askins, “John Fox, Jr. A Re-Appraisal; Or, With Friends Like That, Who Needs Enemies” in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, ed. Helen Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins. (Boone: The Appalachian Consortium Press, 1979). John Fox, Jr.’s Trail of the Lonesome Pine, a play depicting the adventures of a central Kentucky genteel prospector and his efforts to “rescue” a poor mountain girl is still performed every summer in the town of Big Stone Gap in Wise County, VA. A source of great pride and key tourist attraction to the area, there is little recognition among citizens of the county regarding Fox’s dismissive and judgmental opinions regarding the region. Donald Askins writes, “Half a century after his death, John Fox, Jr. still dominates the ‘cultural’ activities of the little town in southwestern Virginia to which he came in the 1890s hoping to make his fortune in land and coal speculation. Although he failed as an industrial entrepreneur, he stumbled upon another natural resource ripe for development and proceeded to exploit his discovery with a vigor that has preserved his name as one of the very few readily recognized in any list of Appalachian authors (251).” 100 Ibid., 253. 101 Ibid., 121.

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created a police force of gentlemen which ruled by the Winchester, Billy Club, and whistle.102

Big Stone Gap was in many an example of “industrial martial law.”

The power of the local-essayist rested in their ability to not only shape the cognitive perceptions of their audiences, reifying in their minds preconceived notions of cultural

“normativity” and “otherness,” but equally so to develop “patterns of action” for addressing this otherness. They sought to both explain and redress the causes of Appalachian otherness through systematic social action. This process was as much cultural as it was economic.103

Had the local-color essayist’s work failed to entertain and inspire particular forms of activism, its impact would have been fairly circumscribed and probably temporary.

Unfortunately for the region and inhabitants, this was not the case and the cultural imagery established in the pages of Lippincotts and Harpers was merely the first stage in what we would become a systematic, hegemonic effort to erase a uniquely Appalachian religious culture.

From this point forward, intellectual engagements with Appalachia – whether from economists, missionaries, sociologists, geologists, industrialists, or teachers – operated in large part from within the “conceived imagery” of the local-color essayists.

B. Denominational Home Missions and Regional Evangelization

If the “local-color essays” established a conceptual space through which the

“otherness” of Appalachia was defined, the work of the Protestant Home Missions and

Benevolent Societies provided a coherent, institutionalized response. Shapiro contends that the development of the home mission movement in Appalachia directly coincided with the popularity of local-color essays. He writes,

It was no accident that the northern churches began work in the southern Appalachian mountains at a time when the popularity of Murfree was at its height, or that In The Tennessee Mountains was used as a first mission-study text

102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 31.

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for those who wished to understand conditions of the region. The interest in Appalachia generated by the descriptions of the local-color writers was consciously used by the agents of denominational work in the region to support their claim to attention from the churches’ boards and societies, and to financial support from their membership, while the very existence of a substantial body of literature describing a strange land and peculiar people in the southern mountains lent credence to their assertions of Appalachian otherness. That the churches’ discovery of Appalachia occurred at this time and in this context was not without consequences, moreover, for it meant that the Appalachia they discovered would be the Appalachia of the local colorists, not merely another region in need of home missionaries.104

However, this similarity did not preclude genuine difference in their respective perceptions.

For example, while the “local-color essayists” tended to view Appalachian life as “quaint and picturesque,” the home missionaries saw its “otherness” as a “problem to be solved.”105

Here again, it is important to note the relationship between the wider south and

Appalachia, particularly within the period immediately following the Civil War. According to

Shapiro the activities of the various home mission groups in the region “took place within the historical context of a broader ‘renovation of the South on northern principles’ following the Civil War.”106 While this point is important for understanding the motivation and logic behind the Protestant denominations foray into the southern mountains, what matters most is the actual consequences of their efforts. That is, “while the rhetoric of home missions continued to focus on the ‘Americanization’ of the South through the end of the century, in practice the southern campaigns of the northern churches yielded instead the establishment of preaching station and mission schools in the southern mountains.”107 Thus, if work among the peoples in Appalachia was considered “southern white work,” it became increasingly easier for home missionaries to portray the mountaineers as one of the

“exceptional peoples,” along with Africans, Native Americans, Chinese, and Mexicans.

104 Ibid., 57. 105 Ibid., 60. 106 Ibid., 34. 107 Ibid., 48.

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Indeed, it was their isolation from modern society – embodied in their poverty and ignorance – that allowed them to be categorized as “exceptionally other.”108 Indeed, a significant part of their justification regarding the primitivism and boorishness of the mountaineer depended on the isolation engendered by the mountains themselves. Here, a kind of metonymic peculiarity is attributed to the mountaineer. As such the predetermined

“needs” that motivated the home missionaries centered on both a physical and conceptual surmounting of such environmental obstacles. And while home mission education efforts were intended to be temporary, their funding as educational institutions required that they maintain their mission status, which subsequently meant that the object of their work – “the other Appalachians” – needed to remain perpetually other.109

A cycle was thus created in which the representations of Appalachian otherness motivated practical efforts to address the problem and incorporate the region into the national ethos. For numerous denominational missionaries, the “otherness” of Appalachia was not merely a quaint vision of the past or entertaining anecdote about an exotic locale, rather it represented an obstacle to national unity and religious homogeneity. Therefore, the needs of these peculiar mountaineers were addressed through an indoctrination into the dominant and normative religious ethos of the period. The distinctive theology of

Appalachian mountain religion – its nature-oriented mysticism, experiential pneumatology, and egalitarian community structures – needed to be extinguished at best and controlled at worst. Accordingly, the home missionaries sought to install a theology that “housed” God within the confines of denominational spaces and rendered salvation as the consequence of rationalistic choice. In both instances, the wild religiosity of Appalachia was replaced with a bureaucratic sterility and a properly civilized (metropolitan/urban) religious orthodoxy.

108 Ibid., 52. 109 Ibid., 51.

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For example, McCauley describes the different conceptualizations and practices of late 19th-century revivalism. Pointing to the work of Charles Grandison Finney, she writes

“revivalism – which is all about salvation or the conversion experiences – was now approximating a science; it was a rational and logical process dependent almost exclusively on ‘the right use of constituted means’ which could, and should, be skillfully manipulated by the trained expert to achieve the desired effect.”110 Richard Humphrey describes this type of religious consciousness as “a system of rational doctrines…[and] a faith in a reality that is apprehended by principle, law, or theory…Fact and the gathering of data or ‘proof’ are important. Doctrine is more abstract principle or theory than it is a story of image or representation of reality.”111 Describing this development as a theological fault line, McCauley considers it instrumental in the growing bureaucratization of revivalist religion. Within this new frame, “revival preachers” became “specialists,” individuals trained in a form of psychoanalytical manipulation of human desire and guilt. Consequentially, and here the theological tension becomes more acute, the movement of “God’s grace,” considered by many Appalachian Christians as the initiating moment in salvation, is replaced with the rational decision of the individual. In turn, human cooperation with God’s grace becomes

God’s cooperation with human reason.112

According to the home missionary, membership in a denomination, education according to national standards, and the ability to explain one’s faith or belief through rational discourse were the marks of “living” religion. Thus, Presbyterian missionary Ellen

Myers could claim of Appalachian Christians “They have no conception of living religion.

They have no prayer or conference meetings. Aside from our own I doubt if there is a prayer

110 McCauley, 13. 111 Humphrey, 136. 112 McCauley, 14.

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meeting nearer than Berea, seventy miles away. There is no family prayer in all the land.”113

An authentic religious life required a degree of institutional control and stability and denominational theology necessitated a strong ecclesiology. God could only be properly worshiped inside an “official church.” The camp meetings and sporadic worship services that were central to Appalachian Christianity were thus derided as contributing to the region’s problems.

Perhaps most importantly, both McCauley and Humphrey describe home missionary theology as a displaced and displacing process. In its emphasis on the “individual” and his/her rational choice for or against salvation, the home missionary not only dismissed the vibrant communal life that was integral to mountain religiosity, they also perpetuated the type of spiritualist detachment from the land that enabled the industrial capitalist’s campaign of exploitation. Humphrey writes, “For mainline Christianity land is a commodity; it is no longer ‘place’…With the modern emphasis on mobility for jobs, promotions, and economic development, progress, consumerism , and economic development all lead one away from a sacred and personal relationship to the land, the people, and the culture. Mainstream belief systems have promoted a sense of alienation from the land.”114 This point is certainly true insofar as we emphasize the relationship between individual/community and the environment. However, we must also note an essential corollary to this argument: the establishment of company church in coal camps.

To say that denominational missionaries facilitated an overwhelming “displacement” of Appalachian mountain religion is, on the one hand, to note their emphasis on

113 Ibid., 405. 114 Humphrey, 139. McCauley notes the importance of railroads in the development of “mainline” religion: “Mountain preachers knew explicitly who were the home missionaries with their ‘railroad religion.’ Railroads made up what were universally called ‘the main lines of travel’ where lived the people ‘with the very best religious and educational advantages.’ The common American expression ‘mainline religion,’ meaning the leading denominations of American Protestantism, was derived from this usage (407).”

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individualistic salvation and institutional structures. The displacing tendency is perhaps more easily recognized in the focus on “individual souls” and the willingness to dismiss the importance of the land, particularly as an acute form of spiritualization. On the other hand, this first kind of displacement necessitated the creation of new spaces within which to incorporate newly educated and civilized mountaineers into a religious ethos that acquiesced to and openly supported the power of capital. As opposed to the lay preacher of

Appalachian churches, company clergy were economically dependent on the largesse of the industrialist and were consequentially more inclined to support company policies.

Appalachian historian Dwight Billings writes, “The [company] churches’ organizational viability was thus linked directly with industrial profits. Structural dependences was reinforced by cultural control…The ‘acquiescence’ of the clergy to the norms of ‘capitalist paternalism’ reflected both the hegemony of the ownership class and the extent to which minister’s thinking represented an uncritical acceptance of ideas they had absorbed from above.”115 We should note two points regarding Billings’ argument. One, he is writing about a, primarily early 20th-century phenomenon and two, his argument in turn focuses on the development of “religious opposition” to company churches. However, while these points are of course important, my concern at present is to simply note the extent to which industrial and religious hegemony were intertwined in Appalachia. Company ministers are in many respects an extension of denominational evangelization and an attempt to inculcate a spiritualized theology of individual salvation within the region.

Accordingly, the mission work of the denominational representatives and their schools was carried out with little regard for the actual needs of the people. What mattered were the “perceived needs” of “isolated peoples.” Again, the assumptions of the “outsider”

115 Billings, 14.

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– in this case, Protestant home missionaries – determined the “reality” of life in the southern mountains. Moreover, we see in the home mission movement a logic that on one hand folded Appalachia into the broader territory of the South, while on the other hand maintained a separation between the regions so as to ensure a higher evangelistic success rate. In both cases, the priorities and the values of the home mission societies were paramount and reflected the concerns of a growing metropolitan bourgeois culture. As with the economic and cultural distinctiveness of region, the representations of Appalachian peculiarity put forth by the local-color essayists and utilized by home missionaries were in large part determined by physical fact of the region’s mountain topography; while metropolitan elites may have been able to fabricate an image of the mountaineer seemingly out of thin air, they could not deny the reality that Appalachia was a region of mountains.

McCauley and Shapiro provide us with the necessary historical and epistemological context to understand the external reactions to and conceptualization of Appalachian religion, specifically with regards to topography and the land. However, they do not expand their understanding beyond the historical and ethnographic. In the remaining sections I pursue such a task. If the mountains are truly constitutive of popular religiosity in

Appalachia it is due to the intimacy and reciprocity between humanity and nature inherent in the rurality of the region and Appalachian mountain religion was a problem and threat precisely because it offered an alternative theological imagination that was placed-based, nature-oriented, and the embodiment of a “heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations – songs, cries, gestures – of the larger, more-than human field.”116 To the rationalistic, scientific mind of the urbane bourgeois home missionary, Appalachian mountain religion was an incoherent mix of superstition, distorted Christian faith, and

116 David Abram. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 9.

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polytheistic animism.117 The denominationalism of the region thus amounted to a thorough disenchantment of popular religion. Challenging this entrenched disenchantment, particularly as it feeds into the continued ecological destruction of the region requires we retrieve something of the distinctive religious sensibility characteristic of nineteenth-century

Appalachian mountain religion. While we must not romanticize this period in Appalachian history – the deep strain of anti-intellectualism within Appalachian mountain religion was and remains problematic – I believe that through an imaginative interpretation and appropriation of Appalachian mountain religion we can use the past to embody a more environmental present and future.

IV. Remembering the Residue: Elemental Imagining Towards the Land

In many respects, the work of the local writer and home missionary is indicative of what Henri Lefebvre describes as “representations of space.” As we saw in chapter one, this specific type of space is associated with rigid conceptualization and quantification, identified by Lefebvre with the bureaucratic demand for efficiency, calculation, and accumulation.

And, whereas the idea was discussed in the context of capitalism and industrialization, we cannot elide the extent to which this type of space is as much cultural as it is economic; indeed, part of what distinguishes Lefebvre’s Marxism from other twentieth-century variants is his insistence that alienation and objectification fundamentally transform everyday life.

Accordingly, the home missionary impulse toward abstract conceptualization – in this case

117 Ironically, and rather tragically, this opinion was offered by Harry Caudill, an eastern Kentucky lawyer and author who is often credited with helping to initiate the Appalachian front in John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” His Night Comes to the Cumberlands is a foundational text in Appalachian Studies but unfortunately betrays an acutely bourgeois logic. For example, while Caudill’s goal in writing the book was to explain the poverty of Appalachia, he often ends up blaming the sloth, indolence, and ignorance of residents. Similarly, a key aspect of his proposed solution is an expansion of federally subsidized infrastructure legislation reminiscent of the Tennessee Valley Authority. However, while the TVA electrified much of Central Appalachia, its effect on the region is extremely complex, particularly its policy of forcing people off of their land. Caudill even goes so far in the last chapter of Night Comes to the Cumberlands to call for the mass flooding of valleys throughout Appalachia so as to open up new spaces for development.

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an overly rational understanding and explanation of religious belief – divested the lived experience of Appalachian religion of its imaginative affectivity and corporeality.

This narrative of denominational conquest can therefore be seen as a specific instantiation of a broader trend within western thought that has insisted on the fundamental emptiness and illegitimacy of any tradition or perspective deemed insufficiently rational.

Here, Lefebvre’s criticism of Western philosophy demonstrates the extent to which philosophical reflection in particular has yielded to the ethos of capitalist alienation: “There is a philosophical alienation, the extremum of real alienation…Alienation, and specifically philosophical alienation, then becomes the common measure of both philosophers and other men – a measure as well of that philosophy which saw itself as measure of men and world…An old historical situation for philosophy, from Socrates to Descartes, recurs in aggravated form, with an increased abstraction arising from the distance in relation to praxis, a distance proportional to the independence of the philosopher.”118 Metaphysical philosophy is consequently considered a form of egocentricism, wherein the philosopher detaches himself [sic] from everyday praxis and posits his own subjectivity as universal and absolute.119 Indeed, as unique forms of analytical intelligence, metaphysical philosophy contributes to the fragmentation and atomization of life.120

Placing the work of the local color essayist and home missionary in this context we can start to recognize the extent to which they were not merely agents of a specific conceptualization of national identity, but equally so of the assumed superiority of disembodied, displaced abstract thought woven throughout western society. Indeed, in their pursuit of cultural and religious homogeneity, the essayist and missionary facilitated what

118 Henri Lefebvre. Metaphilosophy. (New York, NY: Verso Press, 2016), 15, 21. 119 Ibid., 23, 47, 57. 120 Henri Lefebvre. Critique of Everyday Life: The One-Volume Edition. (New York, NY: Verso Press, 2014), 624.

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Lefebvre describes as the technocratic ethics of assimilation, repetition, and equivalence wherein “every moment [is] anticipated, quantified in money terms, and programmed temporally and spatially.”121 Here we must recall the extent to which industrialization and denominationalism were fundamentally intertwined. From this perspective, the heresy and deviancy of Appalachian mountain religion is assuredly an indication of region’s inability and/or unwillingness to conform to the ethos of systematic stability and efficiency; here, the tradition of oral preaching is conceptualized as an indication of the people’s illiteracy and not a lived language rooted in the body and gestures.122 And yet perhaps more insidiously, the decentralization, affectivity, and spontaneity of Appalachian mountain religion are equally so a threat to the ontological incarnation of Capital.123

Were the essayists and missionaries successful in their efforts? Did they incorporate the region into the burgeoning progress of modern America and civilize the people of

Appalachia? Did their collaboration with the industrialists yield economic prosperity and cultural civility? Did Appalachian religiosity become more rational in its expression and proper in its decorum? Did Appalachians become willing participants in official, denominational Christianity? The answer depends on one’s perspective.

In many respects, we cannot avoid an affirmation: as history progressed and the century turned, Appalachia was increasingly drawn into the orbit of the national culture that

121 Ibid., 731. 122 Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, 215. 123 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Ibid., 115. The appeal to ontology marks the shift from the analytical/descriptive approach of Appalachian Studies to a constructive appropriation of the discipline’s work; as I argue in the following chapter, Appalachian Studies, as a distinct academic field, has favored and to a large degree continues to do so, descriptive (re: historical, anthropological, ethnographic) treatments of the region’s culture. Such work is of course invaluable in understanding what makes Appalachia unique, but it unfortunately does not provide a sufficient argument for how this distinctiveness might serve as a resource for the articulation of an alternative ontology. Indeed, questions of ontology specifically and philosophy/theology broadly are largely absent from Appalachian Studies. My focus on space (chapters one and two), imagination (chapter three) and nature and flesh (chapters four and five) is therefore a response not only to specific problems facing the region (the intersection of capitalism, environmental destruction, and anthropocentrism) but to a lesser, albeit important, extent the absence of constructive theological/philosophical work done by regional scholars.

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the essayist, industrialist, and missionary sought to create. Many became, for the most part, active participants in the industrial economy and denominational ecclesiology that became defining features of modern America; throughout the first half of the 20th-century, coal mining was the primary occupation for most Appalachian men and mainline Protestant churches continue to function as vital institutions for the people. Additionally, efforts at educational reform and attempts to increase literacy in the region did provide a more structured educational model. However, emphasizing the positive, or at least neutral, consequences of this historical development risks uncritically adopting the ideological narrative that served as its motivation and justification. To be sure, some Appalachians benefited from this process; they experienced, if not prosperity, certainly a degree of economic security. Similarly, for many, their membership in “official denominational

Christianity” provided a vibrant sense of community and support. And yet, such a myopic tale only perpetuates what Appalachian Studies has sought to demonstrate over the last 40 years: that the history of Appalachia is as much, if not more, one of conquest and domination as it is civilization and liberation. However, while the region is marked with denuded mountaintops, dilapidated houses, and darkened lungs, echoes of a vibrant, style of life that created Appalachian mountain religion can be heard beneath detritus of urbanization and denominationalism.

The following sections are an attempt to hear these voices anew, a creatively and critically appropriation of certain elements of Appalachian mountain religion so as to articulate a specifically regional, ethically radical, and ecologically oriented theology. Critical to this task is the imagination. To be clear, I do not propose a wholesale retrieval or appropriation of 19th-century Appalachian culture or religion. Similarly, my appeal to

Appalachian mountain religion does not ignore or dismiss qualities that can be legitimately

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considered reactionary; here we should note the latent and explicit patriarchy within the tradition, its allergy to academic training, and the various ways in which it has facilitated a fatalistic response to injustice and oppression. Rather, through an imaginative remembering, what Lefebvre describes as a rescuing “the past from darkness (from ‘unconsciousness’, to use another terminology) and dispersion, [and] bringing it into the light of the present day,” I enter into a dialogue with the past so as to articulate a distinctively Appalachian and theological response to the economic and ecological crises facing the region.124

The imagination therefore should not be primarily associated with fantasy or self- entertaining and is not essentially a mental process of the individual that detaches him or her from lived reality or engagement with others. The imagination is not about escape, but rather, a critical response of those along the margins and limits of society to the processes of alienation.125 In the imagination, narrative and cultural styles that have been fragmented and destroyed through abstraction – what Lefebvre describes as “residues” – seep through the cracks of society and serve as the grounding for resistance.126 The “betrayed story” of popular religion in Appalachian is a “residue” of the home missionary movement and must be “critically redeployed” through an imaginative remembrance of its forgotten past. Here, we must sift through the abstract sterility of metropolitan representations in order to discover an imagery that is “multiple…[and] appeals to all the senses and…arouses obscure emotions by travelling back to ancient seasons and bygone ages of the individual, the group

124 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 582. 125 Ibid., 299. 126 Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, 11, 299, 315. “Every system leaves a residue that escapes it, resists it, and from where an effective (practical) resistance can take off…The theory of residues takes up in modern terms a theme of romanticism. And so we support the thesis of a new romanticism with revolutionary tendency…Our method of residues contains a number of articles: detecting the residues, wagering on them, showing the precious essence in them, combining them, organizing their rebellions and totalizing these. Each residue is an irreducible to be grasped (299, 301).” See page 12 for Lefebvre’s comparison between particular articulations or embodiments of “power” and the subsequent “residues” produced therein. Of particular importance are the contrasts he identifies between: technology/technocracy and the imaginary; reason/rationality and the “irrational”/natural; and mimesis and poietic capacity.

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and the species…[that] activates and actualizes a link between the present and the past…[as] an aspect of expressivity.”127 Accordingly, critical knowledge about the processes of alienation and abstraction, in short the colonization of life affected by urbanization, is truly radical only if it leads back into the complexities of daily life, of which, as Lefebvre insists, the imagination is constitutive. In this, a theoretical style (rather than a propositional system) rooted in the imagination is essential in dismantling the hegemony of abstraction and hyper-rationalism and its concomitant environmental destruction; the imagination of

Appalachian mountain religion once embodied such a style. I contend that it can once more.

A. Poiesis and Ecology: Imagination and the Earth

There are two primary themes that I want to emphasize. The first is the connection between the imagination and poiesis, a relationship that from antiquity forward has been used as justification for the dismissal of both. The second is an emphasis on the ecological dimension of the imagination, specifically as the latter helps cultivate a willingness to respond to the other. That is, if the imagination offers a means to challenge the hegemonic stasis of abstract thought (via poiesis) while decentering the subjective ego through an encounter with other beings (via ecology), if it does not challenge and reject the anthropocentric paradigm it risks remaining thoroughly trapped within what Mick Smith terms “ecological sovereignty”, a concept which grounds political decisions regarding ecological spaces and nonhuman lives within metaphysical distinctions that assert and insist

127 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 581. In this we are able to build on Lefebvre’s heterodox Marxism – including his emphasis on everyday life – while challenging his critique and rejection of religion and theology. As Stuart Elden reminds us, Lefebvre’s metaphilosophical philosophy is “a reflection on philosophy rather than the building of a system (84).” This anti-systematic philosophy represents not only the power of its critique, but its compatibility with Appalachian mountain religion. In this, Lefebvre’s emphasis on totality paradoxically challenges the traditional barriers of Western philosophy, particularly those traditions that emphasis universal knowledge (45). As we saw in chapter two, whereas the party apparatus in twentieth-century often confined Marx to purely political-economic sphere, in turn dismissing the relevance and value of the “everyday,” Lefebvre advocated a metaphilosophical Marxism that fully embraces poiesis (84). While philosophical reflection is important, evidenced in Lefebvre’s proliferate output, its value lies not so much in the knowledge gained via abstract reasoning but rather in the manner in which philosophy pushed and is pushed beyond itself (metaphilosophy). Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible. (London: Continuum, 2004).

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on an ontological boundary between the “human” and “nonhuman.”128 Put differently, the imagination must facilitate a (re)turn to nature (which as we shall see in chapters four and five is problematic for other reasons) if it seeks to foster a radical critique of urbanization and anthropocentrism.

According to Lefebvre, capitalist ideology and philosophical abstraction “takes the real, dissects its, recomposes it…simulates it…adds to the natural world a prefabricated world that does not copy nature, rather substituting for it intelligibility…[and] renders man…the man of technology and technicity.”129 Subservient to the utilitarian promises of automation, this technocratic society expels poiesis – along with nature, history, the imaginary, the deviant – from reality, rendering it a marginal residue of abstract rationality:

“The residue is the consequence of the process of autonomization. It seeks to express precisely what is expelled: the singular and freedom expelled by the state, desire and subjectivity by cybernetics, drama by mathematics, speech by language, the non- philosophical (the everyday, the ludic) by philosophy, and so forth.”130 Poiesis reminds us of the mysterious and enchanted dimension of life. It is the “creative letting go of the drive for possession, of the calculus of means and ends” and facilitates an openness to the life of the other beyond functionality or calculation.131 In short, the poetic imagination facilitates the subversion of capitalism’s technocratic abstraction.

Yet we need not mourn the marginalization of the poetic and imaginary because they

“breed outside the tumult of capitalist modernity, beyond its cacophony of screeching automobiles and gridlocked traffic, of alarms and buzzers, of ringing and technological

128 Mick Smith, Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 129 Henri Lefebvre. Metaphilosophy, 173. 130 Ibid., 11, 335. 131 Ibid., 368.

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gadgets that get in your face, gnaw away inside your brain, that stifle your imagination and prevent you from dreaming.”132 In short, a poetic dwelling within the residue of modernity’s spaces of representations enables us to “unrealize repressive realities in favour of emancipatory possibilities” and envision a space or spaces wherein “difference may converge without fusing.”133 Describing the creative acts of poetic imagination as a type of materialist magic, Andy Merrifield describes the imagination as that which “explicitly reaches out towards the utopian, towards an affective politics of hope, at the same time as it delves into the heady subcontinent of dream, of latent desire.”134

Imagination is magical because both cultivate a new way of expressing a deeper understanding of reality and a disruption of modernity’s narrative of linear progression.135

The magic of imagining is a transformative practice that “stretches what is acceptable as real to its limit”136 and “takes language, symbols, and intelligibility to their outermost limits, to explore life and thereby change its direction.”137 Indeed, Lefebvre describes the magician as someone that “evokes people who have disappeared, who are absent [and] obscure powers; he [sic] resurrects the dead and achieves the repetition or the renewal of the past. He [sic] can challenge what has been accomplished and acts as though what is, is not. He [sic] can influence the future by bringing it into the present. He [sic] changes his [sic] personality by

132 Andy Merrifield, Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination. (New York: Pluto Press, 2011), 21. Arguing for a “warm Marxism” that seeks not to engage capitalist ideology on its own terms, but rather render its oppressive, exploitative character unacceptable, Merrifield insists that the most hopeful and potentially fruitful response to capitalism is not an occupation of its bureaucratic structures, but rather a quotidian exodus wherein we burrow beneath the concrete edifice o5f capitalist power and “hope our tunnels are long enough to reach the woods (108).” 133 Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Post-modern. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), 228, 227. 134 Merrifield, 10. 135 Maggie Bowers, Magic(al) Realism. (London: Routledge, 2004), 8-9. 136 Ibid., 22. 137 Rodger Cunningham, “The Green Side of Life: Appalachian Magic as a Site of Resistance.” Appalachian Heritage 38, 2 (2010), 55.

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identifying a wide variety of beings…in a participation.”138 The magical act is imaginative not because it points to the sleight of hand or feats of illusion, but rather because it brings the self into an existential encounter with a multiplicity of beings, in which the self is “struck and shaken by the extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and the everyday.”139 For the

Appalachian, this encounter is inextricably rooted in the land, in the elemental earth.

Indeed, as Rodger Cunningham, the mountaineer’s “sense of identity is not located inside his skin; [but] in many ways, and especially in the time [and space] dimension, it is located in the world with which he shares his being,” the poetic opening towards otherness cannot be limited to other humans.140 Indeed, the Appalachian’s bodily sense of mutual reciprocity between earth and self was, for the industrialist, local-color essayist, and the home missionary a “genetic and cultural extraction…from a…world which had not yet defined itself from its elemental womb of Nature.”141 However, what bourgeois logic represents as a fatalistic subordination of the human before nature is in the daily existence of the mountaineer a false dichotomy dependent on an artificially constructed dualism of domination and submission.142 Opposed to the urban inflected domination of nature,

Cunningham argues that mountaineers choose solemn and joyful participation in Creation, such that where the industrialist, local-color essayist, and home missionary saw the mountains and its inhabitants as objects to be pitied, exploited, and manipulated, the mountaineer saw the ridges, hollers, and valleys as others encountered in their everyday

138 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 583. 139 Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4. See also Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 9-10. 140 Rodger Cunningham, Apples on the Flood: Minority Discourse and Appalachia. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 97. 141 Ibid.., 95. 142 Ibid., 96.

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lives.143 In this, Appalachian cultural history lends itself to what John Sallis calls the

“elemental force of the imagination.”

The elemental dimensions of the imagination are radical to such an extent that it embodies the utopic retrieval of life and stories betrayed by our perpetual and assumed detachment from the earth. “Assumed” because, despite our efforts to the contrary, despite our attempts to cover over and erase the concrete lives of nature, “we are always already turned toward nature, thoroughly engaged with it from the moment we draw our first breath, walking upon the earth and depending on the stability it offers to us and to the shelters we build upon it.”144 While Sallis’ argument for a (re) turning to nature does not entail an embrace of rural space, his reflections on Platonic philosophy parallel my own critiques of its fundamentally urban character, and by extension dismissal of rural life (in this case the chora). Platonic philosophy entailed a turn from wild nature and elemental life to the city and human life, in which we live distractedly.145 Bernard Freydberg notes that Sallis’ use of the term “distracted” is intentional, specifically given the etymological origin of “- tract” – trahere, “to draw.” Urban life is distracting because it draws us, literally and symbolically, away from the earth and wild nature. Thus, the Socratic contention that the

“country places and trees have nothing to teach him” embodies the circular logic of a philosophical discourse that “is framed by the political discourses it would ultimately serve.”146 Indeed, Platonic philosophy is concerned with the political because it occurs, it is practiced, within the polis; our liberation from the captivity of the image into the realm of the original Forms necessitates and depends on a liberation from the cave to the city. Within the walls of the polis and its overarching discursive frame, the countryside (chora) and wild

143 Ibid., 99. 144 John Sallis, “The Elemental Turn”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50, no. 2 (2012), 346. 145 John Sallis, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 3. 146 Ibid., 25.

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nature are secured at the margins of being, emptied of life and “understood – interpreted – to be available for all kinds of use for human purposes.”147 Our drawing away from the earth and drawing towards the city marks the beginning of our objectifying manipulation of

“nature.”

Perhaps more significantly, our distracted lives entail a forgetfulness that, when detached ground of our being – the earth – we literally cannot “be human.”148 Sallis insists that the “earthbound human” must once again draw herself – be attracted to – the earth, wild nature, and elements.149 Evoking Nietzsche’s call to “remain true to the earth,” he argues that the (re)turn to wild nature and the elemental “would remove the [political] frame

[and] contest the hegemony of (at least a certain) ethics and politics, venturing to become, as it were, more pre-Socratic [and] reinstall the human in wild nature and its bearing on the earth and beneath the sky, returning human nature to nature.”150 As such, turning to nature is as much a re-turn as it is a new movement; a radical turn, wherein “radical” evokes roots of the past as they enable us to imagine the future.151

Here we must note the contrast between “natural things” and the elements. Whereas the latter evoke an encompassing and indefinite monstrosity that exceeds the proportions of humans, “natural things” are manipulable, more easily understood and confined by a system of measurements; a “thing” of nature resides at the limit of human culture, even as it (it is always an ‘it’) serves as the material foundation for such culture.152 As “individuated,” such a

147 Bernard Freydberg, The Thought of John Sallis: Phenomenology, Plato, Imagination. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 149. 148 Sallis, Force of Imagination, 171. 149 Freydberg, 292. 150 Sallis, Force of Imagination, 25. 151 Ibid., 13. 152 John Sallis, Logic of Imagination: The Elemental Expanse. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 348- 349. Photographer Mike Oblinski has created a series of black and white videos of cloud formations, monsoons, and tornados that vividly portray the kind of overwhelming presence that Sallis” associates with the elements. In slowing down that movement of clouds or bursts or rain, Oblinksi offers the viewer an intimate

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natural thing is quantifiable, potentially given over to the abstract predicates of mathematical proposition. Sallis writes, “Nature is decomposed in order that natural things, deprived of their retreat, might be assimilated to the sphere of what can be governed, controlled, and ultimately – for this is the very sense of operative here – made produced.”153 Thus for example, a piece of coal is a “natural thing” – produced through natural processes of heating and compression – yet immanently open to the governing hand of the market. According to the logic of objectified “thing-ness”, the seam of coal lies buried in the recesses of the earth, dormant in static repose, and awaiting discovery and extraction by the industrialist’s penetrative hand.

Yet how might we identify the fundamental difference between the “plant” and

“coal?” As with the piece of coal, it is possible to categorize, to quantify and measure, a forest, be it singular or the collective. Conceived as arboreal stock for the proliferation of a civilized order, the “forest” in this instance is purged of whatever dynamism and vitality it once might have possessed and declared a dead “thing,” raw material to be utilized however the human subject desires. Through such a process, the forest ceases to be a forest and becomes instead a “representation,” a signifier of an abstract concept that can be subordinated to preconceived ideas about the “life” of a forest and its functionality in the human world. Ostensibly then, we can surmise little discernible difference between a piece of coal and a forest. And yet, Sallis identifies the forest – along with the earth, sky, sea, wind and rain – as something “other” than a thing.154 What accounts for this distinction? Why could it be that the “tree” within the forest or “coal” below the mountain are “natural

look at the overwhelming power and presence – the monstrosity – of the wind and water that we experience as “weather.” Clouds pulsate and roll across the horizon, bursts of rain are released in bursts, and we witness the dynamism of these elemental formations. We should note the importance of Oblinksi’s use of motion-capture technology in the videos, without which we would not be able to perceive the storms at a slower speed. 153 Sallis, Force of Imagination., 152. 154 Sallis, “The Elemental Turn,” 347

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things” surrounded by “elementals?” Or, how might we speak of the “forest” and

“mountain” as elementals?

Certainly, the “tree,” whether at an individual or species level, is quite different from the forest that encompasses it. We can identify the tree according to the taxonomic criteria of its constitutive parts: leaf, bark, fruit, twig, or form. In this, it is easy to individuate a tree according to human needs, whether understood at a subsistence or market level. Similarly, this type of identification is more amenable to scientific abstraction and reduction.

However, we can similarly break down a forest into its constitutive parts – trees, soil, animals

– and it is equally the case that the forest is only elemental – is encompassing – because it is a collective of trees. Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter, the forest (and the mountain) can be rendered a “thing” – something “governed, controlled…and made produced.” What then is it that makes the “elemental” different from the “natural thing?” If, at an ontological level, they are ultimately composed of the same material, why does Sallis insist on their distinction? I contend that the difference between “elementals” and “natural things” as Sallis understands them hinges on how we relate to or interact with nature – abstractly or imaginatively.155

155 See also Edward Casey, Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). Casey offers a helpful rejoinder: “The proper language or idiolect of wilderness is that of natural things. By ‘natural things’ I mean not just things whose genesis and formation have occurred independently of human technologies but things that bespeak Nature. For the most part, such things are pregiven physical objects, maters of physis in its primordial configurations: tree, bush, flower, reed, rock, boulder…Things taken in this primordial sense area as much places as they are discrete objects, and finally both at once. Take a mountain: is it a thing or a place? It is an elemental thing-place. The mountain looms before us as a massive place for things and as itself as a thing. It looms as a Thing of things [collective of things], just as stones and lichen on stones are in turn things of this Thing. Furthermore, just as such determinate things as rocks have and make their own determinate places, so a monumental mountain-Thing is a place of its own, albeit a nondeterminate place: where exactly does a mountain begin or end? (216).” Applying a more explicitly theological sheen, as will be done in the following chapter, we might substitute Casey’s language of “Things” for “creature.” In either case, his reflection on the “thing-ness” of “natural things” helpfully reminds us of the malleability of our language, particularly as we speak of/about the complexity of more than human life. Consequentially, he complicates Sallis’ terminology while expanding its import.

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For Sallis, the “force of imagination” – as a self-showing of those “things” that are strange or alien to us – need not be reduced (and in turn abstracted) to a rote process of fantastical imagining devoid of any truth.156 Rather, he questions whether our understanding of imagination should embrace an “anterior operation” that is not only constitutive of what we term “imagining” but equally so what we consider perception. In short, Sallis seeks to retrieve and construct a connection between “imagination” and sense apart from our efforts to conceptualize it as an abstract process. The turn to the sensible and elemental draws on imagination because it is through the imagination – rather than rational conceptualization – that humans are able to “return to that which, as the very condition of life, we are already turned.”157 Such an imaginative turn to the elemental is a re-turn because “human beings…are encompassed by the elemental…by earth and sky, also by the life-supporting air that in various guises fills the expands between earth and sky, usually by other elements as well that run together in this expanse and in their various concurrences are spread indefinitely across it. Human beings (and indeed other living beings, in their own way) belong to the elemental to such an extent that outside such belonging they could not be the beings they are.”158 This elemental turn facilitates an attentiveness to our earthy existence, wherein we are able to open ourselves “to the solicitation of the elemental.”159 And herein lies the truly radical dimension of Sallis’ argument.

If the imagination draws us into an ethical encounter with the other, Sallis pushes this argument to its limit. The imagination has a “force” because it does not originate in the human mind, or perhaps more clearly it is not limited to or primarily expressed through human cognition. Rather, what makes Sallis’ work so important is his insistence that “wild

156 Sallis, Force of Imagination., 6. 157 Sallis, “The Elemental Turn”, 346. 158 Sallis, Force of Imagination, 171. 159 Ibid.

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nature” and the “elementals” reveal or show themselves through the imagination. Freydberg writes

Tractive imagination [an imagination that draws forth] become elemental…The title of [the] work begins to come into full view: Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental. If one recalls the polysemantic play of “sense” – especially as it occurs in “the sense of sense” – one notes that force of imagination is precisely that which elicits both sense as apprehension and sense as what is said in logos provoked by apprehension. Always in play even as it recedes, force of imagination itself becomes the foreground and background with which the elements draw forward and backward, As such, while distinguishable from them, imagination “grows into them” imagination itself becomes elemental.160

In the “force of imagination”, the human mind does not construct the elements or wild nature, but rather encounters such elemental or wild otherness as it shows itself to us.161

Sallis’ discussion of the “elemental” is invaluable in expanding our sense the poetic magic of ethical encounter and draws our attention to the ontological vitality of wildness, an imagery that will be critical to my interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of “the flesh.”

I have focused on the work of Henri Lefebvre and John Sallis for two primary reasons. From Lefebvre, we are given an understanding of the “imagination” as an essential resource or dimension for challenging philosophical abstraction. Specifically, his emphasis on poiesis and the residue is invaluable in recognizing both the value of Appalachian mountain religion. That is, just as the imagination has been derided in the western philosophical tradition, equally so has Appalachian religion been rendered marginal by mainline denominational Christianity. Within this context, the “imaginative act” becomes a means of entering into a different perspective on reality so as to critique the present through a creative appropriation of the past. Accordingly, as Lefebvre demonstrates, the imagination cultivates an awareness of the irreducible mystery and otherness of reality.

160 Freydberg, 246. 161 Ibid., 344.

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Sallis provides a kind of ecological decentering of the imagination. While not denying the human dimension of that imagination, his emphasis on the “elemental” orients us towards a more than human reality. Here the imagination is not so much the sole purview of human agency, but rather that, which facilitates an encounter with nature.

Accordingly, the imagination as residue is deepened and stretched beyond margins that are occupied only by humans and into the concrete interdependence of the human/nature relationship. Consequently, the imagination not only facilitates a creative appropriation of the cultural past (Appalachian mountain religion) but necessitates a humbling of human pretense in an encounter with an “elemental” other (Appalachian mountain religion).

Bringing Lefebvre and Sallis into dialogue allows us to construct an understanding of

“the imagination” is a critical tool in not only retrieving certain aspects of Appalachian mountain religion (Lefebvre) but employing them in the pursuit of a more ecological or environmental religiosity (Sallis). Attention to the elemental – and I think on this point we must concretize and particularize our discussion – pulls the human beyond herself through a reciprocal imaginative movement. If the imagination is relational, then the (re)turn to

“nature” – to the other-than-human – (re)turns the human to the elemental origin of her existence. However, if we fail to concretize or particularize our initial reflections on the movement between the imagination and the elemental, we will subsequently fail to fully appreciate the ways in which the former is constituted by and through the latter. In other words, turning to “nature” in the abstract does little to actually challenge the abstract theology of denominational home missionaries. Appealing to the ecocritical work of Steven

Mentz and Michael Marder’s will give us the tools to read the particular experience of Edna

Alexander and the particular theological tradition of Appalachian mountain religion in light of an elemental imagination. Herein lies the promise of Appalachian mountain religion – in

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returning to a theological imagery of a particular place, of specific hollers and ridgelines with concrete histories, we enter into a “reality that may be quite unfamiliar, where a bird or a stone just might have something important to say to us.”162 In short, we have to (re)turn to a pile of dead leaves.

B. Living in the Brown: Edna Alexander and the Encounter with Dead Leaves

Recall from the beginning of this chapter that for Edna Alexander, the adoption of brown attire was an evocation of not only a simple, agrarian lifestyle, but the profound theological values of humility and simplicity. Accordingly, she understood herself as embodying a pattern of holiness that echoed the prophetic witness of the biblical narrative.

I do not want to dismiss this understanding and explanation. Rather I want to approach it from a different perspective. Selectively drawing on the ecocritical work of Steven Mentz and Michael Marder, I want to emphasize both the color of her vision and the object – the leaves.

From her testimony, it is clear that Alexander emphasizes the color of the leaves.

From this perspective, the dark brown hue of decay and fecundity evoke the values of humility and simplicity that she considers fundamental holy living. Here, it is important to recognize the more overt theological aspects of her experience, particularly as they connect her vision to the broader theological character of Appalachian mountain religion.

One, while Alexander’s vision certainly represents the priority placed on the individual religious experience, her understanding of it is shaped by her membership in a religious community that while prohibiting female preachers nonetheless provides a space for “unofficial” female leadership. Here, her identification of the woman in her vision as a

“prophetess” and her subsequent self-naming of the same title is indicative of the egalitarian

162 Andy Fisher. Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. (Albany: State University of New York, 2002), 13.

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ethos that characterizes Appalachian mountain religion. Indeed, whether consider a

“preacher” or “prophetess,” Alexander’s role as a religious and community leader is irrefutable and her vision is all the more powerful because of the decentered, relatively non- hierarchical ecclesiology that characterizes mountain Christianity. In this, and in her subsequent visions of Elijah and Jesus, Alexander clearly locates herself within the prophetic tradition .163

Two, we must emphasize the extent to which Alexander did not immediately

“follow” her vision. The three-year period of prayerful discernment reinforces not only her submission to the presence of the Holy Spirit, but the value of humility that is so essential to mountain religiosity. Here, it is clear that Alexander recognizes the significance of this particular experience and while it does not necessarily alter the fundamental patterns of her daily life, from her testimony it is clear that she recognizes its peculiarity; indeed, she wrote it in order to explain herself to people that mocked and questioned her appearance.164

Clearly, the theological dimensions of Alexander’s vision reflect the values and beliefs of Appalachian mountain religion. She identifies her lifestyle and vision with the work of the Holy Spirit and explains both in reference to the prophetic tradition.

Additionally, her willingness to patiently and prayerfully discern her vision is emblematic of the humility that defines Appalachian Christianity. However, when rooted in the context of an “elemental imagination,” Alexander’s vision and the Appalachian mountain religiosity that it embodies, evoke a fundamental awareness of our inextricable rootedness in the earth.

Here the color of her dress is more than a prismatic reminder of humility or simplicity.

Rather, the dark brown hue evokes that which is irreducibly problematic in a civilization that identifies truth or value with respectability and purity. As Steven Mentz

163 McCauley, 164. 164 Ibid.

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argues, brown is the color of that which “you cannot cover up, that will not go away.”165

Brown signifies the waste that we try to wash away or hide in the pipes beneath our streets.

It is the color of rust and decay, of mud and sewage. It is the color of our bodily vulnerability and possible humiliation. And as the prophetess is not the only figure to dress herself in cloth the same color as Alexander, “brown” is the color of prophetic witness, of

Jesus and Elijah. Indeed, Mentz helps us recognize that the language and imagery of

Alexander’s testimony is not incidental but infused with theological resonance.

For example, her vision explicitly identifies the color with the Son of God and a major Hebrew prophet – “then I had another dream…one night that I talked with Elijah and he was dressed in men’s clothing the same color as mine…and I had another one that I talked with Jesus and he was also dressed in clothes the color of mine.”166 While Alexander provides no explicit statement or clue about what these conversations entailed, employing an elemental imagination helps to engage in the kind of Appalachian midrash that McCauley considers essential to Appalachian mountain religion.167 Thus, if “brown” is the color that

“repel(s),” the vision of Jesus in brown cloth subverts any pretense to divine purity.

“Brown” is the color of divine healing, of dusty hands that made the lame walk or the dirt and spit that gave sight to a blind man. “Brown” is that which does not recoil from the sick, but presses against their flesh in acts of compassion and solidarity. Indeed, Edna

Alexander’s vocation a local midwife and healer therefore not only locates her within an

“oral midwifery mountain culture” that was “deeply steeped in traditional healing arts”, but

165 Steve Mentz, “Brown” in Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond the Green, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 193. Mentz acknowledges at the beginning of his article the racial dimensions of the color brown: “I cannot help remembering without being overcome by our culture’s most insistently social brown, human skin color. This racialized brown stains my metaphors, so that it is difficult to argue that brown is the color of shit, excess, and revulsion without courting racist codes. This chapter wants to bracket race and explore brown as an organic-inorganic borderlands, a swampy terrain of hybridity and exchange (194).” 166 McCauley, 164. 167 Ibid., 76.

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equally so within the biblical narrative of divine power and faith.168 A Jesus dressed in the color of “stinking goo” must intensify our sense of his radicalism, for that which stinks and repels is often that which we associate with the poor and oppressed.169 To see Jesus and

Elijah clothed in the color of the mountain prophetess thus reinforces the egalitarian, prophetic witness that McCauley associates with Appalachian mountain religion.

Alexander’s brown clothes are an embodiment of a religious tradition in which “making room for the other” is the clearest witness to identification with Christ.170 Indeed, McCauley notes that at one point Alexander opened her home to a mentally ill woman that had been wandering throughout the area, providing her with shelter, clothing, and food.171 Recalling the anecdote from Loyal Jones regarding the mountain preacher and the “mud turtle,” we might say that baptism into a new life of Christ is an immersion into the brown, into a kind of divine tincture that subverts the empty sterility of religious abstraction, for however sanitized we might try to make our work, our homes, and our selves we cannot escape the

“brown” of life. Nor should we want to, for in its inexhaustible presence

brown captures a connecting opacity at the heart of ecological thinking…[and] comes at us from both sides of our world, the living and the dead…brown pushes us into hybrid spaces that span living and nonliving matter, aesthetic values and biological drives…Brown is the color of intimate and uncomfortable contact between human bodies and the nonhuman world…To be ecological is to be brown, disturbingly.172

Within this context, we are able to more clearly recognize the ecological connotations of

Edna Alexander’s vision. As her brown dress evokes the humility of Appalachian mountain religion it draws our attention to the brown humus that sustains her own life. Accordingly,

168 Ibid., 165. We must note here the risk and vulnerability that a belief in “divine healing” entails. While Edna Alexander was frequently called upon to pray for physical healing, she was intimately familiar with the possibility of death that such practices contained. McCauley notes that when her husband Vincent suffered a rupture appendix in December, 1989, neither one of the Alexander’s wanted to go the hospital for treatment. 169 Mentz, 193. 170 Wirzba, 53. 171 McCauley, 165. 172 Mentz, 193.

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her agrarian simplicity is not only culturally and religiously meaningful, but points to an ecological significance as well. On one hand, Alexander does not offer an explicitly ecological interpretation of her dreams, nor does she appeal to any kind of ecocritical theory.

This is to be expected and is not altogether problematic given the theological and religious focus of her witness. In other words, Alexander’s vision is not, for her at least, specifically about her relationship to the land, but rather focuses on her experience of the Holy Spirit, her submission to God’s will, and her desire to embody a holy life. On the other hand as

McCauley acknowledge, Alexander’s “clothes symbolize her total identification with her natural environment as sacred space” and awareness that, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, “close ties to the earth open wide channels to God.”173 Approaching

Alexander’s vision with an “elemental imagination” allows us to recognize what is already there, the equally important, yet perhaps overlooked, aspect of this vision, its object. For while “brown” is the color of Jesus and Elijah, the prophetess and Edna Alexander, it is also the hue of dead leaves.

To claim, as she does, that she is “so much the color of the leaves” is a prismatic evocation of a kind of messy intertwining between life and death, human and nonhuman. It is a statement that draws us into the decentered and decentering existential subjectivity of plant life. Here the previous discussion concerning the interdependence between the imagination and the earth helps us recognize the latent, yet potent, ecological dimensions of

Alexander’s religious mysticism. Recall that in the preceding subsection I emphasized 1) the role of the imagination in retrieving marginal/marginalized traditions in order to challenge abstract thought and 2) the elemental or natural dimensions of the imagination as decentering human agency and subjectivity. In synthesizing the work Henri Lefebvre and

173 McCauley, 164, 166.

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John Sallis, I sought to articulate an argument for the imagination as provoking and/or cultivating a reconsideration of humanity’s relationship with more-than-human life. Edna

Alexander’s mystical experience is both indicative of this kind of imagination and necessitates its own reimagining. That is, my central thesis of this subsection specifically and this chapter more generally is that as Edna Alexander is shaped by and embodies

Appalachian mountain religion’s distinctive theological sensibility, she opens a space to reimagine its equally distinctive theological imagery. And so let us return one last time to her testimony, specifically one section:

About four or five years later, maybe longer, Devona [her youngest child] and I were walking down the mountain and something just said to me to step over in the leaves out of the road. That was the first that I knew I looked like that [prophetess]. I looked back at my little girl…and said, “Look at me, this how that [prophetess] looked that I saw. If I sat down you could hardly see me I am so much the color of the leaves. Just like that [prophetess]”.174

We have discussed how her vision is indicative of Appalachian mountain religion’s theological values. However, if we shift our perspective ever so slightly, if we approach this particular section with an “earthy imagination” two subtle, yet profound and intertwined, aspects assume even greater significance the voice that called her over to the leaves and the possible immersion in the leaves.

To be “of the leaves” is to enter into what Michael Marder describes as “the trope of being exposed” and the “provisional unity of multiplicities.”175 We should note that the two, apparently contradictory statements – Marder’s emphasis on “being exposed” and

Alexander’s awareness that you could “hardly see her” if she sat in the pile of leaves – are not so much in tension or conflict, as distinct but complementary. Marder wants to challenge traditional philosophical argument for immutability and security that have

174 Ibid., 64. 175 Michael Marder. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 82, 84.

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accompanied rejections of plant life. “Vegetal exposure” is thus another way of referring to the vulnerability that plants experience. Alexander’s statement is primarily concerned with demonstrating the extent to which her brown clothes match the color of the leaf pile.

Despite this difference, the two statements are consonant, particularly as regards Alexander’s identification with the leaves. Accordingly, Alexander’s possible “disappearance” into the pile of leaves entails an embrace of the ontological “exposure” that Marder identifies with plant life. It is to assert a fundamental conviviality at the heart of existence. More than a logical reconceptualization or ethical reconfiguration of our relationships with plants, embracing the vegetal requires an alternative imagination. Indeed, Marder contends, “as soon as we try to imagine, at the edge of our imaginative capacity, the perspectives of those beings that live unconcerned with symbolic meaning…The old questions about the ‘meaning of life’ should…give way to questions about the meanings of lives (both human and nonhuman) that arise, practically and concretely, from the heterogeneous vivacious activity of every single creature, including a plant.”176 With regards to plant life, we can identify three particular qualities that serve to destabilize anthropocentrism: growth, place, and gift, all three of which cannot be understood apart from one another.

Marder claims that part of the problem with both conceptual and practical accounts of plant life is our inability to actually perceive the soul – its growth, its movement – of the plant. Plant life embodies an inherently different “pace and rhythm of movement,” than humans and animals.177 An argument that is not altogether controversial, except Marder’s point is to deny the philosophical attribution of an ontologically insufficiency.178 For

Aristotle, the plant is defective because it does not obey the parameters of metaphysical nor

176 Ibid., 35. 177 Ibid., 21. 178 Ibid., 23.

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attains towards an established telos.179 The “soul” of the plant is limitless and its growth seemingly without end; weeds and wilderness – plant life seemingly without purpose or intent – are identified as prime exemplars of this point.180 Against this interpretation, Marder describes the propensity of vegetal being towards limitless growth as “an incessant, wild proliferation, a becoming-spatial and a becoming-literal of intentionality” that resists and transcends the conceptual enframing of modern philosophy.181 The soul of the plant is not akin to human logos or animal mobility, but this is precisely the point.

Marder’s reference to “becoming” and “spatiality” are critical, and indicate the extent to which “plant being,” its particular ontos, subverts standard accounts of “being.” Indeed, whereas traditional definitions of ontology might emphasize stasis or permanence, a vegetal ontology posits a “becoming [that] is not opposed to being…[but] is the primary modality of a being’s segmentation, the process whereby this stuff called being…‘structures itself and becomes’ as an emergent series of individuation.”182 The image of plant life offered represents a radical divergence from the atomistic subjectivity of modern anthropology, one that is non-oppositional and dispersive, “characterized by the promise of life and growth, not the avoidance of death and loss.”183 Indeed, for both Elaine Miller and Jeffrey Nealon, the “life” of plants is not confined or limited by a barrier between organism and world, but rather is the “coemergence of the entity with its territory.”184 In its existential dependence upon the fecund earth within which it subsists “the plant does not stand under the injunction, ostensibly relevant to all other types of subjectivity, to cordon itself off from its surroundings, to negate its connection to a place, so that it can fully become itself as a

179 Ibid., 23-25. 180 Ibid., 27. 181 Ibid., 37, 22, 24. 182 Jeffrey Nealon. Plant Theory: Biopower and Vegetable Life. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 86. 183 Elaine Miller, “Vegetable Genius” in Re-Thinking Nature, ed. Bruce Foltz and Robert Frodeman. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 116. 184 Nealon, 90.

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consequence of this oppositional stance.”185 The plant – like the mountaineer – is a “placed” being, co-creative of its habitat and literally and figuratively rooted the material ground.186

Discussing the sense of sacredness that many Appalachians attribute to the land, Richard

Humphrey offers the following from a resident of Watauga County, North Carolina:

Our people are attached to the valleys and mountains all around surrounding us. It’s been home for generations. They have the land, the place…probably more than the cities…How can people keep from having faith if they see this – you see God all around us…God put this here for us to live on, not destroy it. He wants us to keep it beautiful. People offer money for our land but we don’t want to sell it. You just don’t want to be cut off from the sacredness of your home and land.187

Some aspects of her statement are problematic. For example, we can read a kind of objectification of the land as simply a “physical surrounding” or “natural context” for a particular life. Nevertheless, this woman’s comment speaks to an attitude that, as McCauley and Humphrey have demonstrated, is emblematic of Appalachian mountain religion’s understanding of the human/nature relationship. The mountains of Appalachia, its creeks and soil, nourish a religious sensibility and theological disposition in much the same way that the plant is “coemergent” with its place. Appalachian mountain religion exists because of its topographical roots.

Against conceptions of life as something to be fought over, the rhyme and reason of our interactions with other beings as inherently one of conflict, the plant embodies a “kind of primordial generosity that gives itself to all other creatures, animates them with this gift, parts against itself, and in this parting and falling apart invites the participation of beings in the acts of the living.”188 Life is collective, one of cohabitation and coevolution. And while

185 Marder, 69. 186 Nealon, 96. 187 Humphrey, 124. 188 Nealon, 46.

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each of us exists as singular beings, we do so only as participants in the whirl of an ever- present Being. The plant confronts us with a life that

is not something…owned by organism, something hidden deep within it, or to be protected against the outside at all costs; [but] rather, life [as] the territory for the emergence of ‘interkingdoms,’ assemblages of heterogeneous process. The animal territory for thematizing life, however important and apt it may be, tends to focus our attention on the…competition among individual organisms to the detriment of this robust sense of distributed, interconnected life.189

Consequently, as the human encounters the plant’s polymorphic generosity, if s/he is able to recognize it, embrace it, s/he is confronted with an ontology that resists the “metaphysical violence seeking to eliminate differences,” of which industrial capitalism (and as I have argued urbanization) are fundamental expressions.190

And so the pile of dead leaves confronts Edna Alexander (and by extension us) with an ontology that challenges human pretension and draws her into a thoroughly peculiar way of life. In her testimony, she does not identify the voice that calls her over to the pile of leaves, but we could legitimately surmise that she would point to the Holy Spirit, or Jesus, or

Elijah, or God, all of which locates the voice in a somewhat traditionally transcendent realm.

In them, she hears the Holy Spirit calling her to a life of humble simplicity, in turn confirming the value and vibrancy of her religious tradition. Her vision of “brown leaves” must therefore be situated within the broader context of Appalachian mountain religion, particular as it reinforces the importance of place, specifically the hollers, paths, and ridgelines of the Appalachian mountains, in the development of a unique religious sensibility.

In short, her vision is in many ways an embodiment of the unique theology that characterized Appalachian mountain religion, specifically its emphasis on the Holy Spirit, experience, and place.

189 Ibid., 119. 190 Ibid., 54.

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Yet what if “the voice” were the leaves themselves? What if they speak and call her to them? What if it is the leaves that beckon her to a form of holy living that they themselves partake of? What if we take Alexander’s possible immersion into the pile of leaves seriously?

What if they desire to envelop her into their peculiar way of life? From such a perspective,

Edna Alexander’s vegetal hued clothing provokes the Appalachian to reconsider his/her relationship with God and to the ground upon which s/he treads.

Indeed, as she becomes a concrete embodiment of the mutual porosity that exists between the self and plant, her understanding of holiness and divine presence, her sense of place and value, must therefore be seen as an encounter with vegetal otherness. In her vision she is grafted, indeed grafts herself, into “elemental caress” that “demands a minimum of synchronicity,” in turn opening herself and begin opened to a shared willingness to inhabit a common world.191 The “leaf” does not merely represent the “environment” or

“nature.” Nor is it a static or passive reference point. Rather, in its self-showing, the leaves draw Alexander into a theological sensibility constituted not by abstract thought but embodied mutuality. Here, the “multiplicity of equals” that constitutes the Appalachian mountain religious community is expanded to include not just a pile of dead leaves and grass but the whole of the mountains themselves. Accordingly, the plants – trees and leaves, grass and bushes – which enfold the plain-folk camp meeting, partake in and embody the tender- heartedness that flows throughout the community.192 The tearful expressions of love and cooperation evoke a Christian spirit that involves “a resonance of multiplicities comprising the subjectivities of friends.”193 And the cooperative spirit that rejects the violent competition of denominational evangelization and capitalist urbanization embodies the kind

191 Michael Marder. Grafts: Writings on Plants. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 25, 28. 192 McCauley, 226. 193 Marder, Grafts, 31.

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of “radical pluralism comprised of the all-too-human and the other-than-human existences” that characterizes vegetal life.194 The leaves and grass, living at the margins of human culture, are therefore paradigmatic symbols of a theological imagination that has been rendered residual by metropolitan abstraction.

Similarly, in this vision the religious value of humility becomes a posture that echoes the generosity of vegetal humus. Here, the Appalachian hospitality rooted in a “loving heart” echoes the plant’s “welcoming the other…turning oneself into the passage for the other without violating or dominating it, without endeavoring to swallow up its very otherness in one’s…interiority.”195 From this perspective, Edna Alexander’s belief in and practice of “divine healing” is rooted in her experiences of the Holy Spirit and fecund humus. The “hospitality” that she extends to her neighbors is thus a response to the gift of life offered to her by God and the soil and her identification with “the leaves” embodies a willingness to be “final residue…of bodies” that “makes room…shares…heals.”196 As

William Logan Bryant writes,

What does the root hum- mean? It must have to do with humble, or with humilis, humiliate. Those words come from roots meaning “of the ground lowly.” But humus does not refer to the ground itself. It refers to the end product of decaying litter and dead creatures….When we start to comprehend this in widening circles of the world, we know something worth knowing. We know that we must become responsible.197

Edna Alexander’s mystical experience is rooted, literally and symbolically, in the decaying composition of a hospitable humus. And in her identification with the pile of dead leaves, she embodies an acutely ecological religiosity and offers a profound rebuke of abstract theological and religious systems. While we should not ignore the spiritual dimensions of

194 Marder, Plant-Thinking, 58. 195 Ibid., 185. 196 William Logan Bryant. Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), 14, 19. 197 Ibid., 15, 16.

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mountain religiosity, we must remember the extent to which its pneumatology and spirituality has been fundamentally connected to and shaped by the mountain topography.

The humility, simplicity, and affectivity that characterize Appalachian mountain religion must therefore be understood as emerging in the encounter between a theological tradition and the concrete materiality of place. In a conflict between the abstraction of a disembodied denominational orthodoxy and materialism of an earthy holiness revivalism, Edna

Alexander’s theological vision reveals the beauty and vulnerability of identifying with the wild fecundity of dead leaves.

V. Conclusion

The primary goal of this chapter has been a retrieval and re-imagining of the distinctive theological imagery and religious sensibility of Appalachian mountain religion. I began with a detailed discussion of the tradition, focusing in particular on the importance of place and community and the values of humility and experience. Here, I emphasize the extent to which the distinctive topography of the region contributes to the communal practices and religious values of Appalachian mountain religion. In short, it is important to recognize the vitality and dynamism of this religious tradition in order to properly understand the impact that denominational home missionaries had on the region.

Accordingly, I turn to this period in Appalachian history in section three. Focusing specifically on the figures of the local color essayist and denominational home missionary, I argue that the late 19th century represented a fundamental transformation of Appalachia.

Here, the “metropolitan representations” of the region emphasized the perceived peculiarity of its inhabitants. More pointedly, the local color essayists’ attempts to “describe”

Appalachia for their fellow metropolitans rendered the latter “peculiar” and “problematic.”

More importantly, it was based on these representations that denominational home

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missionaries justified their entry into the region and subsequence dismantling of the region’s distinct religious tradition. However, while these figures were successful in a number of respects, there remain elements of not only is experiential pneumatology, but more importantly its environmental or nature sensibility. In order to recognize these points, we must look at Appalachian mountain religion through an explicitly ecological framework.

Indeed, the language or grammar of ‘Christian theology’ was articulated in a specific way by the denominational home missionaries, to such an extent that that which was considered aberrant or heterodox or unacceptable was precisely those beliefs and practices that materially and symbolically rooted the people in the land. The source material that I have chosen, therefore, indicates the extent to which a specific form of theological language/grammar - denominational orthodoxy - was used to reject and discard the religious sensibility, and therefore particular language and symbolism, of Appalachian Christianity.

In the final section, I returned to the chapter’s opening vignette in order to identify and emphasize the subtly ecological/environmental elements of Appalachian mountain religion. Drawing on the work John Sallis, I contend that the imagination provides an invaluable resource for understanding and interpreting Appalachian mountain religion.

Here, I focus on the color (brown) and object (leaves) of Edna Alexander’s dream vision, in turn arguing that it points to a material and symbolic intertwining between the human and the vegetal. Accordingly, Alexander provides an example of a religious imagination that must be retrieved, particularly if the environmental destruction that afflicts the region is to be countered. In so doing, we are able to re-enchant our home and cultivate a poetic praxis of resistance to an urbanization and its concomitant religiosity. By returning to “the green”

– and the brown and grey – Appalachian religion might remember its history and

(re)embrace the spontaneity of the wild so as to create spaces outside the exploitative logic

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of capitalism. The “vegetal being” of Edna Alexander challenges us to a daily remembrance of the “elemental womb” out of which we emerge.198

198 Cunningham, Apples on the Flood, 95.

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CHAPTER FOUR

ELEMENTAL BRIERS AND WILD CLIFFS: MERLEAU-PONTY, URBAN

DISCARNATION, AND THE PROVOCATIONS OF THE FLESH

“No wonder one feels a magic exhilaration when these pavements are touched, when the manifold currents of life that flow through the pores of rock are considered.” - John Muir

“Everything in the world of things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

I. Vignette – Eastern Kentucky, Late-Nineteenth Century

In 1883, Hamilton Pierson, a former Bible distributor for the American Tract Society and president of Kentucky’s Cumberland College, reflected on his time spent traveling throughout the mountainous regions of eastern Kentucky for the American Bible Society and recorded his impressions of the region’s people and their religious traditions. A self- proclaimed “brush breaker” - those members of “official Christianity” tasked with converting, some might say subverting, Appalachian mountaineer religiosity - Pierson titled his work In the Brush; Or, Old-Time Social, Political, and Religious Life in the Southwest, and in so doing evoked a powerful cultural and spatial eponym for the Appalachian mountains and its people. Associating the “religious life” of Appalachia with a topographical signifier of the region’s conceived unruly natural environment and uncivilized inhabitants, Pierson’s book did not differ all that much from other religious tracts about the region and contributed to

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the cultural representation of the region as a deviation from the established norms of denominational Christian orthodoxy.1

And yet, in important ways, Pierson’s work diverged from the majority of home missionary texts on the area, primarily in the, if not appreciative, positive appraisal of the

Appalachian mountain religion; Deborah Vansau McCauley contends that while “[he was] a representative of the denominations of American Protestantism…he was unique for his time and for a long time after in his account of religious life and traditions in the Brush. Unlike his predecessors, and most of those from ‘outside’ who would follow and comment on religion in the mountains, Pierson gave a very loving, respectful, observant, appreciative, caring, and nuanced account of what he saw.”2 Indeed, according to McCauley, in many ways Pierson challenged the caricature of “Appalachian” as “stagnant and regressive,” dispossessed of a genuine religious belief and practice, and offered instead an image of

Appalachian religion - with its oral preaching, foot washing, and spontaneous prayer - that was a unique expression of a vibrant, distinctive religiosity that was shaped by topography.3

Throughout the preceding chapters I have focused on: 1) a philosophical conception and argument for rural space, particularly as it offers a viable alternative to urbanization and anthropocentricism; 2) an historical analysis of industrialization and urbanization in

Appalachia, wherein I focus specifically on mechanization (railroads) and centralization

(company towns) facilitated the dismantling of Appalachia’s unique forms of agrarianism; and 3) a discussion of the environmental dimensions of Appalachian mountain religion and the importance of the imagination in reconceptualization of these dimensions. Accordingly, my argument has been primarily, although not exclusively, expository in its focus on the

1 Deborah Vansau McCauley, Appalachian Mountain Religion. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 388-390 2 Ibid., 389. 3 Ibid. 9, 390-391.

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history and culture of Appalachia; this is perhaps most clearly seen in chapters two and three, although even the more conceptually oriented dimensions of chapter one are marked by a concerted focus on the historical process(es) of urbanization. Considering that my argument is acutely concerned with specific aspects of Appalachia’s past, the engagement with history is not only understandable but altogether necessary. Accordingly, my argument thus far has been prefatory for the constructive theological move that I now presently make, such that I have attempted to approach Appalachian history so as “to listen and respond to ancestral ghosts.”4 Much of what characterized 19th century Appalachian culture and religion has been largely forgotten or disappeared – there are few mountain homesteads or holiness churches in the region and those that remain are located along both physical and conceptual margins – and the memory of this period has been buried underneath the rubble of decapitated mountains and piles of denominational tracts.

And yet, there remain echoes of Appalachian mountain religion that can serve as

“sources of power to sustain an imagination that can resist absorption into the restrictive grasp of economic-technological controls.”5 Urbanization is overwhelming but not absolute,

4 Mayra Rivera, “Spirits, Memory, and the Holy Ghost” in Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology, ed. Stephen D. Moore and Mayra Rivera (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 125 5 Rivera, 131. See also Paul Riceour. “Memory, History, Oblivion” in Carnal Hermeneutics, edited by Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015). Riceour’s analysis of the relationship between memory and history is helpful on this point. Reflecting on the reduction of memory to “object of history.” He writes: “The earliest potential break between history and memory can be assigned to the invention and the expansion of writing as a way of inscribing experience on material support distinct from the body: brick, papyrus, parchment, paper, compact disc, to say nothing of inscriptions which don’t transcribe the oral voice: marks, drawings, play of colors in clothing, gardens, steles, monuments, and all kinds of archeological remains (123) Riceour’s allusion to the “body” and “writing” is important for two reasons. First, it points to the importance of the physical, material body in the practice of remembrance. Memory embodied is different than memory written, and perhaps one of the causes for of our “postmodern cultures’ hunger of memory (Rivera 124)” is a willingness to accept narratives - be they philosophical, theological, or historical - of disembodiment. Two, the role of “writing” in detaching us from the past helps us understand the consequences of the transition away from oral preaching in Appalachian religion. Recall McCauley: “Mountain religion is essentially an oral religious tradition because it is known primarily through its oral literature and material culture, which accounts its virtual invisibility in the study of American religious history (6).” Accordingly, the orality of Appalachian mountain religion was an aberration and threat to national religious culture because it provided its practitioners with independence from the codified rules and doctrines of mainstream denominational Christianity.

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despite its pretensions to the contrary. The historical sensibility that influences my approach entails recognizing the profound ways in which “collective practices of remembrance may attempt to not only protect the past from oblivion, but also provide spaces to allow for individuals…reencounter past promises.”6 Hence, my argument in the previous chapter concerning the ways in which the imagination can intertwine “past” and “future” in a critical reflection on the present. Theological and religious inquiry is necessarily part of this process and must engage history and ethnography and sociology; indeed, the theological dimensions of my argument are dialogically intertwined with the philosophical and historical material.

However, an exclusive or disproportionate focus on the descriptive can prevent us from

“speak[ing] confessionally” toward the other, whomever that may be.7 As I will argue, such a confessional space must be decidedly non-anthropocentric such that the “confessional” character of my argument is present only to the extent that it seeks to “confess” a way of being in the world that is not marked by a hierarchical division between the divine, humanity and nature. In this it is perhaps not altogether different from the vast majority of ecologically oriented theology. What marks my argument as peculiar is the depth to which I want to encounter the “other.” Here, the explicitly Appalachian character of my work is operative, for the “other” that I seek to “confessionally encounter” is that which historically troubled the home missionaries, and continues to trouble our conceptual categories: the mountain(s).

My appeal to the mountains prefigures a religio-theological consideration of human meaning along the margins of our spatial representation. In my attempt to exceed the limits of “human” and “nature” as concepts and move towards a deeper sense of the common creaturely flesh that binds the two, even the imagery of “creaturely flesh” is perhaps pushed

6 Ibid., 123. 7 Laurel Schneider. Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 13.

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to the limits of our comfortability. That is, while other theologians or religious scholars have emphasized the importance of the “creature” for articulating a more ecological or environmental theology have done so by emphasizing the shared “creaturely status” among humans and animals. For example, Celia Dean-Drummond and David Clough’s volume

Creaturely Theology: On God, Human and Other Animals and Tripp York and Andy Alexis-Baker’s volume A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian

Care for Animals, do not conceive of the “creature” or “creatureliness” apart from animality.8

Additionally, the collection Divinanimlity: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology, which contains an essay on microbes and another on sequoia trees, overwhelmingly associates “creatureliness” with animals.9 These sources and their perspective(s) valuably challenge anthropocentricism but their association of “creatureliness” with “animality” is too limiting, particularly within the context of Appalachia. Assuredly, animals and animal life are important to the region’s ecosystem, but they cannot be seen as exhausting the sensibility of “Appalachian creatures.”

That is, placing “creatureliness” in Appalachian requires a more expansive and deeper definition of what counts as a “creature,” one that accounts for the vegetal and lithic.

Indeed, if the “creature” and/or “creatureliness” is an important image to challenge anthropocentricism, we should ask what might happen if we imagine the very mountain(s) as a creature of a common flesh.

Appalachian Studies cannot, as currently constituted, adequately help us answer this question. Specifically, the tendency among Appalachian scholars to favor historical and sociological approaches to religion indicates an anthropological bias that, even for those

8 Celia Dean-Drummond and David Clough. Creaturely Theology: On God, Humans and Other Animals. (London: SCM Press, 2009); Tripp York and Andy Alexis-Baker. A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals. (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012). 9 Stephen D. Moore. Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). See specifically Denise Kimber Buell’s “The Microbes and Pneuma That Therefore I Am” and Terra S. Rowe’s “The Divinanimality of Lord Sequoia.”

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scholars focusing on the natural topography and ecological niches of the region often subsume this subject in a specific concern for human-cultural identity. Thus for example, even McCauley’s explicit references to and emphasis on the mountain topography and its impact on Appalachia’s religious character and values are situated within a broader narrative about humanity.10 The topographical and environmental dimensions of Appalachian religion seem to be rendered as a passive backdrop or context, and McCauley’s methodology does not allow her (or us) to consider them apart from human culture. This point is, to a certain extent, a consequence of her limited focus as well as the limitations of “nature” a concept.

And while this tendency does not invalidate such an approach, it indicates a perhaps subtle, yet disconcerting, anthropocentrism within the discipline.

Acknowledging this limitation of Appalachian Studies in general and McCauley more specifically, neither invalidates nor diminishes the importance of the field and the insights achieved through historical and ethnographic research; indeed, McCauley’s work is indicative of how this approach is invaluable for my own work. Rather, it indicates the necessity of pursuing an interdisciplinary dialogue that engages in the kind of midrashic creativity that

McCauley considers central to Appalachian scriptural hermeneutic. Even though this is a traditionally Jewish approach to religious textual interpretation, McCauley considers it indicative of the extent to which 19th century mountain preachers and lay(wo)men willingly embraced and comfortably worked with the ambiguity of the biblical text.11 My argument follows McCauley into the ambiguity of this religious tradition so as to “reread [it] in order

10 For example, Coy Miser, an Appalachian preacher interviewed by McCauley, is adamant in his argument for the mountains as a unique and special space to live one’s faith and experience the presence of God. However, there is a discernible sense in which Miser’s embrace of the mountains derives from the fact that they provide a space for human faith, rather than as distinctive beings with their own life. In the context of his argument, Miser does not dismiss the importance or centrality of the mountains as he is clear that a genuine or sincere practice of Christianity is in part dependent on their existence. Rather, he does not entertain - nor does McCauley or Catherine Albanese and Richard Humphrey - the agency and subjectivity of the “mountain” apart from human communities. 11 McCauley., 77.

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to reconceive [the] world…[and] reconfigure [the] ever-changing boundaries [of our thought] and populate them with new thoughts woven of old texts.”12 What follows then is a type of transdisciplinary midrash that appeals to sources and arguments beyond the disciplinary parameters of Appalachian Studies so as to gesture toward a different way of imagining and talking about non-human/more-than-human subjectivity that is not just

“environmentally” attuned, but perhaps more so, speaks directly out of the subaltern voices of Appalachian mountain theology and religiosity.

My argument in this chapter proceeds in two primary moves. As a transition to my discussion of “nature” as a concept, I return to McCauley’s work on Appalachian mountain religion and discuss what I consider the latent anthropocentrism of her approach. As the previous chapter provided a substantive and detailed explanation of the key features of

Appalachian mountain religion, this section is more focused and consequently circumscribed.

In section one, I consider two distinct philosophical approaches to the conceptual and linguistic dimensions of “nature.” If, as I contend, “nature” is an insufficient concept by which to challenge the hierarchical division of human and non-human life, it is important to consider philosophical arguments that attempt to retrieve the term for this specific purpose.

First, I return once more to Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy and discuss his unique understanding of the human/nature relationship, focusing in particular on how he challenges, yet ultimately accedes to, a traditionally Marxist definition. As I have discussed in the previous chapters to varying degrees, Lefebvre’s reflections on space account for the various ways in which specific productions of space entail particular understanding of and interactions with “nature.” However, while he offers some powerful critiques of

12 Fagenblat, Michael. A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 20.

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anthropocentricism, his argument does not fully challenge the belief of “nature” as a passive object. Accordingly, I conclude this section by turning to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical reflections “nature” and the body. While I discuss his work in more detail in the following section, here I analyze some of the ways in which his argument regarding

“nature” has been interpreted, specifically the work of Ted Toadvine. I have chosen to focus primarily on Toadvine’s work because he provides a powerful reading of Merleau-

Ponty that attempt to counter reductionist accounts of “nature.” In providing one of the more “ecologically” oriented interpretations of Merleau-Ponty, Toadvine further demonstrates the value of drawing on his work to dismantle the ontological dualism and hierarchy relegates “nature” to a realm of static passivity. Unfortunately, I believe that

Toadvine does not adequately account for the radical nature of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, in effect reducing it to a renewed sense of “nature.” Consequently, he seems to ignore

Merleau-Ponty’s idea of “the flesh.”

Section two engages this idea in depth. Here, I discuss four key features of Merleau-

Ponty’s: elementality, wild being, intertwining, and strange kinship. Each aspect provides us with a substantive account of the uniqueness of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. Accordingly, this imagery offers us a way to a) go beyond the linguistic or conceptual limitations of “nature” and b) allows us to see or encounter the mountain(s) as enfleshed. Indeed, it is only through an appeal to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh that I am able to approach the mountains as something other than a passive background.

II. Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Nature: Lefebvre and Merleau-Ponty

By way of transition, let us return to “the Brush.” I begin this chapter with a brief discussion of Hamilton Pierson not entirely because I see in him a means of bridging the chasm between “denominational Christianity” and Appalachian mountain religion; pursuing

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such a goal is neither the intent of McCauley’s work nor the focus on my argument. Rather,

I emphasize this idea because it is evocative of the heterodox, and so “othered”, character of

19th century Appalachian mountain religion; both Pierson’s self-designated title

(“brushbreaker”) as well as the title of his book (In the Brush) reveal the extent to which land, in this case the unruly topography of the region, and culture, here configured as the primitive immaturity of the people, functioned (and perhaps continue to do so) as a synecdoche in the mid- to late-19th century national consciousness. As we saw in the previous chapter, while the industrialist sought to penetrate the land and the missionary pursued a conversion of the people, both wanted to literally break “the Brush” and assimilate the region into the cultural and religious norms of the nation. Indeed, as we discussed in the previous chapter, concerns over the formation of a hegemonic religious identity that could unite the nation in its progressive modernization was a fundamental motivation of the home mission movement.13

Accordingly, a significant aspect of what makes Appalachian religion unique, although certainly not isolated in history, is the extent to which its material culture was connected to and dependent on the “natural topography” of the mountains. Consider for example, the emphasis on “baptism by immersion in living waters,” which as McCauley asserts was seen as “the point of entry into mountain people’s earthly pilgrimage of salvation, while at the same time serving to break through social distance and confirm community…the rite that established the autonomy of the individual within that community, a community made up equals.”14 McCauley’s attention to baptism in “living waters” is more than a simple reference to the presence of rivers and creeks in the Appalachia. As with “the

Brush,” the “living waters” should not be seen as aspects of a passive backdrop but rather as a kind of participatory being that cannot be reduced to the purposes of humanity.

13 McCauley, 398. 14 Ibid., 87.

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Unfortunately, McCauley’s implicit anthropocentrism prevents her from making such an argument and her narrative is ultimately incomplete because, in her primary focus on the

“human” and elision of the importance of “nature” in the development of Appalachian mountain religion, she does not fully consider the import of the topographical eponym. This is all the more unfortunate given that a great majority of 19th century-Americans living beyond the mountain ridges erased the distinctions between the environment and its inhabitants, in turn justifying the physical conquest of both and substantively fragmenting the “primal bond” between the individual and nature that shaped the Appalachian sense of self.15

For example, contrary to Catherine Albanese’s definition of Appalachian religion as regional precisely because of the natural topography, McCauley argues, “Grace and religious experience through the meditation of the Holy Spirit mark what is especially distinctive about Appalachian mountain religion as a regional religious tradition.”16 Such a description is of course not incompatible with any emphasis on “nature” or the environment but it does indicate the extent to which McCauley centers her discussion of the Holy Spirit on the experience(s) of the human subject. And yet even given this blind spot, we can perhaps expand on her argument and deepen its implications by incorporating Henri Lefebvre’s discussion of “nature” and its position within the urban-industrial logic.

A. Natural Poiesis: Lefebvre and Nature’s Creativity

Perfunctorily, there is an acute sense of nature’s passivity and objectivity woven throughout Lefebvre’s work. While he is keen to emphasize “nature as origin,” such that he sees humanity as engaged in a nostalgic drive to return to its “mother world,” his depiction

15 Ibid., 97; Rodger Cunningham, Apples On The Flood: Minority Discourse and Appalachia. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 43, 103 16 Ibid., 236.

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of nature as a “ground of being” certainly risks reifying nature as “an absolute space…as though it were a grid over which social space is distributed…[as] essentially passive, an object of action.”17 In many ways, it is this ‘nature’ as an object that Lefebvre refers to when he claims that Nature and natural space is ‘disappearing…becoming lost to thought…now seen as merely the raw material out of which the productive forces of a variety of social systems have forged their particular spaces…it has been defeated, and now awaits only for its ultimate voidance and destruction.”18 This is “nature” as the “victim” of conquest and ecocide, wherein abstraction has “set up its rule in the emptiness of a natural space confiscated from nature. [And] the forces of history [have] smashed naturalness forever and upon its ruins established the space of accumulation (the accumulation of all wealth and resources: knowledge, technology, money, precious objects, works of art and symbols).”19

The opposition established here between “natural” and “abstract” space and “nature” and

“history,” is in many respects indicative of Lefebvre’s reliance on Marxist categories, specifically the concept of alienation. As previously discussed, Lefebvre is keen to expand

Marx’s understanding of “alienation” beyond the purely economic/scientific sphere, yet even in this re-working of the concept, his reliance on a heuristic dialectic leads him to proclaim:

“The physis-antiphysis dichotomy is superseded as soon as we realize that it is by antiphysis, or antinature, that man controls and returns to nature. From the basis of abstraction (logical and technological signs and forms) man emerges from nature, understands it, controls it, and then reimburses himself in it once more. Here again man moves “‘wrong foot forward’: via

17 Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity. (New York: Verso Press, 2011), 133-134; Russell Janzen, “Reconsidering the Politics of Nature: Henri Lefebvre and the Production of Space.” CNS 13, No. 2 (2002), 103. 18 Lefebvre, The Production of Space. (Malden: Blackwell, 1991), 31-30 19 Ibid., 71, 49.

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antinature.”20 Transcendence of alienation through alienation with no recourse to a “return” to what has been lost.

Seeing in Lefebvre a certain type of objectification and pacification of nature is justified. If we take into account the distinction (itself admittedly rather contradictory in its application) that Lefebvre makes between “production” and “creativity,” wherein the former is primarily associated with human activity and employed as a critique of Cartesian ontology and rationalist epistemologies which would render “space” ahistorical, static, empty, and apolitical, the “agency” of nature appears to be all the more truncated and limited in its capacities.21 For example, Lefebvre’s emphasis on the “Total Man [sic]” - a subjectivity defined by his [sic] praxis - “transcends” and brings Nature under control through his [sic] free agency.22 In this context, “Nature” is non-productive, incapable of abstraction, separation, isolation - attributes associated with dialectical materialism and the overcoming of alienation - and could be seen as inherently passive and static upon which social space is produced.23

And yet, Lefebvre’s thought defies this simple categorization and, as with his analysis of urbanization, there are hidden kernels of dissent within, subaltern elements if you will, that lend themselves to not only an embrace of rural space but a more dynamic, agential picture of “nature.” Accordingly, it is possible to read Lefebvre as an “ecophilosopher of the 21st century…[who] made the connection between the massive despoiling of the global ecosystems, the new shape of social time and social space and the struggle for the transformation of everyday life which, he claims, is the key to the project of chaining life and

20 Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity, 135. 21 Janzen, 100. 22 Stuart Elden. Understanding Henri Lefebvre. (New York: Continuum, 2004), 45. 23 Rob Shields. Lefebvre, Love and Struggle: Spatial Dialectics. (New York: Routledge, 1998), 172.

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repairing our collective relationship to nature.”24 Here we begin to see the connections between his work and the concerns of this chapter, such that his attention to the “killing of nature” must be understood within the interconnected attention to 1) nature’s dynamic agency; 2) appreciation of rural history and space; and 3) insistence that revolutionary praxis requires a retrieval of “the body.”25

In the passage immediately following his reflections on the physis-antiphysis dialectic quoted above, Lefebvre claims that the vision of disalienation articulated by Marx has become increasingly unrealistic, wherein attempts to transcend alienation often lead to the development of new alienations.26 As such, the turgid picture of “nature” in this dialectic is giving way to a “notion of nature [that] appears to be richer, more confused, less simple, and more full of meaning”27 than Marx was perhaps aware. Indeed, despite his apparent

“objectification” of nature and natural space, Lefebvre is clear that pre-given nature - nature before consciousness - “has nothing in common with things.”28 Rather, “nature” prior to and independent of history and production is an expressive, creative space of being. This is a nature that

creates and does not produce… does not labour: it is even one of its defining characteristics that it creates…knows nothing of these creations - unless one is prepared to postulate the existence within it of a calculating god or providence…cannot operate according to the same teleology as human beings. The ‘beings’ it creates are works; and each has ‘something’ unique about it even if it belongs to a genus or a species: a tree is a particular tree, a rose a particular rose, a horse a particular horse. Nature appears as a vast territory of births…Nature’s space is not staged.29

24 Stanley Aronowitz, “The Ignored Philosopher and Social Theorist: The Work of Henri Lefebvre.” Situations 2, No. 1 (2007), 133. 25 Ibid., 134. 26 Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity, 143. 27 Ibid., 134. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 70.

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In many respects this nature is the fundamental force in the emergence of life and its depiction here is a strong repudiation of any philosophical conception which would render

“nature” inert and mechanistic. As imagined here, “nature” is akin to a poet, whose “works” are not merely creative expressions but primal, spontaneous embodiments of the totality and inseparability of its being.30

Despite his dismissal of nature’s knowledge of its own creation - an attitude that requires a specific definition of “knowledge” and which has been considerably challenged by philosophers and scientists, including Merleau-Ponty and which prevents us from relying solely on his work - Lefebvre’s insistence on nature’s “creativity,” its poiesis, is a powerful reminder of what Aronowitz describes as an awareness that nature’s “‘relative autonomy’ and our spatio-temporal freedom ‘from the imperatives of capital accumulation’ go hand-in- hand.”31 That “nature” does not produce is therefore not necessarily an indictment of its stasis or passivity, but rather an awareness that its “presence and poieses stand outside social relations of production…[and] these ‘works’ or oeuvres are an antidote to the alienation because they too are representations that make…even an impossible utopia, ‘present’ for the audience and creator.”32 Nature’s creative activity is therefore an embodiment of not only particular beings and unique space(s) - indeed, the emphasis on the particularity of the “tree” and “rose” and “horse” points to his understanding of “nature” as a fundamentally

30 Shields, 101 31 Elden, 84. According to Elden, Lefebvre’s appeal to poiesis functions as a “counter-weight” to Marx’s privileging of “the economic side [which] has neglected the other aspects of creation (84).” He contends that poiesis is therefore “a balance between speculation and praxis, understood in a narrow sense, as it is a notion of creation, or creative production (84).” Rob Shields expands on this point when he emphasis the connection between poiesis, oeuvre as appropriation, and “the centrality of the body, which by acting, ‘appropriates’ the resources of cultural codes and its material environment (123).”; Stanley Aronowitz, “The Ignored Philosopher and Social Theorist,” 150. 32 Shields, 100.

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heterogeneous space of difference - but equally of a spontaneous ontology that is irreducible and resists any preconceived logic of industrial production.33

Accordingly, the assumed passivity of nature and its increasing disappearance need not imply an essential torpor of nature or natural beings. Rather, what has been conceived of as its inherent inaction is a large part an effect of the domination and exploitation of natural space(s), itself indicative of the logos that privileges abstraction, detachment, and a priori denies agency (not to mention value) to the material, physical world. More importantly, from the perspective of the metropole - detached as it is from “natural space” - both “nature” and “rurality” are mutually inferior. Lefebvre’s reflections on “nature” are valuable precisely because he does not disregard the spatial (and political) dimensions of its despoilation. Thus when he writes, “The countryside disappears, and this in a double way: by industrialisation of agricultural production and the disappearance of peasants (and therefore of the village) on one hand, on the other by the ruination of the earth and the destruction of nature,” it is certainly possible to read this statement positing a “nature” that is essentially a landscape for rural culture.34 Doing so however, ignores a significant, if forgotten, existential interdependency between the “peasant” to the “earth”, a relationship that is perhaps most clearly expressed beyond the limitations of the “nature” as a concept.

That is, while considering “nature” as landscape or material foundation for human culture is not altogether incorrect – indeed, as we have seen within the Appalachian context this perspective yields a valuable critique to any urban-centric denigration of rural space, its inhabitants, and the religious culture that emerges therein – limiting our understanding to such a relationship truncates any understanding of “nature’s” transcendence of human conceptualization and/or action. As I discussed in chapter one, “rurality” need not be

33 Janzen, 102. 34 Elden, 133.

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wholly defined by an agrarian economy, but rather can speak of a participatory space of coexistence between humanity and nature that certainly includes the practice of agrarianism, but only insofar as it remains open to the uncultivated, the dangerous and wild.

Within this Lefebvrian frame, McCauley’s discussion of Appalachian mountain religion as a subversive tradition can be infused with a “thicker,” more radical interpretation vis-à-vis the socio-political dimensions of late-nineteenth century denominational expansion.

Accordingly, what we witness in the formation of Appalachian mountain religion is a unique theological imagination of rurality that resists a metropolitan ideology seeking to impose a hyper-rational, social scientific, hierarchical values system. Perhaps more importantly, the sense in which “nature’s creativity” stands outside the regime(s) of industrial production parallels the location of Appalachian mountain religion along the periphery of the national culture. Rather than disavow or deny this marginal status, a reimagining of Appalachian religion should embrace its idiosyncrasy, its heterodoxy as a means of challenging the continued destruction of the land and its people. Certainly such a stance risks the possibility of further exploitation and “despoilation.” However, Appalachia’s history demonstrates the extent to which abandoning the unique elements of its culture, be it an agrarian economy or revivalistic religion, has done little to challenge or limit the destruction of both people and nature. Instead, perhaps Appalachians should look to the past as means of re-imagining the future.

If Lefebvre provides a more complex understanding of “nature” and its implication in human space, why is it necessary to introduce Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of flesh? Are we not better served working within the former’s conceptual framework? Can we not speak of “nature” liberated from the captivity of philosophical/metaphysical dualism? Of “nature” as a generative force of all life on earth?

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B. Generative Being: Merleau-Ponty and the Common Tissue of Existence

Lefebvre’s philosophy certainly points to the possibility of a more dynamic picture of

“nature” and “natural space” that acknowledges the activity of humanity while retaining a sense of “nature’s” own independent creativity. His discussion of “space” likewise offers valuable conceptual resources for recognizing the role that “nature” contributes to the creation of rural spaces. Moreover, the concept remains a key piece of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical language, wherein nature is described as “the flesh, the mother” and “a true explication of Being, that is, not the exhibition of a Being, even infinite, in which the articulation of beings one after another comes about in manner that in principle is incomprehensible to us, but rather the unveiling of Being as that which they [beings] define, that which places them together on the side of what is not nothing. Thus, for example, the

Nature in us must have some relation to Nature outside of us; moreover, Nature outside of us must be unveiled to us by the Nature that we are.”35 Indeed, for Ted Toadvine, Merleau-

Ponty’s philosophy of nature serves as a counter to a positivist scientific logic which perpetuates the detachment of theoretical from practical knowledge to such an extent that the promise of “environmental ethics” rests on a false premise of separation between humanity and nature.36

35 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 267; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), 206. 36 Ted Toadvine, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 5. I have focused on Ted Toadvine’s work not necessarily because I see it as an inherently flawed distortion of Merleau- Ponty’s philosophy; indeed, I work to emphasize the extent to which he provides a compelling discussion of our coexistence with a natural world that transcends both our concepts and perceptions. Rather, I focus on Toadvine for two primary reasons: 1) His argument is, in many respects, greatly similar to my own and echoes my own concerns regarding the issue of anthropocentricism. Whether discussing Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze and Guattari, it is clear that Toadvine want to provide a robust philosophical argument for genuine ecological or environmental criticism. 2) His work on Merleau-Ponty, specifically Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature is one of the more philosophical sustained and rigorous arguments concerning the ecological/environmentally dimensions of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. While M.C. Dillon’s Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997) and Lawrence Hass’ Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy: (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008) provide broad treatments of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical oeuvre and William Hamrick and Ian van der

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Toadvine insists that we abandon the idea of the “environment” as a reified setting for human activity and insists on a reading of “Nature” as the ground of meaning and experience that “presents itself as preexisting us, as always already there before our attempts to make it a theme of perception or reflection.”37 He writes,

A renewed philosophy of nature would concern the being of nature, the being of humanity, and the relation between them. More precisely, the questions addressed by a philosophy of nature are twofold: first, what does it mean to understand human beings as a part of nature, and how can we think nature starting from our situation within it? How does our situation as immanent to nature compromise —or give us access to— the being of nature? Second, how can our understanding of nature respect its transcendence? In other words, is there a means of thinking nature that can take into account its excess over our projections and cultural stereotypes concerning it?38

Clearly then Toadvine’s interpretation of Merleau-Ponty envisions a “Nature” that resists rigid abstraction and conceptualization and provides a compelling argument for why the concept should be retained. 39 Indeed, as Bryan Bannon clarifies, Toadvine’s engagement with Merleau-Ponty focuses on moving beyond the anthropomorphic tendencies of

Veken’s Nature and Logos: A Whiteheadian Key to Merleau-Ponty’s Fundamental Thought. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011) reveal the important overlaps between Merleau-Ponty and process philosophy, Toadvine’s work is unique in its focus on the environment and/or ecology. As such, his interpretation of Merleau-Ponty provides a natural touchstone for the current project. 37 Ibid., 52. 38 Ibid., 7. 39 Ted Toadvine. “The Time of Animal Voice.” Environmental Philosophy, 11, No. 1 (2014); Ted Toadvine. “Life Beyond Biologism.” Research in Phenomenology. 40, No. 2, (2010). These two articles are particularly helpful in formulating a non-anthropocentric philosophy that takes into account non-human subjectivity and agency as transcendent of human cognition and reflection. The former article in particular intriguingly brings Merleau- Ponty into conversation with Deleuze and Guattari, positing that the “inner animality” of our humanity is not only a corporeal subjectivity independent of self-consciousness but equally so a “pack that speaks through the voices that I take to be mine.” Indeed, much of Toadvine’s work on Merleau-Ponty specifically and phenomenology in general focuses on challenging the centering of human perception by emphasizing ways in which “the perceived world of nature is meaningful on its own terms (B.E. Bannon, ‘Flesh and Nature: Understanding Merleau-Ponty’s Relational Ontology. Research in Phenomenology, 41, No.3, (2011), 333).” Bannon’s argument is particularly helpful in clarifying this point, specifically with regards to Toadvine’s interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “the flesh”: “Toadvine appeals to the reflexivity of flesh…with the intention of showing that human expression is a variety of natural meaning without being reducible to it. If expressions humans form concerning the natural world are inspired by nature itself, then nature itself must possess some innate sense that serves as the inspiration…Even humanized nature, then, expresses something about nature and puts us into contact with nature as the mute source of our expression. The mistake would be taking this expressed truth to be somehow exhaustive of the possible true expression with respect to nature (333).”

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traditional phenomenological inquiry through an ontological interpretation of “the flesh.”

Here, Toadvine’s work, specifically his references to “the flesh” is read by Bannon as an attempt to acknowledge and affirm the independence and autonomy of Nature. Within

Toadvine’s argument, a proper interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy should neither begin nor end with the subjectivity or experiences of the lived human body, even if said body is a fundamental component of our spatial materiality.40 Human perception of the natural world is therefore not determinative in defining the life and meaning of nature, but rather “Nature…confronts phenomenology [or human perception] with a problem of transcendence parallel to those of time, death, and the other.”41 Toadvine’s affirmation of

Nature’s transcendence of human perception and cognition is important and on this point I find myself in agreement with Bannon’s claim that “when we limit our understanding of flesh to what is discovered in human perception and experience, (even when we then generalize these structures), we are limiting the potential of the flesh idea.”42 Indeed, one cannot read Merleau-Ponty’s later work, of which the idea of “the flesh” is articulated most clearly, without attending to the sense in which the concept functions to decenter and multiply our notions of subjectivity and/or agency.

Rather, Toadvine’s argument is problematic to the extent that his characterization of the relationship between “humanity” and “Nature” does not actually follow Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to construct a new ontology that would “have more explanatory power”43 than his earlier phenomenological work. That is, he is correct in seeing in Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy an attempt to decenter the human body as parameter of meaning for nature.

Rather, Toadvine’s interpretive move is ultimately unsatisfactory precisely because he insists

40 Ibid., 19. 41 Ibid., 52. 42 Bannon, 338. 43 Hamrick and van der Veken, 236.

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on retaining the ontological concept “Nature.” In doing so, his argument does not adequately challenge the picture of “nature” as a background or container for human perception and activity. We see this is most clearly in his textual descriptions of the human/nature relationship. Consider the following quotes:

Merleau-Ponty provides a philosophical account of what it means to think nature from within, with ramifications for our understandings of the human place in nature, our relation to nonhuman animals, and the mediating role of human culture in our access to nature.44

Structure characterizes the natural world as self-organizing system of “gestalts” — embodied and meaningful relational configurations or structures. Physical matter, organic life, and conscious minds are increasingly complex strata of such gestalts.45

While I do not want to text-proof his work, I highlight these two quotes because they are indicative of the limitations of Toadvine’s argument. Certainly within a broader context, specifically his insistence on nature’s transcendence of human thought and perception, we can read these statements as part of an ecological/environmental criticism of dualism. Here, the appeal to “relational configurations” and thinking nature from “within” can certainly serve as a rebuke of any abstract idealism that might privilege human consciousness. And yet, his overall argument does not move our critical thinking about the concrete relationship between humanity and the natural world beyond the very dualism he seeks to critique. Take his claim that the “natural world [is a] system of gestalts.”

As it pertains to Merleau-Ponty’s arguments concerning perception, appeals to gestalt theory are entirely resonant with the attempt to deconstruct the abstraction and idealism of western philosophy, specifically its Cartesian permutations. Against the idealist and/or dualist insistence that perception is fundamentally a process of “mental representation…a copy of [the] original presentation…with color, depth, texture, size, and

44 Ibid., 8. Emphasis added. 45 Toadvine, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature, 21.

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shape added by the mind,” Merleau-Ponty insisted that perceptual experience is “not atomistic, but relational and meaning-laden…[occurring] against a differentiating field and in virtue of that field.”46 Our perception of the world is reciprocal and participatory, it is something that occurs between perceiver and that which is perceived; when we look upon the world and/or particular beings in the world we are simultaneously being looked at.

Therefore, to say that the “natural world” is a gestalt or system of gestalts is to reject its fragmentation via conscious reflection into inert objects and is a helpful rejoinder to abstract idealism, particularly in its emphasis on context and relationality. Additionally, gestalt theory serves a decentering function by helping us recognize that “perception is our opening onto things that are not oneself.47“ Toadvine’s argument is not primarily concerned with expanding on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology but rather focuses on rooting the former’s work in a richer ontological foundation. Unfortunately, in his effort to demonstrate the environmental dimensions of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, his continued use of “nature” does not fully take into account the extent to which Merleau-Ponty’s critique of philosophical dualism and disembodiment relies on an alternative ontological language and imagery.

III. Carnal Ontos: Merleau-Ponty and the Flesh of Being

Throughout his work Merleau-Ponty is clear that questions of ontology, in particular the problems inherent in Cartesian dualism, motivate and guide his philosophy. In the

“Working Notes” of The Visible and the Invisible he writes of the “necessity of a return to ontology…and its ramifications: the subject-object question, the question of intersubjectivity, the question of Nature” and describes his approach to philosophy an attempt to

“restore the world as a meaning of Being absolutely different from the ‘represented,’ that is,

46 Hass, 21, 29. 47 Ibid., 33.

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as the vertical Being which none of the ‘representations’ exhaust and which all ‘reach’.”48

And while these statements indicate not only his focus on, but contribution to, ontological issues, we must note two important points, one philosophical and the other theological/religious. First, Merleau-Ponty’s ontology is important precisely because it is an alternative to the abstract stasis of traditional western philosophy. Whether conceived in terms of an eternal essence and/or a capacity for rational thought and linguistic expression,

“Being” has been predominantly defined as the purview of humanity, specifically as it relates our capacity for abstract thought. Here, “Being” or reality is fundamentally (and “naturally”) detached from the material ground of our existence, safely ensconced in an ethereal realm of ideas that is only accessible to human beings through mental reflection. For Merleau-Ponty

(and as we have seen in chapter one, Lefebvre), Cartesian philosophy is the clearest example of this perspective. Consequently, his desire to “restore the world as a meaning of Being” is a radically different approach to imagining existence through its materiality. “Being” is thus not a pre-determined set of categories, formulated and defended via abstract cognition, that precedes experience and interaction, but rather the inexhaustible proliferation of life, which itself can never be fully captured by human knowledge. For Merleau-Ponty, “Being” must be understood through our relational carnality with the world, expressed most clearly as “the flesh.”

48 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 165, 253. He makes a similar remark in Nature: Course Notes: “The ontological problem is the dominant problem, to which all other problems are subordinated problems are subordinated (134).” Hass frames Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on ontology in terms of his double attack on Cartesian empiricism and contemporary physicalism (Hass, 51). In the former, life and reality is reduced to an abstract, intellectual “realm” with the Cartesian cogito (the “invisible”) and in the latter, life and reality is reduced to material, sensible matter. Staking one’s position on either perspective yields not only a myopic stance on reality, but perpetuates an artificial division between what Merleau-Ponty’s terms “the visible” and “the invisible.” Consequently, he argues, “It seems, then, that if we are concerned to understand our living experiences we have little choice. We cannot afford to keep duplicating those oversights or compounding them through further intellectual machinations. Instead, we must return to Merleau-Ponty, to perceptual experience as it is lived. We must bring to light its overlapping dynamic character and become reacquainted with its carnality and intersubjectivity (Hass, 52).”

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Second, we must consider the place of “ontology” in theological/religious discourses. Here we need only extend any criticism of “ontology” as abstract and intellectualized to a particular religions tradition, in our case Christianity. If we take Merleau-

Ponty’s ontological reflections as a starting point, it becomes possible to retrieve and reimagine the theological materiality which has been ignored and dismissed over time.

Consequently, we need not necessarily abandon “ontology” but rather reconceive it. Laurel

Schneider’s reflection on the limitations and possibilities of ontology are particularly helpful on this point:

If all accounting for divinity is summed up by linguistics and metaphor then we must assumed that the divine itself is subaltern; it cannot speak, so to speak, its reality is wholly inaccessible to the master tongues. The divine cannot meaningfully interrupt enough to get a word – or a Word? – in edgewise…Of course God can do this, the theologians argue. We simply cannot account for God’s showing up, ontologically, without somehow reducing the divine to a system, a project, a thing, a less-than-God. And of course they are right. But refusing to take up the question of divine reality in an ontological sense leaves the old ontological structures.49

For Schneider, questions/concerns about ontology are important precisely because the

“reality” or “life” of divinity cannot be captured by linguistic categories or conceptual theories.50 Moreover, she reminds us of the connection between “the challenge of ontology” and socio-political and economic power and contends that “theological ontology that is rooted in lived religion seeks to bring an understanding of reality at its most extreme limits into narrative focus and comprehension.”51 As Schneider makes clear, ontos – what it means

“to be” or “to live” – need not be an abstract concept, but is rather an essential component

49 Schneider, 129. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 131, 133.

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of “lived religion”, in particularly those along the margins or peripheries, and consequently must be “rooted” in material reality, in the world.52

Let us return then to Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of “the flesh.” While he does not fully abandon “nature” as a signifier of Being (perhaps it is thoroughly impractical to even pursue such a goal), it is clear that “flesh”, not “nature” or “natural gestalts,” is the conceptual foundation of his philosophical ontology and subsequent critique of the anthropocentric pretensions underlying the modern philosophy’s predilection for disembodiment.53 Indeed, as M.C. Dillion asserts, the flesh is the “element that unlocks an ontology…‘a general manner of being’ whose being does not preclude, but rather invites, being seen, being grasped, and in some sense of the term, being known.”54 Of course embracing “the flesh” is not without its difficulties. Indeed, the relative ambiguity or open- endedness of Merleau-Ponty’s own descriptions complicates any simple appropriation of his argument.

At various points throughout The Visible and the Invisible, “the flesh” is described as:

“this generality of the Sensible in itself, this anonymity innate to Myself”55, “the world”56,

“not matter, not mind, not substance”57, “the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing

52 Ibid., 135-136. 53 David Macauley. Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). Nature, as David Macauley asserts, is too contested and easily given over to abstraction, a concept that, despite its potential to draw us into a deeper relationship with nonhuman life, has more often been used to detach and distance us from nonhuman lives (4). Macauley points to the spate of recent texts arguing for “nature” as social construct. See also Timothy Morton. The Ecological Thought. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). While Macauley does not mention Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought, this particular text provides a compelling argument for this standpoint. Somewhat ironically, his argument parallels Toadvine’s rejection of the concept “environment” – Morton claims that the primary problem with “nature” is the assumption that “it” is something “over there,” something detached and distanced from human culture. 54 Dillon, 35-36. 55 Ibid.,139. 56 Ibid., 137. 57 Ibid., 139.

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body, of the tangible upon the touching body”58, and “a texture that returns to itself and conforms to itself.”59 Certainly is a general overlap between these definition and they should not be detached from one another. Additionally though, they provide a sense of the concept’s variability, particularly as it relates to some of the fundamental concerns that occupied Merleau-Ponty’s thought (the artificiality of the subject/object distinction, the limitations of philosophical intellectualism and empiricism, the importance of the lived body). Further, Merleau-Ponty’s apparent separation of the concept from materiality or matter is something that we must contend with. And yet, despite these issues, Merleau-

Ponty’s articulation of “the flesh” is a genuine alternative to ontological dualism and disembodiment. It is, as David Abram asserts, “a philosophy which would strive, not to explain the world as if from the outside, but to give voice to the world from our experienced situation within it, recalling us to our participation in the here-and-now, rejuvenating our sense of wonder at the fathomless things, events and powers that surround us on every hand.”60 In the following sections I emphasize three specific and overlapping points – intertwining, elementality, and wildness – in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the flesh that not only represent his attention to non-human life and subjectivity but also help us articulate a creaturely theology of Appalachia. These three points certainly do not exhaust his discussion of the idea but rather help us recognize and expand on its ecological dimensions.

A. Intertwining of the Flesh: Animality and the Limitation of Lateral Overcoming

Merleau-Ponty’s consideration of the human-animal relationship occurs primarily in

The Visible and the Invisible and Nature: Course Notes, and comes in the context of his discussion about evolution and the human body. Here, his focus on the animal and animality is

58 Ibid., 146. 59 Ibid., 146. 60 David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 47.

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intended to a) emphasize the reciprocal dimensions of ontological flesh and b) resist the objectification of animals in positivist philosophy. There are two overlapping ideas that are crucial to our understanding: Ineinander (intertwining/chiasm) and “strange kinship.”

Merleau-Ponty writes, “We study the human through its body in order to see it emerge as different from the animal, not by the addition of reason, but rather in short, in the Ineinander with the animal (strange anticipations or caricatures of the human in the animal), by escape and not by superposition…From this follows that the relation of the human and animality is not a hierarchical relation, but lateral, an overcoming that does not abolish kinship.”61 We must note here that while Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of “the flesh” and our strange kinship with the animal foreshadows certain aspects of the burgeoning field of critical animal theory, his insistence on the “overcoming” of such a relationship is problematic. Consequently it is important to correct some of the latent anthropocentric tendencies and brining his work into dialogue with some of the key thinker in critical animal theory will allow us to deepen our sense of the intertwining of human-animal life. i. Ineinander

Let us turn to the intertwining of our flesh with the world. In contrast to some of the other more ambiguous definitions provided by Merleau-Ponty, his description of

Ineinander is easier to grasp. At its most basic level it refers to the possibility of our bodily relation – what Hass describes as overlapping divergence and co-givenness – with the world.62 Merleau-Ponty writes:

If one wants metaphors it would be better to say that the body sensed and the body sentient are as the obverse and the reverse, or again, as two segments of one circular course which goes above from left to right and below from right to left, but which is but one sole movement in its two phases. And everything said about the sense body pertains to the whole of

61 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 214, 268. 62 Hass, 128.

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the sensible of which it is part, and to the world…There is a reciprocal insertion and intertwining of one in the other.63

At other times described as chiasm and reversibility, this intertwining of the flesh “means that there is not only a me-other rivalry, but a co-functioning…as one unique body…not only a me other exchange…it is also an exchange between me and the world.”64 As beings of intertwining flesh, our identity is constituted through a differential yet non-oppositional relationship between the self and other.

The most common example that Merleau-Ponty provides is one hand touching another. A rejection of crude “unidirectionality”, here the dominion of one hand over the other, the reversibility of our intertwined flesh “confounds our categories” to the point that we can no longer posit a strict separation of subject and object; indeed, the overlapping of bodily flesh problematizes our conceptual schemas to such extent that it becomes difficult to even use traditional philosophical terminology.65 The active subject and the passive object are dismantled; the overlapping of two hands touching is embodied in my relationships with others. Consequently, there is an identity-within-difference such that “my body, being seen by the Other, can reverse the roles and take up the Other’s vantage on itself…I do not coincide with the Other, but his experience of my being is not the undisclosable secret…I can experience the Other’s flesh without merging with it…[and] it is that…we cannot see ourselves exactly as Others see us.”66 Ineinander is therefore another way in which our common corporeality and sense-ability serves as a rejection of the “philosophical lie” of

63 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 138. 64 Ibid., 215. 65 Hass, 132. 66 Dillon, 166-167.

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transcendental thought and reflection – the assumption that our conceptual abstraction precede and so determine our perceptual experience(s).67

More importantly, while this argument for reciprocal alterity renews a sense of the body’s importance, it likewise provides part of the theoretical grounding for Merleau-Ponty’s arguments concerning the human-animal relationship. This aspect of his philosophy is simultaneously positive and negative. On one hand, Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the animal and animality help counter anthropocentric assumptions about human superiority.

As Lawrence Hass argues, the reversibility of our flesh fosters a “syncretic sociality, a blurring together or overlapping of self and other that is not synthetic…that stresses and explains our continuity with the animal world.”68 While Merleau-Ponty is clear that humans are different from animals, this is a difference of degree not kind and does not entail a fundamental “rupture” between these two styles of being. 69 There is a separation, an overcoming (perhaps a problematic phrasing), but it is a silent process, full of complexity and nuance to such an extent that it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to speak of a hierarchy of being with humanity at the top.70 The animal is no more “poor of the world” than the human precisely because we can “no longer…consider the organism…as an effect of the exterior world, or as a cause.”71 World and organism, be it human or animal, are constituted by our bodily experiences, which are themselves only possible because of an overlapping flesh.

67 Ibid., 174. 68 Hass, 108. 69 Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 267. 70 Ibid. Here, Jakob von Uexkull’s work on animals and umwelt is particularly influential on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy (167). Von Uexkull’s work draws our attention to the behavior and world making of animals: “Between the situation and the movement of the animal, there is a relation of meaning which is what the expression Umwelt conveys. The Umwelt is the world implied by the movement of the animal, and that regulates the animal’s movements by its own structures (175).” 71 Ibid., 178.

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To some extent Merleau-Ponty’s work is a forerunner to the burgeoning field of critical animal theory, which posits a deconstruction of the various ontological boundaries that have been offered as justification for superiority of the human and violent exploitation of the animal.72 Kelly Oliver asserts that within much of Western philosophy “the animal is sacrificed for man” and considers Merleau-Ponty a key figure in the critique of this sacrificial logic.73 Indeed, Oliver’s analysis of his work is invaluable in understanding the possibilities and limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s argument for the intertwining of human and animal flesh.

For example, while Martin Heidegger’s influence on Merleau-Ponty is clear, such that both were dubious about reframing the human-animal relationship on the basis of evolutionary theory (a claim that some critical animal theorists reject), Merleau-Ponty broke with

Heidegger on the latter’s rejection of the fullness of the animal life-world.74 Emphasizing

Merleau-Ponty’s work on embodiment and behavior, Oliver writes, “In contrast to

Heidegger, who maintains that attunement is what separates the two [human and animal],

Merleau-Ponty finds a resonance between them. Heidegger’s insistence on rupture and abyss versus Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on continuity and kinships turns on their radically different conceptions of behavior.”75 In contrast to Heidegger’s definition of animal life as merely reactionary, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy helps us see that “animals…live for pleasure

72 Matthew Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 2-3. 73 Kelly Oliver, Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us To Be Human. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 2. 74 Oliver acknowledges the differences regarding Merleau-Ponty’s shift from his earlier work on phenomenology towards a more ecological or non-anthropocentric philosophy. She notes that while “In The Structures of Behavior, faithfully following Uexkull, Merleau-Ponty holds a view of animals very similar to Heidegger’s: Animals are locked into limiting environments cut off from imagining other possibilities, whereas man in his essence is open to possibilities and future projections…Decades later…in the Nature lectures, [he] takes the theories of Uexkull in another direction and concentrates on the meaning of animal behavior. Now animal behavior and animal environments, along with human behaviors and human consciousness, become different themes or styles of behavior, consciousness being only one type of behavior among others (211).” 75 Ibid., 210.

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and their own forms of social interaction.”76 The flesh that intertwines us with other humans is also the tissue of our strange kinship with animals: “strange” because of our common alterity and “kin” through our shared embodiment.77 Directed in particular against

Cartesian dualism and its mechanistic reading of animal life, this reconsideration of the human place among or within animality is a valuable resource for approaching “the question of the animal.” ii. Lateral Overcoming

The notion of “strange kinship” not only challenges philosophical conceptions of animals as mechanistic beings, incapable of rational thought and linguistic expression, confined to a purely reactionary relationship with the environment, it also opens up a conceptual space to deconstruct the philosophical chasm erected between the human and the animal. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy enables us to re-narrate both the past and present of the human-animal relationship. And while his analysis of animal life and consideration of

76 Ibid., 216. 77 Ibid., 224. See also Matthew Calarco. Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). On this point Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy appears to overlap with what Matthew Calarco describes as the “indistinction” branch of critical animal theory (49). Calarco’s succinct analysis of three major trends in critical animal theory is a valuable introduction to the field while providing a critical examination of some of its key figures. Along with his Zoographies, this text does not so much privilege, as orients itself around the work of Jacques Derrida. Here, Derrida is identified with “difference” theorists, specifically as it pertains to his attempts to deconstruct the violent and reductive homogeneity of western philosophy’s conceptualization of the animal; indeed, Derrida seeks to not only embrace and acknowledge, but complicate and multiply, the diversity inherent in animal life. Hence his proposal of the term “animot” – a term which “sounds like animaux, animals in the plural…[and] also contains within itself the word for word, ‘mot’ – and it is this word for ‘word’ the word as such, which is to say language and access to the being of beings, that has traditionally been denied to animals (Zoographies 144).” Calarco explicitly acknowledges not only his personal debt and affinity with Derrida’s work, but also acknowledges the limitations of his work, specifically his insistence on ‘insuperable divisions’ and a radical discontinuity between humans and animals (Zoographies 4, 146).” Here, he questions whether or not Derrida assumes too much importance in the difference(s) between humans and animals and proposes that it might be “more effective to set this distinction aside and also set aside the concern with anthropological difference(s) – at least temporarily – in order to develop alternative lines of thought (Thinking Through Animals 51).” Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze are key figures in this field, specifically as they seek to articulate new ways of imagining the deep relationships and shared embodiment that problematizes anthropocentric theories (Thinking Through Animals 57-58). While we cannot posit a clear overlap between Agamben or Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty, certainly we can recognize a basic affinity in their appeal to both alterity and commonality – a sense in which animals are like humans and humans are like animals. Kinship in this context, as we have seen with the concept of “intertwining,” is reversible, proceeds in both directions.

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animal culture is structured around behavior or the interaction between organism and environment, this “kinship” of is not “the result of deeds or decisions but are the results of the structure or form of embodiment.”78 We do not choose “strange kinship” with animals nor can (should) we seek refuge in a specific characteristic or trait, assumed to be unique to humanity, which would sever such familial ties. Rather, our kinship is ontological and existential, rooted in the intertwining of our bodily flesh and indicating the depth and complexity our own animality. Assuredly, this relationality does not preclude the possibility of animosity, violence, and/or death but speaks to the “manifold of intersubjective participations…of mutualities of being [in which] kin…are persons who belong to one another, who are parts of one another, who are co-present in each other, whose lives are joined and interdependent.”79 However, there are aspects of this concept that can be seen as tacitly echoing the very anthropocentrism that Merleau-Ponty seeks to undermine.80

While our “strange kinship” with animals helps deconstruct the various ontological hierarchies of western philosophy, Merleau-Ponty nonetheless describes humanity as occupying a position of “lateral overcoming.” Indeed, when juxtaposed with “strangeness,” it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile the term’s connotations with conquest and victory with the “co-functioning” and relationality that Merleau-Ponty’s claim is constitutive

78 Oliver, 225. 79 Marshall Sahlins, What Kinship Is – And Is Not. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 20-21. Similar to McCauley’s religious history of Appalachia, Marshall Sahlin’s argument is primarily anthropological and he does not fully account for kinship beyond the boundaries of human sociality; part two of Kinship: What It is – And Is Not considers and critiques biological foundations of kinship, but does so primarily with regards to human communities. 80 Ibid. For example, Toadvine argues that the “kinship” offered by Merleau-Ponty is “manifest…in the role that animals play as emblematic of the human, and even the superhuman, in the dreams of ‘primitives,’ the experience of children and poets, and the ‘secret reveries of our inner life’…The advent of the animal in our dreams and myths is therefore a trace of the nonhuman origin of all reflection (Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature 85-86).” To a certain extent, this interpretation profoundly challenges the deficiencies that abstract philosophy projects onto animal life, while also pointing to the artificiality of the barrier erected between human culture and “nature” (in this case animal life), yet in certain ways, it risks reducing the animal to a symbolic figure in human mythology – as emblems in human dreams and poetic experiences. Does this not reduce living animal to a functioning piece – albeit a central one – in human reflection?

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of intertwining. Not only are we left with questions concerning what needs to be overcome, there is little in the way of explaining why this “thing” needs to be overcome.

At one level, we must take Merleau-Ponty at his word: this “overcoming” does not abolish “kinship” but rather speaks to a being-in-one-another.81 Further, within the context of the flesh’s intertwining, “overcoming” is figured in the overlapping touch of one hand upon the other, an image that intended to evoke intimate difference rather than integration.82

To this I offer little critique. The problem is that the language of “overcoming,” despite the apparent malleability of the term assumed by Merleau-Ponty and much of the secondary literature, is evocative of a conflict with and conquest over an oppositional force.

Consequently, we are left with an echo of “the humanity/animality dichotomy [which insists] that ‘the human’ is achieved by escaping or repressing not just its animal origins in nature, the biological, and the evolutionary, but more generally transcending the bonds of materiality and embodiment altogether.”83 While we should recognize the nuance and complexity of

Merleau-Ponty’s work on the subject, the notion of “escape” and “overcoming” overlap to

81 Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes, 268. 82 Ted Toadvine, “The Time of Animal Voices,” 117-119. Toadvine argues that, with regards to animals/animality, the “lateral overcoming” of the chiasm speaks to a “parallel reversibility…[in which] we are human, then, only insofar as our humanity enters into kaleidoscopic exchange with our animality, and insofar as our animality within enters into exchange with the animality without (118).” Comparing Merleau-Ponty’s argument to Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming animal,” Toadvine insists that our intertwining with animals entails an “event of mutual transformation…a becoming-animal of the human that is a becoming human of the animal (117).” Unfortunately, as with his argument regarding “nature” and “gestalts,” Toadvine proceeds to situate the animal in an “immemorial past (118),” a residue or trace within human imagination or thought. Toadvine also references the importance of “mythical thinking” in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Merleau- Ponty references Evelyn Lot-Falck on Inuit masks as emblematic of this point: “The animal and its human double, the Inuit, are inscribed on the same side, presented either simultaneously or thanks to a dispositive of mobile flaps opening and cutting in on each other, alternatively. In this way it restituted the primitive states, when the envelope was a mask that we willfully separated in order to appear as man or as animal changing appearance, no essence. On the mask, the animal is not made divine or is necessarily a totemic ancestor. It recalls a time…when the separation was not yet effected (Nature: Course Notes 307).” Merleau-Ponty offers the following statement: “There is thus a human double for each animal. There is animal double for each man. Primordial indivision and metamorphosis. Today, there is separation (Ibid.).” Again, in certain ways, this argument is a dynamic rebuttal of ontological dualism, but remains problematic in the fact that his primary example is the Inuit mask, a piece of material culture that can be seen as affecting the separation it seeks to overcome. 83 Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), xv.

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such an extent that we should pause and question the character of our intertwined kinship with animals; Kelly Oliver notes that while he “explicitly rejects reductionistic version of the theory of evolution, [Merleau-Ponty] describe(s) a progression from lower to higher forms of animals and finally to human embodiment and behavior.”84 We cannot detach the emergence of this “higher life” from the process of “escape.”85 And so we are left with questions regarding the specific character of this kinship: Is the “overcoming” simply a specific form of “differential emergence?”86 If the overlapping and reversible touch of the hand is emblematic of the chiasm, how does this apply to the human touching the animal? Is there a “type” or “form” of touching that better embodies the flesh’s intertwining? Merleau-

Ponty does not offer definitive answers to such questions and the secondary literature is sufficiently diverse to avoid overwhelming consensus, but I want to hazard a theory: perhaps one of the reasons why our kinship is described in terms of “overcoming” or “escape” is due to the qualification Merleau-Ponty ascribes to it – strange-ness.

Merleau-Ponty primarily uses the term to identify and emphasize the alterity of animal being and its irreducibility to human conceptualization.87 The problem arises however when we consider the implications of this otherness. Here we should note the dual understanding of “strangeness” that characterizes Merleau-Ponty’s thought. On the one hand, the “stranger” is that being which defies categorical reification, in this case the “animal other.” “Strangeness” in this context is a resistance to and subversion of the pretense of

84 Oliver, 209. 85 Ibid. 86 Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes, 214 87 We can posit parallels between his work and not only critical animal theory but posthumanist theory as well, a perspective which Cary Wolfe, one its leading proponents describes that which “enables us to describe the human and its characteristic modes of communication, interaction, meaning, social significations, and affective investments with greater specificity once we have removed meaning from the ontologically closed domain of consciousness, reason, reflection, and so on…[forcing] us to rethink our taken for granted modes of human experience, including the normal perceptual modes and affective states of Homo sapiens itself, by recontextualizing them in terms of the entire sensorium of other living beings and their own autopoetic ways of ‘bringing forth a world’ – ways that are, since we ourselves are human animals, part of the evolutionary history and behavioral and psychological repertoire of the human itself (xxv).”

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hegemonic knowledge and/or categorization. The animal experiences and expresses the world through its own particular gestalt and style, and as such cannot be fully captured in thought or experience; we may attain a deeper understanding of animal life through observation and research but we must continually abandon the notion that we may ever exhaust the life of the animal in our experiences with it and conceptualizations of it. On the other hand, that which we consider “strange” also represents the borderline of identity and existence. Here, “strangeness” is associated with the “foreigner” or “alien” as emblematic of

“experiences of extremity which bring us to the edge…[and] threaten the known with the unknown.”88 The “stranger as limit” indicates the extent to which this figure presents us with being whom we must respond to, but which threatens our pretensions of ontological certainty or existential security.89

Are we then left to choose one side over the other? Or are we left to sit uncomfortably in the seeming contradiction of Merleau-Ponty’s definition? Perhaps not.

Alterity and subversion inhabit the stranger simultaneously. Additionally, the threat embodied by the stranger need not be responded to with hostility and rejection. Rather,

Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on animality and the flesh lend themselves to an engagement with the stranger that Richard Kearney describes as “carnal hospitality…where hospitality becomes a transubstantiation between self and Stranger where the two species cross without ever losing their difference.”90 The intertwining of our flesh with the world into a relationship of “strange kinship” certainly lends itself to this interpretation and we should not deny the significant critique of anthropocentrism that Merleau-Ponty has produced.

88 Richard Kearney. Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 3, emphasis added. 89 Ibid., 5. 90 Richard Kearney and Kascha Semonovitch. “At the Threshold: Foreigners, Strangers, Others” in Phenomenologies of the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitlity, ed. Richard Kearney and Kascha Semonovitch. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 16.

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And yet, can such “hospitality” be reconciled with the notion of “lateral overcoming?”91 In addition to abandoning the language of “overcoming,” I contend that recognizing the subversive quality of this “strange kinship” requires that we deepen and expand are sense of not only how an intertwining flesh cultivates this kind of relationship, but perhaps more importantly who we are intertwined with. In short, the kinship of alterity that Kearney sees as central to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy must embrace those beings that we might consider ever more strange than animals – plants and stone.

I make this move for two primary reasons. One, Merleau-Ponty’s definition of

“flesh” is not circumscribed or limited by “intertwining” and “strange kinship.” Indeed, his philosophy offers others resources that enable us to challenge this implicit anthropocentricism. Here, I want to focus on the characteristics of the “elements” and

“Wild Being.” In the following section, I will not offer an in-depth explanation of these two terms, but rather use them as entry points for the introduction of recent works on vegetal

91 Here again Ted Toadvine’s interpretation of Merleau-Ponty provides a reference point to the latter’s subtle anthropocentrism. In the article “The Elemental Past,” Toadvine offers a compelling defense of Merleau- Ponty’s position that the world does not exist without or before human beings, the primary thrust of which is the distinction between “organic” and “personal” time. Referring to the discovery of and subsequent reflection on fossils, Toadvine asserts that the fossil bears forth a “trace of life” and “embodies the very paradox of our encounter with the immemorial past…before our scientific explanations gain traction (272).” Toadvine goes on to define this “immemorial past” with references to our anonymous animality: “If we understand the phrase ‘elemental past’ to refer broadly to this ‘absolute past,’ then one of its dimensions is our biological life, our animality, insofar as this is lived as an anonymous and immemorial past in relation to the narrative history of our personal lives. Since this past is anterior to the distinction between subject and object, or between human and nonhuman, anonymous sensibility cannot be a conscious experience; it cannot occur within personal time, the time of reflection, insofar as it makes such time possible (275).” As it pertains to his intention to reinforce animal autonomy, this definition of “elemental time” is not problematic. The issue arises, as I have discussed previously, when Toadvine does not challenge actually challenge the centering of human subjectivity or personal time; this is seen most clearly in his reference to the “nested hierarchy” of matter, life, and mind which characterizes Merleau-Ponty”s understanding of gestalts. Reflecting on Merleau-Ponty’s comment – “Higher behavior retains subordinated dialectics in the present depths of its existence” – Toadvine asserts that “human consciousness takes up and reconfigures organic life on its own terms, just as organic life animates the matter of which it is composed (274).” This privileging of human consciousness is problematic and indicates the limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s work; indeed, Toadvine begins the article with a reference to Georges Bataille and Merleau-Ponty’s agreement with contention belief that the sun did not exist before man [sic] (263). Of course this singular moment does not indicate any wholesale agreement between the two on every issue, it is curious, particularly when we consider that for Bataille “becoming-human is predicated upon the evacuation of the heterogeneous, which means the negation of nature, the prohibition or abjection of animal functions, and indeed, the repression or exclusion of the entire ontology of the flesh See Gerald Bruns, “Becoming-Animal (Some Simple Ways).” New Literary History, 38, No. 4, (Autumn 2007), 707.

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(Michael Marder and Jeffrey T. Nealon) and lithic (Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and David

Macauley) being. While critical reflection on plants and stones is a relatively new field, the insights gleaned from the work of these authors are essential for the current project. This brings us to our second reason, the Appalachian context.

If we construe “the stranger” as a threat to the homogeneity of an established social order, we can subsequently note important parallels between such threatening alterity and

Rodger Cunningham’s analysis of Appalachia as an “internal and psychic threat” to metropolitan identity and power.92 According to Cunningham, in the process of peripheralization the “savagery” and “barbarism” projected on the “Indian” [sic] is transferred to the mountaineer:

It was precisely when they acquired the basis for an autonomous collective identity of their own, that they were attacked in terms applicable to upstart children by a culture incapable of achieving a settled maturity of its own, and therefore in constant need of imposing such projections on others in order to bolster its own hollow identity. Imposing inappropriate concepts of “frontier” onto mountain people had the ultimate effect, in the American consciousness, of assimilating them not to a frontiersman but to his dark twin the Indian – of equating them with that person for whom “civilization” had provoked violence.93

As we saw in chapter two, Cunningham’s argument is primarily anthropological but alludes to the existential intimacy between the land and people, such that we must recognize the extent to which the characteristics of “savagery” and “barbarism” applied to both people

92 Cunningham, 110-111. Cunningham’s primary concern is to explain and critique the psychohistorical/cultural dimensions of the conquest and infantilization of Appalachia. Drawing in part of Freudian theory, Cunningham identifies and analyzes the acute ways in which “dominant” forces – in this case financiers, industrialists, and denominational missionaries from eastern, metropolitan centers – project their own insecurities onto “dominated” groups. He writes, “The threats to the American psyche comes no longer from the harsh forbidding world of the superego, which had lost its supremacy in the American republic, but rather from the chaotic, impulse-ridden id, now freed from its former restraints without true autonomy having been achieved in the process. This is an acute analysis within its framework. But Superego and Id are themselves historically conditioned categories; they are, in fact, Freud’s internalized reworking of the concepts of Civilization and Nature, which he took for granted as objectively ‘given’ in the ‘external’ world. Thus rather than saying that the forest symbolizes the id, it is perhaps better to say that the forest and the id are parallel constructs, both standing for a deeper universal reality. Indeed, in terms of the historical development of ideas, one may say that it is the id that symbolizes the forest (123).” 93 Ibid., 107.

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and environment. In this sense, “the Brush” was a concatenation of human, animal, vegetal, and lithic that needed to be tamed and assimilated into the modern project of industrial progress. The mountaineers did not share in any kind of “kinship with the missionary and there was no sense of an “intertwining” between the two. To be a “Brush breaker” entailed the “breaking” – and thus “overcoming” – of a threatening heterogeneity. In this context, denominational evangelism was a denial of “the flesh.”

B. Be(wild)ering Elementality: Of Vegetal and Lithic Flesh

The notion of a “strange kinship” that “intertwines” the human with animals pushes subjectivity and ontology beyond anthropocentricism but is limited by the subtle anthropocentrism of “lateral overcoming.” In order to recognize to recognize the genuinely environmental/ecological dimensions of “the flesh” we must reject any notion of

“overcoming.” Here, “the flesh” as “wild Being” and “elemental,” whose ambiguity make it perhaps more difficult to fully grasp Merleau-Ponty’s use and intent, lend themselves to a deeper sense of “strange-ness” and “kinship” and “intertwining.” To be clear, these terms neither contradict nor eclipse one another, but rather are themselves intertwined. “The flesh” as “element” and “wildness” deepens our sense of those beings with whom we share a common materiality and they compel us to reconsider both our understanding of and response to those whom we consider “strange”; speaking of flesh in these terms allows us to recognize the fundamental heterogeneity of material embodiment. If “the flesh” intertwines us in a “wild elementality” then it becomes both possible and necessary that we extend our notion of “kinship” to the plants and stones upon which we live. “Flesh” is not merely the intertwining of the human and animal, but more radically with the plant and the stone.

As Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the elements and wild Being is relatively broad or general, it is necessary to supplement our understanding with additional sources. While he

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certainly provides a rich description of each idea we can better recognize their radical potential in dialogue with other voices. As regards the “elements”, I will draw Jeffrey

Jerome Cohen and David Macauley’s work in elemental ecocriticism. While approaching

“the elements” from particular perspectives – Cohen’s work is a unique combination of literary studies and philosophy while Macauley offers a philosophical genealogy – both authors provide us with a fuller picture of the character and implications of an elementally oriented theory and reflection. Next, I will introduce two works from the burgeoning field of critical plant theory. One of the clearest ways in which Merleau-Ponty’s argument for

“the flesh as element” challenges anthropocentric discourse is its deepening of subjectivity, its expansion of ontological being beyond the human. In our discussion of intertwining and

“strange kinship” we have seen the ways in which Merleau-Ponty revives the relationship between humans and animals. In his reflections on elementality, he provides a conceptual framework within which to not only encounter, but to embrace vegetal life.

Following our discussion of “elementality,” we will turn to Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on “the flesh as wild Being.” Here we must note that an important distinction between “wildness” and “wilderness.” Within the context of postmodernism, the former has frequently come under suspicion, with many casting doubts as the validity of the concept or the reality. Here, the assumed divide between “nature” and “culture” collapses and along with it the notion of places free of human influence. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy does not touch directly upon this point and his argument that “the flesh” is synonymous with “wild

Being” is as much about the quality or character of Being as it is about particular places in the world. The wildness of the flesh speaks to the freedom of human and non-human life from the hegemony of abstraction and conceptualization. While vegetal being certainly embodies this character, we will focus here on stones and rocks – on lithic being – as a

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radical expression of “wild flesh.” Indeed, given our inability and/or unwillingness to speak of rocks as enfleshed, connecting this particular aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s argument to the lithic pushes our understanding of “the flesh” to the margins of ontology. For a people “of the mountains,” this shift is particularly important. i. Elementality and Vegetal Flesh

Perhaps the most frequent epithets used for Appalachians are “hillbilly” and

“redneck.” Signifiers of cultural and class status, the two terms function in much the same way as the “the Brush”: a shorthand way of representing the chaos and primitivism of the region. However, we need not assume that “hillbilly” or “redneck” represents the limit of

Appalachian derision (for example the more general designation of “white trash”). Indeed, it is important to note the extent to which geography – and here I refer not only to topography, but migration – contributes to the plethora of stereotypical symbols used for

Appalachians. That is, even for those Appalachians living beyond the mountains, the cultural and environmental stigma of the region cannot be so easily avoided. One particularly unique representation of this phenomena is the term “brier hopper” – a designation ascribed to those individuals and families that migrated to industrial cities in the

Midwest (Cincinnati, Dayton, Pittsburgh, Chicago) that evoked the backward simpleton, barefoot and clad in overalls, running along the ridgelines and dwelling in the hollers.

As with any number of epithets used for minority populations, one means of diffusing its cultural power is re-appropriation, adopting and rendering the term a positive symbol. Such a tactic is not always successful, or if it is, runs the risk of reifying such stereotypes and perpetuating a reactionary cultural politics; here we should recall the ways in which “hillbilly” and “redneck” have frequently been appropriated in defense of racist or sexist ideologies. However, a stereotype can be just easily employed for progressive, even

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radical, cultural politics. An example of the latter is Jim Wayne Miller topographical eponym

“the Brier.”

A native of western North Carolina, Miller was a foundational figure in Appalachian

Studies in the 1960s and ’70s, focusing specifically on literature, folk culture, and poetry.

And while his poetic canon is broader than the collected works in The Brier Poems, it is these particular poems that are emphasized below, in large part due his intentional embrace of the

“brier” as “a badge of prickly shame [converted] into an emblem of blossoming pride – the first stage in healing a fragmented, internally divided identities of subordinated…regional minorities like Appalachians.”94 Indeed, Richard Blaustein’s reference to “prickly shame” and “blossoming pride” in this quote subtly indicates the extent to which Miller’s poetic identity is invariably rooted in the topographical or environmental character of the region, such that when “Brier” is first introduced in The Mountains Have Come Closer the reader is immediately “placed” in the particularities of Appalachian rural spaces of representation.

Consider the following examples.

In “Chopping Wood”, Miller intertwines the “cultural” – “idling traffic”, “dances on the deck”, “smoke filled meetings” – with the “corporeal” – “nerves”, “arteries”, “veins” – into a depiction of quotidian labor that ends in the “resurrection and miracle of rest” occurring “along creeks and ridges.”95 The poem “Brier Visions” depicts “thought” as a transformation of “mind” into “plow” and “sunlight” and “crow”, wherein, as the “Brier” enters deeper into his thought, into his “vision,” he sees “coves and hollers” saturated in metropolitan distractions that “lift” the people off the land and deposited “toward the

94 Richard Blaustein, The Thistle and the Brier: Historical Links and Cultural Parallels between Scotland and Appalachia. (Jefferson: McFarland Publishing, 2003), 8. 95 Jim Wayne Miller. The Brier Poems. (Frankfurt: Gnomon Press, 1997), 27.

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mainstream.”96 “Every Leaf a Mirror” and “The Brier Breathing” finds the narrator’s visage and body reverberated in a kind of “leafy reciprocity” such that the leaf confronts the human subject with both the risk(s) of his culture and the possibilities of his “different breathings.”

Every leaf was a mirror he looked in/reflecting his face among smokestacks, billboards, /shopping centers, mills, and vacation cottages/hanging like a mirage along the ridgetops./Time swept past roaring like a tractor-trailer, leaving him hatless in a wake of fume97

In the evening when he walked down the steep slope of his breath into the hollow of sleep he distinguished all his different breathings…breathing that turned his body leafy/turned it cold/and came up/out of a maze of passageways98

While these selections do not fully capture the extent to which Miller evokes and creates a profound sense of overlap between humanity and the environment, they do provide us with an adequate sampling of the mood and perspective that made his poetry, particularly the

“Brier poems,” environmentally attuned. “Miller as Brier” imagines the human body, mind, face, breath, constitution as fundamentally connected to and dependent on non-human life.

They prefigure an acute, if subtle, attention to the vitality and agency of such

“environmental” beings – leaves, coves and hollers, creeks and ridges.

Of particular importance here is Miller’s “Brier Sermon,” a piece of prophetic poetry in which the character “Brier” occupies a street corner, delivers a sermon, and calls upon his neighbors to be “born again.” However, unlike his evangelical counterparts, Brier’s call for

“rebirth” is not couched in the language personal salvation or acceptance of Christ, but rather intones against the “sin of forgetfulness” – “forgetfulness of the fathers/forgetfulness of a part of ourselves [which] makes us less than we ought to be/ less than we could be.”99

“Here the religious theme or idea of ‘being lost’ – its meaning and connection to ‘being born

96 Ibid., 30. 97 Ibid, 41. 98 Ibid., 43-44 99 Ibid., 64-65.

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again’ – is situated within the experience(s) of having “been carried a long way around…so far from home, [that Appalachians do not] know where/we are, how we got where we are, how to get home again.”100 Evoking Jesus’ response to his mother’s query concerning his whereabouts following their pilgrimage to Jerusalem – “in my father’s house” – Miller asserts that the sinfulness of our amnesia is fundamentally related to our desire to “run off and leave” the “home here in the mountains.”101 Having “moved to the cities,” willingly or not,

Appalachians have lost “the ground from underneath our feet…the spiritual ground.”102

They have sinned against themselves and are trapped between the false binaries of metropolitan representations: “proud and independent…narrow-minded…from the heart of

America…the worst part of America.”103 Building on the poem’s religious symbolism, the prayer that Miller offers in response is a plea that the Lord might “help us to see ourselves,/help us to be ourselves,/help us to free ourselves/from seeing ourselves/as other see us.”104 As Miller appropriates the religious language of “prayer” and “born again” and

“sin” he draws the reader away from their typically evangelical or pious connotations, and re- locates them within an explicitly “profane” or “secular” place.

Cultural and topographical particularity are woven together to such an extent that the religious/theological dimensions of the poem are evocative of the traditions and sensibilities of Appalachian mountain religion. Thus, as the Appalachian is re-born, s/he re-discovers their sensibility and their place; they are “born again to sights and sounds and tastes” and

100 Ibid., 61. Blaustein notes: “The poet’s alter ego…has undergone a personal transformation akin to a rite of passage. Separation from his native community has led to marginality and alienation, resolved through a process of self-renewal or identity reformulation; a sorting out what is of lasting value in the past and the present. Modern Appalachians, like modern people everywhere, have become self-estranged; the Brier urges them to consider what they may have thoughtlessly discarded in striving to advance themselves according to the world’s outside definition of progress (56).” 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid., 69-70. 103 Ibid., 70. 104 Ibid., 71

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“the shapes of leaves on trees…the sound of the creek running.”105 In associating Miller, however lightly, to Appalachian mountain religion, I am not claiming that his work is somehow a poetic form of the tradition or that the author should be identified with it.

Indeed, he explicitly claims an “ambivalent” attitude toward religion:

I can find certain religious practices, certain narrow theological views, just as amusing, just as ridiculous as the next person. On the other hand, I think that a religious impulse is a genuine and authentic thing. There’s nothing shame about it, although there’s lots of sham religion in people. It’s superficial to take the old view that everyone who is caught up in religion is either stupid or uneducated…My poetry has a religious foundation, in the broadest sense. I do not have any denominational affiliation.106

According to Miller, the “Brier Sermon” is ambiguous in its religious connotations and influences; he notes its anecdotal references to Zen Buddhism, its consonance with

Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the literary sermons of James Still, William Faulkner, and Herman Melville.107 Miller’s description of his poetry’s religious dimension is important for my argument precisely his emphasis on ambivalence resonates with the ambiguity that

Deborah McCauley identifies in Appalachian mountain religion’s hermeneutics. Just as

Miller appropriates religious imagery and language for seemingly non-religious purposes, so I am attempting to draw on certain beliefs, practices, and symbolisms of Appalachian mountain religion to articulate an intentionally ecological or environmental theology.

Indeed, it is the preacher’s name – Brier – that I find particularly appealing and challenging.

Assuredly, Miller’s appeal to the plant is largely cultural and much of the Brier’s sermon focuses on the “sin” of forfeiting and retrieving Appalachian culture. Additionally, while Miller (and by extension “Brier”) embraces the land, his “salvation as anamnesis” tends

105 Ibid., 74. 106 Jim Wayne Miller, Interviewed by Edwin T. Arnold and J.W. Williamson. Interviewing Appalachia: Appalachian Journal Interviews, 1978-1992, ed. J.W. Williamson and Edwin T. Arnold. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 257-258. 107 Ibid.

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to emphasize a forgotten culture and contains the kind anthropological bias that runs through McCauley’s history of Appalachian religion. Yet it is entirely appropriate that Miller chose the “brier” as his altar ego. Indeed, I would argue that while he could have employed

“hillbilly” or “redneck” – or even “mountaineer” – as a poetic appellation, the fact that he names himself “brier” lends itself to an alternative reading, one in which the “sin of forgetfulness” is expanded beyond its cultural register. Indeed, cultural pejorative frequently applied to mid-20th century Appalachian migrants, particularly in Midwestern cities – “brier hopper” – is meaningful precisely because of its topographical/environmental invocations.

As a signaling phrase, “brier hopper” functions to differentiate and isolate the Appalachian migrant by connecting him or her to the region’s bothersome flora. Both “brier hopper” and “brier” are emblematic of cultural and environmental deficiency, the same trait attributed to the Edna Alexander and 19th century mountaineers by denominational missionaries.

My appeal to Miller’s poetic alter ego echoes my analysis of Alexander’s vision while connecting it to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the flesh. My intention is to employ the figures of “the Brier” and “brier” in order to discuss the connection between “flesh” and

“elementality.” Here I do not seek to elide the particularity of the “brier” as a type of plant, but rather employ it as a poetic synecdoche of the region’s vegetal life, a life which draws us deeper into the radical possibilities of Merleau-Ponty’s work. As an intertwining of identity, the figure of the “Brier/brier” not only draws our attention to the intertwining of the human and vegetal, it also evokes an image of life as a congregation of elemental flesh.108

Merleau-Ponty’s reference to the flesh as an “element” is, like he is other descriptions of the idea, somewhat elusive. Tucked away in the “Working Notes” of The

108 Jeffrey T. Nealon. Plant Theory: Biopower & Vegetable Life. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 93.

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Visible and the Invisible is a parenthetical note on “elements” or “elemental” that references

Gaston Bachelard.109 Having previously used the term to describe the flesh –

The flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it, we should need the old term “elements,” in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principles that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. The flesh is in this sense an “element” of Being.110

– Merleau-Ponty’s fleeting mention of the poet-philosopher does little to clarify the concept.

Indeed, his statement in the note regarding the element in the negative – “not an object” – further complicates our understanding. That Merleau-Ponty only uses the term eight times to designate “the flesh” leaves us with a critical question: in what sense should we understand or imagine the “flesh as element?”111

Alphonso Lingis emphasizes Merleau-Ponty’s connection of elementality with sensibility; the “flesh as elemental” in this case speaks of a reciprocal movement between that which senses and that which is sensed.112 Here, the primacy of the lived body’s engagement with the world is reinforced and our vision, touch, taste are understood to be rooted in a common flesh with that which is seen, touched, and tasted. M.C. Dillon argues that elementality is “an instantiation of…the concrete coincidence of immanence and transcendence in the phenomenon of the body.”113 In this sense, the concept is constitutive of Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of Cartesian dualism and philosophical abstraction. “Flesh as elemental” deconstructs the traditional barrier between empiricist immanence and intellectualist transcendence; indeed it indicates the “ambiguity” and “multi-determinability”

109 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 267. 110 Ibid., 138. 111 Lawrence Hass, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy, 201. 112 Alphonso Lingis, “Translators Preface”, The Visible and the Invisible, liv-lv. 113 Dillon, 146.

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of phenomenal flesh.114 Dillon’s reference to “ambiguity” and “multi-determinability” parallels Lawrence Hass’ discussion of elementality as alterity, particularly as it relates to our rootedness in “embodied life and nature.”115 However, Hass expands on this notion of ambiguity by bringing Merleau-Ponty into dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas, thereby emphasizing our ethical responsibility for and towards others. Here, the anthropocentric tendencies in Levinas’ claim that “the other puts me and my ideas in question” is corrected by an account of alterity that remains “rooted in the element of flesh, animality, and nature.”116 Finally, we must consider Robert Vallier’s notion that

if we need the old word element to designate it, we have learned that the term itself designates nothing precise, but rather a continual movement of differentiation, an on-going inscription of difference that enables and favors the world and living beings…an in-difference prior to and making possible difference…prior to the differentiated orders of subject and object…What we designate when use the word flesh is the elemental, which never appears as such but is the condition for the possibility of all appearing, allowing beings to show themselves.117

Clearly, the flesh as element in this context is not a reference for any specific thing or being, but rather the possibility for material existence itself; Sue Cataldi’s contention that the flesh is medium or texture of being parallels Vallier’s definition.118

These interpretations indicate the extent to which the concept can be understood and described in a variety of ways; in this they echo the polysemy of “the flesh” itself. And while each definition contributes to our understanding of the importance and implications of

Merleau-Ponty’s idea, I find Hass’ explanation most helpful, particularly given his emphasis on alterity and the connection he makes between elementality and nature. Lingis’ work on

114 Ibid., 53. 115 Hass, 100, 102. 116 Ibid., 114. 117 Robert Vallier, “Elemental Difference: Of Life, Flesh, and Earth in Merleau-Ponty and the Timaeus” in Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy: Transforming the Tradition, ed. Bernard Flynn, Wayne J. Froman, and Robert Vallier. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 147. 118 Sue Cataldi, Emotion, Depth, and Flesh: A Study of Sensitive Space – Reflection on Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Embodiment. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 60.

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sensibility or Vallier and Cataldi’s insistence on the term’s ambiguity, echo Merleau-Ponty’s concerns to articulate an ontological language that is open enough to overcome the philosophical dichotomies between subject/object and transcendence/immanence.

However, to detach, or at least distance, our understanding of the element from matter risks another type of disembodiment; this despite the fact that Merleau-Ponty refers to an element as a “concrete emblem” and associates it with the lived body.119 Hass’ work, in contrast, draws our attention not only to the materiality of the flesh, but a specific kind of materiality: the fourfold elements of nature. In emphasizing the materiality of the “flesh as element,” I want to draw our attention to the “flesh” of vegetal being, whose “matter” is perhaps emblematic of the intertwining of earth, air, fire, and water. Moreover, the possibilities and actualities of such vegetal flesh are critical in pursuing a non-anthropocentric ontology.

If the “elemental flesh” is a way of figuring our bodily relationship with the world as one of reciprocity and differentiation, resisting the temptation of centering the human body in this equation requires that we remember what David Macauley calls “philosophy’s forgotten four” – earth, air, fire, and water.120 Here we are able to extrapolate, and perhaps clarify, Merleau-Ponty’s brief reference to Bachelard; according to Macauley, the latter’s poetic phenomenology represents “the most creative articulation and sustained investigation of the elements in the twentieth century.”121 While the connection between Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard is not the focus on this subsection and we cannot afford a sustained treatment of their philosophical kinship, it is important to note that if Merleau-Ponty identified his

119 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 147. 120 Macauley, 13. 121 Ibid., 295

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understanding of the elemental with Bachelard’s work we must account for the latter’s assertion that our contemplation or reverie of the element “finds its matter.”122

To speak of “elemental matter” is to create a “renewed understanding of and critical encounter with air, fire, earth, and water and to make us aware of the complex – and sometimes very necessary – mediation that exist between us and the environment, between humans and the more capacious world.”123 The “elements” are constitutive of our being, our existence, for it is through our “elemental relations” that we “uncannily partner with…that which has always uncannily partnered with use.”124 Materiality in this context is

“inherently creative, motile, experimental, impure because fire, water, air, and earth are never inert.”125 The elements are not a passive or static background for human and animal life; rather they are creative participants in the world and they resist and elude our conceptualization even as they facilitate thought and practice. Their dynamic volatility

“earth-air-fire-water” threaten our daily domestications and pretensions to security.126

Moreover, the “flesh as elemental” – or “Being as elemental” – is attraction beyond human subjectivity. That is, if “elementality” somehow describes the character of Being, then the elements of earth, air, fire, water, embody a kind of material palpability that suffuses existence. Hence, my preference for Hass’ emphasis on “flesh as materiality.” The

“elementality of flesh” not only allows us to recognize its corporeality, it also “underscores the importance of touch, contiguity, and interconnection between the natural

122 Ibid., 296. 123 Ibid., 2. 124 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Elemental Relations,” O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies. 1:Object/Ecology: (2014), 54. 125 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, “Introduction” in Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Coehn and Lowell Duckert. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 3. 126 Ibid., 6, 10, 14, 16.

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environment…and humans, offering what amounts to as an…ontology of contact.”127 Of course, this definition does not limit our understanding of “flesh” to material embodiment; it is more than an a more complex synonym for “materiality.” Rather, to say that the “flesh” is an element is to affirm its materiality. It is to affirm its quotidian carnality, its connection to bodily need.128 To say that “flesh” is an element is to recognize existence as inherently bewildering. It is to “place” intertwining kinship, to draw our attention to a porous multiplicity that dissolves the artificial boundaries that humanity has erected around itself.129

While such porosity suffuses each being, vegetal life offers a uniquely powerful embodiment of this elemental flesh.

And so the Brier returns once more, only this time as an evocation of plant life.

Assuredly, Miller does not emphasize the environmental dimensions of the image. Indeed,

“preacher Brier” as a poetic figure does not explicitly reference some type of vegetal agency or subjectivity; the street sermon is delivered by a human, not a plant, a point that is fairly obvious but not necessarily indicative of a substantive flaw in Miller’s poem or symbolism.

Rather, and here we see the overlap between Miller’s identification with a uniquely

Appalachian plant and Edna Alexander’s dream vision of dead leaves, the vegetal ontos of

Miller’s poetry are reclusively present and must be developed. That is, if the “brier” is a cultural and environmental symbol, emphasizing the latter requires that we shift our perspective and expand our sense of “who” is actually preaching. What if the “sermon” is not defined as a moment of street preaching? What if this message of rebirth, of a renewed contact, is not simply about historical memory, but existential sensibility? What if the

“sermon” is unspoken? What if it is an embodiment, a sheer presence that can only be

127 Macauley, 71. 128 Ibid., 5. 129 Michael Marder. Grafts: Writing on Plants. (Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2016), 30.

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recognized through quotidian contact? What if “Preacher Brier” is an actual wild blackberry bush? Particularizing our plant – for example, the Brier/brier as “wild blackberry” – compels us to reimagine Miller’s poem-sermon and his call for rebirth “to sights and sounds and tastes” beyond the specific spaces of his text.

Native to Appalachia, the wild blackberry has been an important element in the region’s agrarian/subsistence cultures, particularly as a supplemental resource during periods of economic difficulty; for those willing to brave chigger bites, stained clothes, and thorny branches, the wild blackberry graciously provided sustenance.130 Biologically, the wild blackberry resists easy categorization, owing primarily to its heterogeneous fecundity – new plants emerge from crown regrowth, rhizomatic expansion, or season seed germination.131

While such cultural and scientific points are certainly interesting, they are not my primary reason for attending to the wild blackberry as a specific kind of “brier.” Rather, I turn to this plant because it particularizes our sense of the Brier/brier intertwining, draws us into the vegetal world, and in so doing roots us deeper in the elementality of flesh. As a rhizomatic plant, the “wild blackberry as brier” embodies the kind of connectivity and multiplicity that

Jeffrey Nealon considers emblematic of life as co-creative.132 Indeed, the brier only becomes through an elemental connection – rooted in the earth, nourished by water and fire, witness through air.

Here it is helpful to briefly return to Michael Marder’s philosophy of vegetal life referenced in the previous chapter. While there I focused primarily on his discussion of the leaf and its illumination of Edna Alexander’s mystical vision, here I want to consider some of the broader parameters and implications of his argument for and embrace of “vegetal

130 Elmer Gray. “The Blackberry in Appalachia.” Appalachian Heritage. Vol. 8, No. 3 (Summer 1980), 21-22. 131 J.C. DiTomaso. “Pest Notes: Wild Blackberries.” UC ANR Publication 7434. (Davis: University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2010). 132 Nealon, 94.

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being”, particularly as they help us understand the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s identification of “flesh” with the “elements.”

While Marder’s reflection on plants is broad and deep – his Plant-Thinking: A

Philosophy of Vegetal Life discusses the soul, body, time, freedom, existentiality, wisdom, and ethics of vegetal being – I am primarily concerned with the “spatial” dimensions of his argument. More specifically, Marder’s critique of the marginalization of vegetal being provides a philosophical resource to recognize the theological and anthropological implications of not only Miller’s poetry, but Appalachian culture and mountain religion as well. Simply put, Marder’s attention to the “placed” existence of plants – their literal rootedness in the earth – draws our attention to the “elemental flesh” of the Appalachian brier, whose existence is thoroughly bound to the “milieu” or “environment” within which it grows.

Recall that for Marder, the turn to vegetal being entails a “transvaluation of metaphysical value systems” that are obsessed with “primordial [totality]” and anthropocentric superiority.133 Indeed, we need only consider the place of plant in western consciousness to see the extent to which the vegetal has been rendered inherently lifeless.

As critical animal theory demonstrates, animals certain function as paradigmatic examples of

“otherness” and civilization has often employed animality as a cipher in its self-determined contrast to nature and primitivism. Regrettably, limiting “otherness” to animality indicates the extent to which “non-human, non-animal living beings, such as plants, have populated the margin of the margin, the zone of absolute obscurity undetectable on the radars of our conceptualities.”134 Furthermore, as “marginal beings” the plant is subsequently rendered

“dead and dry…deprived of its distinctiveness, and turned into a museum artifact in the

133 Marder, Plant Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 55, 56. 134 Ibid., 2.

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labyrinths of thought.”135 Jeffrey Nealon asserts that “the jettisoned, negative or forgotten other…is most assuredly not the animal, insofar as animality is the subtending paradigm for our era of humanist, neoliberal biopower…Animals are more our life ‘companions’ than our

‘others’…One might suggest that role of abjected other as having been played throughout the biopolitical era not by the animal but by the plant – which was indeed forgotten as the privileged form of life at the dawn of biopower.”136 Here the intersection of ethics and ontology that facilitated a fundamental shift in considerations of animal ‘being’ and ‘value” is not expanded “to address the diverse modes of being of all living beings, many of them deemed too insignificant and mundane to even deserve the appellation of ‘others’.”137

In contrast, Marder offers the plant and vegetal being as that which “is capable of countering [the] metaphysical violence [that opposes] the human to the plant.”138 Plant ontology is communal, characterized by intimate and intense interactions with animal, fungal, and mineral beings. Plants are not “cordoned” off from their specific place: “If vegetal being is to be at all, it must remain an integral part of the milieu wherein it grows.”139

Moreover, existing “at the intersection of the physical elements: the earth and the sky, the

135 Ibid. 136 Nealon, 11. A central theme in Nealon’s argument is biopower and biopolitics, specifically as it concerns the work of Michel Foucault. He writes, “My initial hypothesis was that Foucault might show us how animals’ exclusion from an increasingly triumphant human biopower was precisely what had made animals such ethically compelling figures over the past decade (x).” He continues by pointing out the cognitive dissonance between his hypothesis and the actual substance of Foucault’s argument: “I did not find a confirmation…Foucault in fact provides a very different explanation for intensified interest in animals within the bipolitical era: biopolitics remains invested in animals not because animals constitute our ‘others’ but because animality provides the subtending notion of subjective desire that gives rise to biopower in the first place. Foucault argues that animals – and their hidden life of desire – have from the beginning been the privileged figures for understanding human life within the regime of biopower. Even more intriguingly, Foucault argues that it’s not animality but a primary focus on plant life that gets left behind in the era of biopower (x).” 137 Ibid. Marder writes: “Such suppression of the most basic question regarding plants became the breeding ground for their neglect; although – akin to us – they are living creatures, we fail to detect the slightest resemblances to our life in them and, as a consequence of this failure, routinely pass negative judgment on their worth, as well as on the place they occupy in the modern version of the ‘Great Chain of Being,’ from which both the everyday and scientific ways of thinking have not yet completely emancipated themselves (3).” 138 Ibid., 58. 139 Ibid., 69.

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closed and the open, darkness and light, the moisture of the soil and the dryness of crisp air” vegetal life is emblematic of an exposure to and affirmation of the elemental corporeality characteristic of “the flesh.”140 Within this context, identity is defined by a “radical otherness” and “deep pluralism” that emphasizes the “fluidity of distinction between self and other.”141

As vegetal life, the “brier as wild blackberry” therefore embodies the vulnerable fragility and resilient vigor the flesh.142 It is emblematic of the material contiguity that characterizes elemental flesh. Moreover, within the context of Appalachia, it can be seen as the palpation of subsistence, a willing, and perhaps at times unwilling, participant in human survival. From a religio-theological perspective, the “brier as preacher” – rather than

“Preacher Brier” – is provocative in or because of its sheer bodily presence. And while the ability to “recognize” this kind of “vegetal sermon” draws us back to the human imagination, such a point does not erase what Rilke names the “happening” of life. Indeed, the promise of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, the promise of describing “being” as “flesh,” is its ability to retrieve not only our own materiality, but to situate that materiality in a multispecies kinship. Accordingly, there are multiple intertwinings at work in Miller’s poetry –

Brier/brier, human/vegetal, cultural/environmental, religious/profane – wherein “Preacher

Brier” “becomes” through the same elemental flesh as the “wild blackberry bier.” The sermon call to re-birth is not merely about cultural remembrance, but rather equally so about a return to elemental flesh.

Herein lies the deeper, radical possibilities of “the flesh” for re-imagining

Appalachian mountain religion. As we have seen, an important dimension of Appalachian

140 Ibid., 75. 141 Marder, Grafts, 94. 142 Ibid., 111.

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identity was a relationship with the land, be it the predominantly agrarian culture that marked the pre-industrial era or the distinctively place-based religion that developed in the hollers and valleys. Additionally, from the perspective of the industrialists and missionaries who penetrated the region in the late-19th century, the “mountaineers” were problematic in large part because they were a human embodiment of the topographical chaos and savagery of the mountains themselves; as wild and untamed as the deep, dark brush within which they lived. ii. Wild Being and Lithic Flesh

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, the British Isles were civilized when “a Trojan named Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas the founder of

Rome, left Italy, landed in southern England, killed most of the giants, drove the rest into caves in the mountains, named the island Britain after himself, and colonized it with fellow

Trojans.”143 As the legend goes, following the genocide of the islands inhabitants, only one

“giant” remained – Goegmagog, the final embodiment of the rebellious, instinctual, and chaotic savages that stood in the way of the Roman’s conquest.144 He meets the same fate as his kin when he is thrown from a rocky cliff into the sea below.

For Rodger Cunningham, whose historical narrative of Appalachian peripheralization extends beyond the typical chronological starting point of the late 19th century, Geoffrey’s mythic reading of British history reveals the extent to which the experience(s) of exploitation or domination that shaped “Celtic” and “Appalachian”

143 Cunningham, 6. 144 Ibid. See also Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). There are certain parallels between Cunningham’s analysis of Monmouth’s narrative and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s interpretation of Odysseus actions in the Homeric epic. Here, the primitive giants in Monmouth’s history are analogous to the Cyclops Polyphemus: “The singleness of the eyes suggests the nose and mouth, more primitive than the symmetry of eyes and ears without which, and the combining of their dual perceptions, no identification depth, or objectivity is possible. But, compared to the Lotus-eaters, he represents a later, truly barbaric age, one of hunters and shepherds. For Home, the definition of barbarism coincides with that of a state in which no systematic agriculture, and therefore no systematic, time-managing organization of work and society, has yet been achieved (50).”

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identities were actually newer instantiations of an ancient process. These moments of peripheralization are really particular instantiations of a more expansive process. With regards to the narrative of Goegmagog’s execution, Cunningham emphasizes two overlapping points: 1) narrative distortion and 2) colonial expansion.

As a “historical” narrative, Monmouth’s depiction of the pre-Celtic inhabitants of

Britain as “beastlie” giants, relied on those island legends that told of an invasion by a race of giants, descended from Ham and Albion, which displaced the “Samothean Celts.”145 Within this context, “the ‘conquest’ of Brutus and the exiled Trojans was depicted as a project of reclamation, wherein the ‘dark’ genealogy of these ‘monstrous and frightening’ giants is used as justification for their violent displacement. A population of ‘metal-users with towns and commerce’ was distorted into the memorial representation of more primitive peoples.”146

Moreover, and here we see Cunningham’s appeal to psychoanalysis, these “giants” served as parental figures – representatives of despotism and rebellion – wherein the “feared aspects of parents” are projected onto an external body. Further, while he does not emphasize the ecological or environmental dimensions of this narrative, we should note the extent to which the “darkness” of these primitive giants – similar to the backwardness of the Appalachian mountaineer – was intimately connected to representations of the forests – and mountains –

145 Ibid. This association of an uncivilized and subsequently conquered people with “giants” is a common trope in narratives of western civilization, particularly with regards to Noah’s descendants. Robert Pogue Harrison, writes “Dispersed through [the] primeval forests that spread across earth after the flood, Noah’s descendants gradually lost their humanity over the generations and became solitary, nefarious creatures living under the cover of branches and leaves. They became bestial ‘giants.’ Abandoned early on by their mothers, they grew up without families or consciousness, feeding on fruits and searching for water. They were shy, brutal, restless, incestuous, and lacked any notion of a higher law than their own instincts and desires. They copulated on sight, aggressively and shamelessly, exercising no restraint whatsoever over their bodily motions, and they roamed the forests incessantly. This is what Vico calls the giant’s ‘bestial freedom’ – a freedom from terror and authority, a freedom from fathers (3).” Here, the giant as a “nefarious creature” devoid of any humanity and living a “bestial” life reveals the urbanthropocentric perspective that considers humanity and urbanization as ontologically and culturally superior. 146 Ibid.

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as the haunt of anarchy and wildness.147 Accordingly, the legend of Corenius’ victory over

Goegmagog’s speaks to the process whereby “the displaced nations of Albion were turned into monsters…cast back into the dark sea from which they came, [and] the very name of their defeated champion was corrupted into a reminder of the Chosen People’s enemies.”148

We need not dispute this point – the process of projection, conquest, internalization certainly describes Appalachian history – but Cunningham does omit a key detail regarding the execution of Goegmagog – the stony cliff.

While Cunningham’s omission is not overwhelmingly problematic, it does indicate a limitation in his reading of the Monmouth narrative. Assuredly, if we approach the story from Cunningham’s perspective, that is if we read it as the genesis of peripheralization, we can certainly understand his emphasis on the psycho-cultural symbolism of Goegmagog and his “giant” kin. Yet ignoring the topographical dimensions of the narrative yields an incomplete understanding of why and how the giants were a threat to Brutus’ civilizing efforts. Indeed, I begin this section with a brief discussion of Monmouth’s narrative precisely because, as a piece of “colonial justification,” it helps us recognize, and perhaps embrace, lithic flesh. It is not simply that Goegmagog’s name functions as an eponymic reminder a primitive chaos that deserved a genocidal extinction, rather as Jeffrey Jerome

Cohen notes the memory of this one figure is connected to a specific place of his demise:

Saltus Goemagog.149 Cohen writes,

Despite the action inherent in that designation, however, the toponym captures not a life in motion but an enduring arrest, an eternal fall from which Goemagog, ever about to be smashed to fragments by looming rocks, will not escape…Like an American Indian name attached to a town or road

147 Harrison, 2, 6, 8, 61. 148 Cunningham, 8. 149 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 118.

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build on former tribal land, such appropriation petrifies lives into a colonial trophy.150

However, saltus is not simply a “cliff” or “precipice,” and in this case a forced conclusion, it also refers to an “uncultivated woodland” – a wilderness in desperate need of modernity’s civilizing forces.151 Here, both the individual and the rocky precipice upon which he is executed are associated not only in the death of the former, but in the fundamental wildness of the latter. The “giant” and “cliff” are material embodiments of the island’s coarse qualities. They are what Merleau-Ponty calls l’etre sauvage – “wild being.”152 However, whereas the conquering Trojans saw (or as Cunningham would have it projected) this trait as a threat to civilization and its properly rational ontos, I contend that such “wildness” is (or at least should be) constitutive of existence. I will begin with a discussion of “wildness,” noting specifically that it does not necessarily designate a “natural space” apart from humanity but rather a specific kind of ontological relationship. I then turn to Jeffery Cohen’s recent ecocritical reflections on stones, particularly his emphasis on the vibrant, if peculiar, existence of lithic being. In apposing rocks/stones with wildness I seek to deepen our sense of what or whom we should consider as enfleshed, to such an extent that it becomes possible, if bewildering, to speak of “lithic flesh.”

While Merleau-Ponty’s associates “wild being’ with Nature, we have discussed the limitations of ‘Nature’ as a concept and must not limit ourselves to this identification.

Indeed, as connected to “the flesh,” “wild Being” is associated with the “sensible” and described as the “common tissue” of our existence.153 Consequently, his reflections on the concept should be understood within context of his broader project of describing the

150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 153 Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes, 214, 203.

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diverse ways in which the body “can be our living bond with nature.”154 As a component of his phenomenology, it functions hermeneutically to open philosophy to the expression of

“thing themselves, from the depths of their silence.”155 Here, it serves as an interrogative tool, a resource for the restoration of “the world as a meaning of being absolutely difference from the ‘represented,’ that is, as the vertical Being which none of the ‘representations’ exhaust and which all ‘reach,’ the wild Being.”156 Indeed, at the beginning of the section on ontology, I provided a quote from Merleau-Ponty in which he described the philosophical task as restoring the world, that which is beyond representation, to the meaning of Being.

There he identified it with “verticality,” itself an indication of “temporal depth” and

“topological space.”157 More importantly, he defines this “ontology” as “wild.” Thus, when

Merleau-Ponty describes the central philosophical task as “a true explication of Being…not the exhibition of Being...the unveiling of Being as…that which places them together on the side of what is not nothing” we cannot elide the primordality – or elementality – of that which constitutes our existence.158

To be clear, speaking of ontos as “wild” does not imply an absolute boundary or separation between “nature” and “culture” – a position Merleau-Ponty describes as absurd.

Rather, “wildness” speaks to that which “escapes the control of civilization.”159 To “be wild” is to experience “the initiating and differentiating creativity…the natality of beings, by which the more than human world resists dominion and its reduction to a resource.”160

Indeed, we should note here the philological connection between l’etre sauvage (“wild being”)

154 Ibid., 27. 155 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 4. 156 Ibid., 253. 157 Hamrick and van der Veken, 95-96. 158 Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes, 206. 159 Mick Smith. Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 94. 160 Ibid., 96.

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and sauvage/sylvan (wooded space), such that the ontological and spatial inherently overlap.161

Considering my argument in the previous chapters, particularly chapter one, this point is not altogether new. However, within the context of emphasizing or retrieving “the flesh” and connecting it to stones, such “spatial savagery” assumes an acute significance. Accordingly, for Appalachian, as for Goegmagog and his kin, the ascription of savagery and wildness has been projected onto both people and the land. Merleau-Ponty’s description of the flesh as

“wild Being” offers us a way of retrieving and re-appropriating this insult and embracing the

“wildness” of stone.

Indeed, if plants occupy the “margin of the margin,” stones seem to be exiled beyond whatever ontological horizon allows us to speak of plants as “living being.” Indeed, as Kellie Robertson notes, “rocks” or “stones” have become emblematic of “insentience” and are frequently considered a contamination of human sensation and vitality.162 Cohen asserts, “The lithic has for too long served as an allegory for nature stilled into a resource” such that the modern world has evacuated lithic being of whatever enchanted identity it once possessed, rendering it ‘worldless’ and incapable of not only human rationality and animal mobility, but vegetal generation.”163 David Abram notes that our understanding of the plant as “alive” qualifies any attempt to detach or distance ourselves from vegetal being.164

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of “stone,” for “clearly, a slab of granite [or pebble or boulder or ridge or mountain] is not alive in any obvious sense, and it is hard to see how anyone could attribute such openness or indeterminacy to it, or why they would want to.”165

In order to encounter the lithic from a new perspective, we must attempt “to discern in the

161 Ibid., 188. 162 Kellie Robertson. “Exemplary Rocks” in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. (Washington: Oliphaunt Books, 2012), 91. 163 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone, 11. 164 David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 46. 165 Ibid.

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most mundane of substances a liveliness.”166 Indeed, the contention that stones are inherently inert, that their materiality prefigures a fundamental passivity, is flaw in human perception and imagination. Because we cannot sense the life of stone we imagine that it is not present: “Much of the world is too swift, too small, or too vast for unaided human perception.”167 And yet the material vitality of stones manifests itself in the flows and shifts, collisions and eruptions of lithic being.168 Stones are actively silent in a continuous interaction with humanity that creates a common reality.169 Acknowledging this point requires an embrace of what Cohen terms “geophilia,” a love of stone that, while often unrequited, engenders peculiar forms of mutual companionship.170 He writes,

Because of its habit of undermining human singularity, of revealing common materiality as well as recurring affinity, to convey within its materiality the thickness of time, stone triggers the vertigo of inhuman scale, the discomfort of unfamiliar intimacy, and the unnatural desires that keep intermixing the discrete…Geophilia…recognizes matter’s promiscuous desire to affiliate with other forms of matter, regardless of organic composition or resemblance to human vitality.171

What would it mean to encounter the stone in love? What would it mean to look upon rocks and pebbles as more than the inert material that we use for the foundation of civilization? What would it mean to consider the seam of coal as something other than potential profits? What would it mean to speak of the Goegmagog’s cliff or the Brier’s ridge as existing in the same flesh?

The love of “lithic being” is, according to Cohen, something that arises from within, a generative and generous attachment that “inhabits all things as the principle of their

166 Cohen, Stone, 6. 167 Ibid., 42. 168 William Logan Bryant. Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), 95. 169 Robertson, 115. 170 Cohen, Stone, 6. 171 Ibid., 27.

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formation.”172 From this perspective, lithic love is a binding force that “challenges as much as fosters.”173 As a challenge, the sheer prospect of “loving stone” – and here the stone is both object and subject – is disconcerting because its perceived indifference, its absence of response, seems to reinforce the notion that it is dead. How can love something that appears not to actively love us in return? How are we to embrace the indifference, the inscrutability, the autonomy – in short the wildness – of stone?174 Embracing this kind of love, admittedly difficult, requires a reconsideration of agency and temporal scale. Further, the intertwining of subject and object in the “love of stone” also entails a rather peculiar definition of the verb. The activity of stone, it’s a unique movement and dynamism, is inseparable from the “thickness” or “breadth.” If “love is patient” then the slow pulsation of geophilia requires a different kind of affect or emotion.

If the human experience of time is inherently perceptual, if it is dependent on our sensory encounter with the world, the very materiality that constitutes lithic being renders our consideration of its temporal scale disorienting. We struggle to conceive or imagine the historical expanse that comprises the life of stone. Indeed that presumption of stasis ascribed to stones, as opposed to the dynamism of water and fire, is representative of its ahistorical existence; it is far easier to recognize a kind of commonality between our activity and that of fire and water.175 Additionally, we might be inclined to deny that stones or rocks have a “history,” so dependent is the concept on our conception of the self as rational, and thus remembering, beings. And yet, the utter existence of such being(s) indicates the heterogeneity of temporal experience and complicating of agency. Stones are there, in front

172 Ibid., 25. 173 Ibid., 24. 174 Ibid., 44, 51. 175 Ibid., 81.

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of us, around us, within us. Erosion, rotation, eruption, corrugation – the slow movement of stone(s) is the “most vital.”176

Assuredly, to say that “stones” have a history or that they experience the passage of time is to foreground the kind of being that conceives of such concepts as “time” and

“history.” The ways in which humans mark the passage of time are dependent our own unique capacities for conceptual thought.177 Yet such “markings” convey the margins of

“strange kinship” that lithic being embodies.178 The life of stone(s) reveals the depth to which life is not the possession of humanity, and in so doing decenters and disorients our subjectivity.179 Stone(s) provoke us with an existence that is intimately unfamiliar that transcends our conceptualizations and diminishes the human in its cosmic, elemental scale.180

In the presence of stones, the human encounters an ontology whose spatio-temporal scale

“is too ancient and enduring for domestication [and rebukes] the arrogance of expecting the nonhuman to be like us and for us.”181 In short, “lithic being” embodies the wildness (or that which is irreducible to abstraction) of flesh that subverts and resists, destabilizes and disorients, any attempt on our part to reduce and/or assimilate its difference into the homogeneous hegemony of anthropocentric discourse.

And yet, the stone is not simply indifferent to abstraction or conceptualization, but rather participates with us in a wholly unique form of companioning and entanglement.182

Stone(s) affect(s) us through “the engendering or renewing or interrupting relations among

176 Branka Arsic. Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 188. 177 See also Lowell Duckert. “Speaking Stones, John Muir, and a Slower (Non)Humanities” in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. (Washington: Oliphaunt Books, 2012). Reflecting on the ecocritical dimensions of John Muir’s life and work, Duckert contends that our role as a “‘humanist recording device’ yields an ‘ethics attuned to the voices of things (like rocks) spoken to…and heard from (278).” 178 Cohen, Stone, 122. 179 Ibid., 83, 63. 180 Ibid., 79. 181 Ibid., 23. 182 Ibid., 136.

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bodies, objects, and eroding the boundary between organic and inorganic.”183 Indeed, the skeletal structure that makes our being possible is the mineralization of soft tissue. Our movement is dependent on that which we assume to be inert.184 To love stones is to acknowledge our intertwining with their own existence wherein

we might…also take some inspiration from matter in motion to embrace a collaborative practice that includes in its companionships the inhuman, that promiscuously embraces alliance with rocks…and forces of nature as well as humans living and dead. We might explore the strange relations through which desire and agency burgeon, the networks of connection that enable the motility of lapidary objects…lithic materialities…and earthly forces – an enmeshment of fellow travelers, landscapes, graves, elements.185

From this perspective, the concern that Rodger Cunningham evinces about the threat of

“petrification” – of turning oneself into stone – is perhaps emptied of its negative connotations.186 “Becoming stone” need not be a process of objectification, but rather the possibility of wild conviviality with the earth. What Cohen describes as a kind of liminal kinship with stone echoes Merleau-Ponty’s argument for “strange kinship.”187 However,

Cohen does not limit our understanding of this ontological relationship to those beings that, despite their disorienting strange-ness, remain recognizable in their similarity.

To the modern ear, it is ostensibly implausible to speak of an “ontology of stone”; stones are assuredly not alive and no matter how one defines “being” we can be fairly certain that a rock does fit, does not count. Moreover, to consider the stone as enfleshed yields a cognitive dissonance; the stone may be part of material reality, but the notion of “lithic

183 Ibid., 171. 184 Jane Bennett. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 10-11. 185 Ibid., 139. 186 Cunningham, 137. 187 Cohen, 122. David Macauley writes, “Stone…rests at the very outer limit of our understanding of both life and language, of what is possibly animate and what can conceivably communicate. Literary critic Walter Benn Michaels has written skeptically of landscapes ‘speaking’ and more specifically of investing rock with a voice. In this view, claiming that the angles of stone are like expressive gestures involves an illicit anthropomorphism. Teaching a stone to talk, as Annie Dillard phrases it, however, need not be taken so literally. Another option is teaching a human to ‘listen,’ meaning broadly to perceive in a way that permits entities to be revealed in their ‘given-ness’ – their ‘thus-ness’ or ‘such-ness’ – and for us to become receptive to the other-than-human dimensions of the environment (Elemental Philosophy 58).”

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flesh” is oxymoronic at best, irrational at worst. And yet, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of

“the flesh” offers us an imaginal context within which we might deconstruct the anthropocentric logic underlying our reduction of non-human, non-animal, non-vegetal being as devoid of life. The “lithic flesh” is uniquely so when we expand our sense of

“flesh-ness” beyond the limits of the human body or animal skin or vegetal pulp. More importantly, the “flesh” of the stone is only such because it is the flesh of human body, animal skin, or vegetal pulp. To embrace the lithic as an enfleshed being is to acknowledge the manifold ways in which we are intertwined with it in the wild elementality that constitutes being itself. “Being” is experienced and embodied through the elemental flesh that intertwines us with wild(ness) animal, plant, and stone. As beings of flesh we are constituted by and through the encounter with other beings of flesh, a relationship which not only encompasses the animal but the vegetal and lithic as well - and for the Appalachian, the mountains.

Indeed, the appeal to Goegmagog’s leap reveals a profound, if subtle, overlap between Cunningham and Cohen’s work. If, as Cohen writes, “Human prehistory is known through ‘lithic friendship’ [and] everytime we touch a stone we become intimate again with those first hominids,” then Monmouth’s narrative, while assuredly mythic reveals something profound about the distinct ways in which anthropology and geology are intertwined.188 We might surmise that for Brutus and his fellow Trojans, the “wildness” of the land that they encountered before meeting Goegmagog and his giant kin actually prefigured the

“barbarism” of the latter. Additionally, if, as Cunningham argues, the execution of

Goegmagog signals the beginning of a violent process of exploitation that has echoed over centuries, then its affect cannot be detached from its place. The “cliff” is both silent witness

188 Ibid., 53-54.

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and potential victim of this ancient peripheralization. Indeed, if Appalachia can be said to be a victim of peripheralization, how much more so can we say the same of stones? While animals and plants have assuredly occupied marginal spaces within Western thought, the lithic appears to be altogether imperceptible; it (or they) are simply the inorganic bedrock of existence. The penetrative processes of industrial resource extraction are dependent on the assumption that the stone(s) is not alive.

Throughout this section I have attempt to challenge this conception of lithic being.

In connecting it to Merleau-Ponty’s description of “flesh” as “wild being,” I seek to recognize and embrace the stone’s capacity for indifference to the machinations of civilization. Accordingly, I have sought to deepen our sense of “the flesh” so as articulate the ontological intertwining between the human and the lithic. Speaking of human, animal, and vegetal flesh – albeit in perhaps different ways – does not entail an altogether great cognitive leap. Whether we consider humans, animals, and plants as sharing in a common ontological matter, we are relatively accustomed to speaking of their materiality as “flesh.”

Such is not the case for stones. In their material composition they are certainly not

“enfleshed.” Or at least not in the ways we normally think of. However, if we imagine stones within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s ontological philosophy we are able to not only recognize and appreciate their unique ways of being, but express such a response in terms of

“flesh.” Doing so opens a space for a cultivating a sense of intimacy and reciprocity between humanity and the earth. More importantly, more argument for “lithic flesh” is ultimately prefigurative. While I am concerned with the “life” of “stone qua stone,” this attempt to imagine “lithic flesh” is intended to point us towards the Appalachian mountains as particular embodiments of lithic flesh. Resistance to the processes of

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urbanthropocentrism, in short the ability to “demand existence”, recoils off the lithic surface that encompasses the mountaineer.

IV. Conclusion

And so we must recognize the manifold ways in which the lithic beckons us to reconsider what it means to be alive. Perhaps more explicitly, it confronts the mountaineer with the, perhaps disorienting, possibility that the mountains themselves are alive. When we run our hands along a high wall or taste the grit of sandstone or smell the rank odor of limestone or look upon a folded ridgeline – we encounter lithic flesh. My attention to and embrace of vegetal and lithic flesh are only intelligible when considered as the preliminary theoretical work for what follows.

Indeed, the urbanthropocentrism that I have discussed in the previous chapters – the historical and contemporary process(es) of exploitation of rural space; the coerced abandonment of a mountain agrarianism and the violent dismembering of the topography; the disappearance of a distinctly, if imperfectly, environmentally oriented religious tradition – achieve their import only in relation to an argument for the vitality of non-human flesh. The concept of “the flesh” is therefore essential in not only distancing ourselves from the stagnant imagery of “Nature,” but in moving us towards the more religiously/theologically rich imagery of “creatureliness.”

Urbanthropocentrism is thus not simply a cultural or political or environmental problem. It is an overwhelming denial of ontological contact. As animal flesh is cleaved, as vegetal flesh is lacerated, as lithic flesh is puncture, human sensibility – our existential encounter with the world – is dissolved. An embrace of vegetal and lithic being is an embrace of “elementality” and “wildness”, of something that so often frustrates abstraction or conceptualization or representation. Accordingly, a life of contact with such flesh, of

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daily encounter with and immersion in plants and stones, opens the possibilities of experiencing the wild vitality of our shared creatureliness. As I will argue in the next chapter, for the Appalachian such “creatureliness’ is embodied in the existential conviviality of the mountains.

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CHAPTER FIVE

WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN FOLD: THEOLOGY, AGRARIANISM, AND THE

CREATURELY PARTICULARITY OF APPALACHIA

“The gaps are the things…The gaps are clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the winds lances through…Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- universe.” - Annie Dillard

“At its most materialistic, materialism comes to agree with theology. Its great desire is would be the resurrection of the flesh, a desire utterly foreign to idealism.” - Theodor Adorno

I. Vignette – Powell Mountain, VA 2018

The turn off for Powell Valley road is roughly two miles outside of the incorporated city of Norton, VA. A winding, two-lane path down the side of Powell Mountain, the road was at one point the only means of traveling from Norton to Big Stone Gap. Prior to the construction of the U.S. Highway 23 bridge, travelers were forced to endure a two mile descent to the valley floor, wherein the road would level out for the remaining five miles.

From start to finish the trip is roughly seven minutes and you can view the majority of it from the Powell Valley Overlook.

However, accept for the moment that you do not travel the length of the road.

Having passed the local rock quarry and run parallel to the exposed rock of a high wall, assume for the moment that you decide to explore the solitary path called Grindstone Road.

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Equally serpentine and all the more disheveled, the road leads you into a shallow, yet nonetheless secluded, holler. You travel up and, at least geographically, to the south, although, as with most experiences, you may not think in such explicitly directional terms.

Nor, for that matter, might you be wholly aware of the time. The sun, its light seems to be paradoxically, and somewhat arbitrarily, both present and absent. And while the path you are may not be like many other “holler roads”, given that fact that it is really a holler on the side of a ridge, such that it could realistically be described as somewhat asymmetrical – the western exposure is actually the slope of the mountainside into the valley floor –you may find yourself experiencing a case of claustrophobia, a sense that space is contracting and the visible horizon is slowly disappearing. For while you assuredly encounter all manner of flora and fauna, to the east rests the very possibility of such a space. It is easily overlooked yet it is there, faintly and imperceptibly bestriding your presence. There it is, sitting at the edge of the region’s ridge and valley rippling, a literal fold in the earth. Its upper rim is composed of resistant sandstone, a band of stone most visible when the leaves have fallen, while its lower roots are supple limestone, whose watery regress(es) make possible the valley floor, and by extension, your path.

The mountain that stands beside you is a congregation of plants and animals, of stone and mineral, of wind and rain, sun and earth. It is a silent witness to and bears the marks of the harrowing transformation that urbanthropocentrism has wrought throughout the region. It is the hinge upon which a religion of brown leaves, mud turtles, and prickly briers is possible. It is wild and elemental sedimentary flesh. It is a creature.

II. Introduction

The previous chapters have attempted to provide the theoretical or conceptual framework for the following argument. My argument for rural space as the possibility of a

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deeper connection between humanity and nature (chapter one); Appalachian history as embodying a particular form of topographical agrarian mythology (chapter two); the environmentally attuned imagination and practices of Appalachian mountain religion

(chapter three); and the elemental and wild ontological flesh of plants and stones (chapter 4) must therefore be considered as a preface the primary constructive theological move that remains. That is, my appeal to philosophy, Appalachia studies, and ecocritical theory does not indicate an absence of theological concerns, but rather an interdisciplinary approach to the subject.

Assuredly I am offering a different way of thinking theologically about humanity’s place in the world, although my argument does not follow a traditionally systematic form.

This is not altogether problematic or unique; as “speech about God,” theology emerges from a multitude of disciplinary viewpoints. To this end, my argument is in many respects a work of “historical” and “cultural” theology, an examination of historical memory, cultural forms, and the challenges of their embodiment in religious beliefs and practices. Additionally, my focus on the philosophy of space lends itself to concerns of philosophical theology.

Furthermore, given that my focus on history, culture, and philosophy have been oriented by an overarching concerned with the “environment” or “ecology”, the specializations of “eco- theology” could easily apply to my argument.

The intentionally interdisciplinary nature of my project lends itself to each of these sub-disciplines and I do not necessarily deny this point. Indeed, we could easily my describe my theological sensibility as “confessional,” although this does not so much reference a specific denominational or mainline tradition but rather a particular place. Furthermore,

“denominational theology” need not inherently yield itself to a kind of formulaic or bureaucratic dogma, even if such a definition characterizes the history of denominational

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religion in Appalachia. In fact, we could even say that there already exists a distinct, yet ultimately familiar, theological sensibility in Appalachia, provided that we differentiate between the various religious traditions that populate the region. And while, she does not explicitly focus on its “theology,” Deborah McCauley’s work demonstrates the extent to which Appalachian mountain religion was marked by a distinctive theological character: experiential, affective, and pneumatological.

Yet what would it mean to (re)imagine the historical and cultural character of

“Appalachian mountain religion” within a more theological frame? What would happen if the qualitative adjective “mountain” was allowed to be genuinely definitive? What if the

“mountain” was something more than an adjective? How would such a shift change our understanding of both “Appalachian” and “religion?” What happens when “speech about

God” becomes intertwined with a speaking about, and potentially for, mountains? What happens when such speech reverberates off high walls and throughout hollers? What happens when the “mountain(s)” become, if not a determination of such religiosity, then active in its articulation? Would that allow us to encounter, to embrace – perhaps to love – the mountain differently, or at all?

The following is an attempt to answer these questions. As a kind of “situated” or

“placed” theology of creation, my argument flows out of the particularity of Appalachia’s history, culture, and topography. As I mentioned in the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Chapter Three,’ my approach to theological reasoning is fundamentally shaped by my concerns about the spatial transformation of Appalachia. Space is the lens through which I have read

Appalachia’s cultural and religious history, and subsequently it is the lens through which I approach theology. Moreover, while the example that I draw on in this dissertation might not be considered ‘traditionally theological’ and seem to avoid the distinct theological

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grammar of Christianity, this appearance should perhaps be seen as a consequences of my hermeneutic. That is, I talk about a “pile of dead leaves” and “brier” and “mud turtle” and

“mountain homestead” precisely because they allow us to expand our imagination so as to engage the marginalized elements of “Appalachian mountain religion” that connected

Christianity to the topographical space of the region. Consequently, as I draw on sources that do not appear to be dogmatically or doctrinally Christian in their imagery and language, the constructive theology that I propose dwells along the margins traditional theological grammar.

In this, it builds upon, but ultimately seeks to expand beyond, the agrarian theology of creation articulated by Norman Wirzba. Here, I do not so much offer a subfield of this particular theological model, but rather a complementary alternative. That is, if the agrarian theology of creation is appropriate for the Carolina Piedmont, Kentucky bluegrass, or

Midwestern prairie, the topographical character of Appalachia necessitates a different kind of theology. What I propose is therefore a theology of “creatureliness” and “creaturely flesh,” such that my understanding of what accounts for a “theology of creation” insists on the importance, if not centrality, of “creatureliness.” That is, while a broadly conceived

“agrarian theology of creation” assuredly challenges the reductionism or abstraction of

“nature”, it is ultimately inadequate for the Appalachian context. The region’s manifold life exceeds the limits of “creation” as theological concept. The mountain(s) provoke us toward a deeper, more expansive symbolism.1 As I will argue, “creatureliness” enfolds the human, animal, vegetal, and lithic within a vitality of a wild and elemental flesh. As a theological concept, it allows us to imagine and encounter the mountain(s) as creature. Accordingly, the disposition or mood of my theology is kindled by the everyday rusticity of Appalachia – and

1 Stephen D. Moore. “Introduction: From Animal Theory to Creaturely Theology.” Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology. Edited by Stephen D. Moore. (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2014), 9.

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my understanding of what it means to “speak about God” hinges on an encounter with the

“flesh” of the animals, plants, and stones as creatures.

The confessional dimension of this turn to the creature lies in its ability to

“goad…thought and action” away from our own humanity.2 Indeed, it is the decentering sensibility – the shift from the human to the creature – that challenges not only the distortions of alienation and reification but also the boundaries between the profane and sacred.3 Approaching theology in this manner does not deny that it is a human activity, something intertwined with and an expression of human culture.4 Rather, it “places” it within a deeper context; perhaps more accurately, we might say that this approach to theology insists on a fundamental intertwining between “culture” and “nature” whereby we engage in a reconceptualizing of the relationship between “culture” and “nature” beyond the limitations of the latter term. Such situated theological reflection therefore entails a shift in how we conceive and understand the categorical representations of organic/inorganic, living/dead, and animate/inanimate. And while not necessarily concerned with dismantling such binaries, this approach to theological reflection situates such relationships beyond or outside the reifying processes of urbanization.5 A creaturely theology therefore posits a

2 Elizabeth Pritchard. “Bilderverbot Meets Body in Theodor W. Adorno’s Inverse Theology.” The Harvard Theological Review. Vol. 95, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), 314, 306 3 David Kauffman. “Beyond Use, Within Reason: Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of Theology.” New German Critique. No. 83, Special Issue on Walter Benjamin (Spring-Summer 2001), 171. 4 Kathryn Tanner. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 63. Regarding the intersection between academic theology and the everyday social practices of Christians, Tanner argues that the two are fundamentally concerned with the beliefs and practices of Christian communities, particularly in moments where established practices are challenged by new situations. She writes, “Academic theology is therefore about Christian social practices in the sense that it asks critical and evaluative questions of them. It is, finally, governed by those practices in the sense that it employs a strategy of criticism and evaluation similar to that used in everyday Christian life. Academic theologians ask how well the practices at issue hang together with other things that Christians believe and value…Academic theology is about everyday Christian practice in that the beliefs, symbols, and values that academic theologians work with have their primary locus or circulation there (80).” 5 Kauffman, 167.

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subversion of urbanthropocentrism. I will return to this point at the conclusion of this section.

The concepts of ‘creation’ and ‘creatureliness’ could be explored in the context of explicit systematic theological sources: the Genesis account of creation; the Psalmist praise for the Lord’s creative acts; the Pauline passages that describe creation’s desire for the

Creator. I neither reject nor deny the importance and resonance of these sources for articulating a theology of creation. They demonstrate the importance of the concept not only for the broad contours of the scriptural narrative, but also the specific doctrinal articulations of Christian theology. Equally so, such sources are clearly part of the religious tradition(s) of Appalachia, albeit read in a distinct way. It is this distinction has primarily guided my argument. As a work of ‘constructive theology’ - and here we must be clear in the distinguishing features of this type of theological inquiry - I am concerned to emphasize the elements of Appalachian religious culture that were so problematic to the representatives of mainline denominational Christianity: the creatures of Appalachia’s topographical space. That is, while the phenomenologically descriptive approach is perhaps evident in my discussion of ’the flesh’ and its ability to illuminate certain aspects of Appalachia’s cultural and religious history, I do not merely rest in the descriptive; indeed, an overwhelming emphasis on description and analysis is a limitation of typical disciplinary (Appalachian

Studies) approaches to Appalachian religion. I seek, rather, a re-imagining, and so a construction of something new. As an argument in constructive theology then, the present work pursues and retrieves those aspects of Appalachian religious belief and practice that were rendered aberrant by the systematizing of denominational home missionaries. If my argument appears to avoid traditional or dogmatic or doctrinal theological language, it is not because I do not consider such language important, but rather because, if I want to work

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within/for/about Appalachian mountain religion, my theological reflection seeks to retrieves those elements of Appalachian mountain religion that were suppressed by denominational home missionaries and situates itself along the margins of Christian theology.

Here again, I must reiterate the importance of space and the spatial transformation of Appalachia figures for my theological approach. My argument opens with a consideration of ‘space’ precisely because the distinctive features of Appalachian culture (chapter two) and religion (chapter three) cannot be properly understood outside a the topographical spaces within which they occur(ed). Indeed, the constructive moves that I make in chapters four and five reveal the extent to which my methodology and hermeneutics are shaped by this attention to space.

The examples that I refer to, the sources that I draw upon, the language that I employ - each are chosen precisely because they are what has been lost and/or marginalized through the (spatial) processes of urbanization. In making such choices, I am not necessarily rejecting dogmatic or doctrinal theological language, but rather emphasizing (and perhaps privileging) an alternative religio-theological imagery and symbolism. Indeed, my use of the phrase ‘religio-theological,’ as opposed to ‘religious’ or 'theological is indicative of the diversity of sources upon which I rely. As I have sought to demonstrate throughout this dissertation, particularly in chapters three and four, a re-imagining of Appalachian mountain religion should not/cannot limit itself to the language of dogmatic theological. Rather, as an argument in constructive theology, my dissertation works along the margins of Christian theology in order to articulate a critique of and offer an alternative to urbanthropocentrism. My project, therefore, is not merely descriptive, although certainly chapters one and two contain descriptive elements; even the descriptive components of my analysis of urbanization and argument for rural space (chapter one) and explanation of

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Appalachia’s distinct agrarian past and its subsequent urbanization through industrial resource extraction, provide a hermeneutical explanation for the constructive moves that I make in chapters three, four, and five.

For now it is important to emphasize the extent to which this approach resonates with the kind of midrashic perspective that McCauley considers characteristic of

Appalachian mountain religion. That is, in her emphasis on the subtlety and ambiguity of

Christianity we are reminded of the “dialogical gaps” that suffuse its historical and narratival identity.6 The opportunities provided within a midrashic perspective allow us to expand the boundaries of what it means to be human through or within the particular spaces we inhabit.

That is, the anthropocentrism that has erected the very boundaries between humanity and

“nature”/”environment” is deconstructed through a kind of midrashic spatiality. Indeed, I would contend that Appalachian mountain religion is midrashic in this sense because of its topographical character. The mountain “gaps” (hollers) are a space of interpretive potential in the same way of the textual gap. A “mountain holler” thus offers us a space within which to imagine “creaturely flesh” between ontology and theological anthropology. Indeed, we could perhaps say that this kind of midrashic practice is only possible because of the antediluvian agency of stony earth and ebullient water. In short, “Appalachian mountain religion” – and its emphasis on spontaneity, ambiguity, emotionality – arises within an elementally carved material and symbolic space. Within the name the adjective “mountain” not only modifies the noun “religion,” it functions as the axis around which the other two words rotate. It is only in proximity to the “mountain(s)” – both geographically and contextually – that “Appalachian religion” exists. Absent the middle term, the first and second are emptied of their meaning. In this chapter I pursue this relatively simple assertion,

6 Catherine Keller. Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 118.

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in turn concluding that if we are to make anything of “Appalachian mountain religion,” if the tradition is important for challenging urbanthropocentrism and its attendant ecological crises, then we must orient our thinking around a theological imagery of the mountain(s) as creatures of our flesh (and ourselves as creatures of the mountain flesh).

My argument is divided into two sections. In the first, I consider some recent arguments that place “creation” at the center of theological reflection. With regards to the problem of anthropocentrism and urbanization, the importance of “creation” as a theological theme is invaluable, not least of which because it offers us the opportunity to reconsider humanity’s relationship with non-human life within a more dynamic context.

While perhaps brief and admittedly circumscribed in its scope, this section considers the possibilities and limitations of creation “oriented” theologies. Of particular concern is the extent to which a number of theologians and religious studies scholars limit their consideration of “creation” to human and non-human animals, and while I do not deny the importance of this interpretive move, indeed as my discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s

“intertwining” and “strange kinship” indicates the common flesh that unites human and non-human animals significantly challenges a hierarchical ontology, denying the

“creatureliness” of plants and stones merely re-inscribes the boundary that the image should subvert.

By way of challenging these limitations, I seek to expand the conceptual scope of what we call “creatureliness.” My concern here is twofold. One, I want to construct an image of and argument for “creatureliness” that does not limit itself to a common or shared animality. In order for this idea to be adequately (or even potentially) subversive of the anthropocentricism that has so thoroughly shaped our encounter with non-human life, it is incumbent to understand “creatureliness” beyond the boundaries of shared animality. Two,

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I pursue the concept of “creatureliness” in a thoroughly immanent frame; references to transcendence or the divine are primarily framed in thoroughly ‘material’ or ‘earthly’ imagery.

Again, I make this move not to deny the importance of “God as Creator” or “Christ as

Incarnate,” but rather to emphasize those examples that are most clearly rooted in

Appalachia’s topography.

Indeed, and this is particularly for the Appalachian, the appeal to “creation” and

“creatureliness” cannot be detached from particularity of topography. Rocks, plants, creeks, mountains – these are as much embodiments of “creaturely flesh” as humans and animals.

Indeed, I contend that we must consider the creatureliness of the mountain as the embodiment of the creatureliness of the human, animal, plant, and stone.

III. Theologies of Creation: The Possibilities and Limitations of the Agrarian

Interpretation

Let us briefly return to our consideration of the concept “nature” and its limitations.

Recall from the previous chapter that, while their attempts to retrieve “nature” as something other than a passive or static background from human agency are valuable, Henri Lefebvre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty nonetheless inadequately challenge anthropocentrism and its ethical consequences. In this respect, their adherence to the term itself indicates the limitations of their philosophical critiques. Accordingly, I argued that Lefebvre’s philosophy is too dependent on a Marxist objectification of “nature,’ Merleau-Ponty’s later work provides a more fruitful resource within which to conceive and articulate the dynamic between human and non-human beings. Here I offered a critique of Ted Toadvine’s work on Merleau-Ponty, noting specifically that while the latter continues to employ “nature” as a concept, we can read his turn to “the flesh” as an attempt to think beyond the abstraction of the human/nature binary. It is through “the flesh” that the “living bond” between humanity

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and the world is embodied.7

However, my reference to “the flesh” is primarily an opening to a more a theological consideration of this relationship. That is, if the primary goal of my argument is to articulate a theology of creaturely flesh, I cannot conclude with only an appeal to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. To articulate a philosophical and religious argument for vegetal and lithic flesh, as I sought to do in the previous chapter, is ultimately an inadequate critique of urbanthropocentrism if it is not combined with an alternative to “nature.” As Ted

Toadvine’s otherwise compelling argument demonstrates, it is tempting to simply add

“nature” to the “flesh”, and thereby assume that we have sufficiently deconstructed the anthropocentric paradigm that shapes so much of our thinking about non-human life.8 The following section expands on this point by drawing in the more explicit or intentional religio-theological element: creation.

My appeal to “creation” is particularly suited to the Appalachian context. Rodger

Cunningham helpfully notes that the modern insistence on either domination of or submission to “nature” represented a false dichotomy that did not realistically or accurately describe Appalachia, but rather was employed as justification for the exploitation of both people and the land. Accordingly, Cunningham insists that the Appalachian encountered the mountains as “Creation.”9 The mountaineer did not approach the land through detached domination or passive submission. Recall the example from chapter two of Mrs. Allen and her son. In placing her child upon the ground, in telling him that it was time “to get to know” the land, Mrs. Allen represents an encounter with the land from within a particular

7 Christopher Ben Simpson. Merleau-Ponty and Theology. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 38. 8 Simpson’s analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and its resonance with Christian theology is indicative of this point as well. He emphasizes that, in Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of philosophical dualism and reductionism, the flesh is the “living bond…with nature” which is itself conceived as a kind of “primordial corporeality (38, 21).” 9 Rodger Cunningham. Apples On The Flood: Minority Discourse and Appalachia. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).

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perspective that considers it as “creation” and not “nature.” She does not consider herself

“submissive” to it, nor does she seek to “dominate” it; rather we can see a dynamic relationship. Mrs. Allen expresses a clear awareness that her life is dependent on what the industrialists, missionaries, and local color writers derided as an implacable Nature. Mrs.

Allen’s existence was shaped by an intertwining with the soil and plants, water and sun, of her home.

Despite its connotations, Cunningham’s emphasis on the connection between an

Appalachian perspective and sensibility and the symbolism of “creation” is not explicitly religious or theological. Further, we should be careful in reading his argument as somehow wholly or absolutely comprehensive in its description of Appalachians; indeed, his relatively brief comment implicitly indicates the extent to which religious language and imagery are, and have been, central to Appalachia’s relationship with the mountains and/or land. Given our discussion of Appalachian mountain religion, such a claim is fairly simple to recognize and understand: the Appalachian religious sensibility that McCauley describes developed within and is shaped by a natural topography that contributes to a flawed, yet profoundly environmental, perspective. The complexity arises when we take into account the extent to which urbanization, through industrialization and denominational evangelism, initiated a substantive shift in how Appalachian’s understood themselves and the mountains. Indeed, without attributing intention to either individuals or communities, we need to acknowledge the degree to which many Appalachians, either paradoxically or contradictorily, hold both positions in tension: land and mountains as abstract “nature” and sacred “creation” of God.

And yet, the descriptive accuracy of Cunningham’s claim is not entirely the point.

Rather, his argument indicates a kind of normative “reckoning” about the possibility of a more affective, less violent relationship between humanity and the environment. Perhaps

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more importantly, Cunningham’s critique of “nature” resonates with an explicitly religious and theological re-conceptualization of humanity’s relationship with non-human beings and indicates the extent to which religion and theology are invaluable for both understanding and re-imagining the relationship between mountaineer and mountain.10

However, Cunningham’s argument does resonate with recent theological and religious studies works to retrieve the concept and imagery of “creation.” Here, I want to focus on the work of Norman Wirzba, primarily for two works – specifically The Paradise of

God and From Nature to Creation – which offer a decidedly ecological reading of “creation.”

Concerned with any degree of scientific positivism or reductionist conceptualization, Wirzba nonetheless approaches the idea of “creation” by attending to the ecology and biology.

Perhaps more importantly, he reads “creation” through an explicitly agrarian lens. Here, the theological/biblical symbolism is meaningful only in within the context of both ancient near eastern agrarian cultures and modern agrarianism. In what follows I will emphasize this second point, not only because I am in agreement with his reading, but perhaps more importantly because I feel it points to the impetus of my argument: an agrarian reading of creation is understandable, and potentially powerful, for cultures and economies that are predominantly agrarian, but what impact can such a reading have for those places that cannot be limited by such terms? Simply put, Wirzba’s agrarian theology of creation can only say so much to a culture and economy that has, at least since the late 19th century, been defined by and dependent on various forms of resource extraction; this despite the presence of an agrarian economy prior to the dominance of the timber and coal industries. As a rural

10 See also Theodore Hiebert. The Yahwists Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). Regarding the language of the Genesis 2 narrative, Hiebert writes of the biblical authors/traditions as possession “no terms comparable to the modern words ‘nature’ and ‘history,’ which divide reality into two independent and unified realms…One finds in Israelite literature words for the earth and its features and for political entities and social institutions, but no words that divide these matters conceptually and absolutely into two different spheres and orders of reality as do the modern words ‘nature’ and ‘history’ (17).”

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space of the mountains, Appalachia needs a theology of creation – or as I will contend a theology of creatureliness – that attends to its particularity.

In his book From Nature to Creation, Wirzba describes the modern conception of and encounter with “nature” as fundamentally idolatrous. Situating the term within its Greek etymological context, Wirzba notes that defining “nature” as the “reason and power” enabling living things “to be what they are” established a paradigmatic relationship of domination and exploitation between humanity and the natural world.11 He writes, “The temptation of idolatry is not rooted in the natural world per se, but in a distorted personal will that focuses on itself rather than God or that handles creation in terms exclusively devoted to self-advancement.”12 Within this context, the idolatry of nature does not emerge from a reverential or respectful attitude that is considered to be fundamental to polytheistic or pagan religions, but rather arises from the modern presupposition “that nature is an autonomous realm that operates according to natural laws that we can understand and manipulate to our own ends.”13 Humanity “idolizes” nature because of its benefit and value to our own project. Accordingly, idolatry is fundamentally connected to our pursuit of knowledge and predilection for abstract categories and representations. Here, our ability

(desire?) to “represent” and “categorize” the world around us perpetuates an exploitation of the environment/non-human life. Indeed, as Wirzba notes, the etymological roots of idolatry – eidolon – refers to vision and appearance wherein knowledge of the object finds fulfillment in “the mastery and possession” of that which is seen.14 And while we need not

11 Norman Wirzba. From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 33-34. 12 Norman Wirzba. The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 119. 13 Wirzba, From Nature to Creation, 47-48. 14 Ibid. See also Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space. (Malden: Blackwell, 1991). As Lefebvre notes, the power of visualization is the power of signification, of the immobilizing sign that “has increasingly taken precedence over elements of thought and action deriving from the other senses (faculty of hearing and the act

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summarily dismiss or reject “the visual” – for example, Wirzba emphasizes the “icon” and

“iconography” of creation – it is important to recognize what Lefebvre describes as its lethality, its violent ability to overwhelm “the magic of the spoken word, whose symbolisms

(the breath of the Spirit, the bird of prophecy, the act of creation) infused even the realm of death with life.”15

For Wirzba, the idolatrous character of the “modern scientific and technological mind” is inherently a failure of imagination and fracturing of the self.16 Moreover, Wirzba’s connects his criticism of “nature” as a concept is to his focus on rural/agrarian spaces, such that his reflections on “creation” intentionally “places” humans within the quotidian spaces of rural life. I contend that his emphasis on the grace of divine creativity is simultaneously an embrace of our quotidian sublunary. Indeed, by connecting “creation” to agrarianism,

Wirzba not only roots the former term in its “earthy” genesis, he also opens a conceptual space wherein the limitations of “nature” can be considered in the context of urbanization.

“Nature” as a concept is therefore problematic because of its function within a specific socio-historical and political context. While it might retain a kind of theoretical potential for subversion, as Lefebvre and Merleau-Ponty seem to argue, within our modern context it is primarily identified as the passive material substrate that humanity struggles against in its effort to a secure an edifice – material and symbolic – for its superiority.

“Nature” therefore does not name the proliferation of life that surrounds humanity. It is not even shorthand for vitality or reason or growth. It is a disembodying paradigm by which humanity justifies its violent use of non-human life. It is weakness of imagination as much

of listening, for instance, or the hand and the voluntary acts of ‘grasping’, ‘holding’, and so on). So far has this trend gone that the senses of smell, taste, and touch have been almost completely annexed and absorbed by sight (139).” 15 Ibid., 261-262. 16 Wirzba. From Nature to Creation, 47.

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as it is one of perception.17

Before discussing the possibilities of “creation” as alternative imagery or symbolism for describing the human/non-human relationship, I want to explicitly note that my reference to and preference for “creation” is not consonant with or dependent on a

“creationist theology.” I am thoroughly uninterested in and resolutely opposed to the literalist hermeneutic and anti-science epistemology that seems to motivate and limit so much of the popular discourse around the word. Indeed, the attempt to use “creation” as justification or foundation for an abstract system – “creationism” – demonstrates a blatant rejection and denial of the word’s genuinely subversive potential. Furthermore, as I will argue in the next section, “creation” is not the conceptual terminal point for critiquing urbanization and anthropocentricism, but rather leads into the intensity of “creaturely flesh.”

For now, I want to turn to Wirzba’s discussion of “creation” and religious agrarianism. In describing “creation” as a “moral and spiritual topography that situates all things in relationship with each other and with God,” Wirzba expands our sense as to what the act of divine creativity actually summons forth.18 By emphasizing the environmental or ecological elements of the Hebrew creation narratives, he focuses our attention on the cultural context and spatial materiality of the text.

Acknowledging the anthropocentric character of the biblical creation narratives,

Wirzba nonetheless insists that its agrarian perspective “stresses human kinship with rather than separation from the rest of creation, human dependence rather than human dominion.

[Such that], as much as humans may want to claim that they are special, the Yahwist account, reflecting the practical wisdom of subsistence farmers, continually reminds us that we are

17 Ibid., 63, 71-72. 18 Ibid., 73.

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bonded to the earth, that we carry about being and in our vocation the marks of the soil.”19

The Yahwist rejects any attempt to detach humanity from the material ground of their being; they are “of earth…so their fate is bound to the earth.”20 Commenting on the existential intertwining between humanity and the soil, Wirzba notes that, for the farmer, intuitively recognizes what has become a scientifically and ecologically fact:

Our bodies feed on the soil and the myriad of organisms it contains and supports, just as we in turn feed it with our waste, and finally, with our bodies. As we ingest these elements, they become part of us. The soil has never been foreign to or outside of us, for, in order to live at all, the elements that make up the soil must also become the elements that constitute our own being. Were it not for soil, the material elements of the earth could not combine so as to promote organic life. Rather than being dead inert, dead stuff, soil is the matrix through which life and death continually move into each other.21

The biblical command to “till” and “keep” the garden is not an abstract or theoretical injunction, but rather reflects the attentiveness of the farmer to “work with the natural orders [to] ensure survival and well-being.”22 From this perspective, the “love” that is expressed and embodied in the divine act of creation is materially and symbolically “rooted” in the earth, and the relationship between the humanity and the soil is one of interdependence, wherein the labor or work is described in terms of service and worship.23

Consequently, sin is not only “disobedience to” or “rebellion against” the Creator, but the human rejection of the soil, of their relationship with creation.24 In eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve embody a singular instance of anthropocentricism, of rejecting “the

19 Norman Wirzba. The Paradise of God, 29 20 Ibid., 30. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 31. 23 Ibid., 53. 24 Ibid., 32.

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divine intention for creation.”25 Creation entails a, perhaps paradoxically, a theocentric and ecocentric framework.

To speak of “nature” as idolatrous is to recognize and emphasize the extent to which humanity’s sinful inclination has yielded a cultural denial of creation. Wirzba’s description of modern culture “as a whole proceeds on the assumption that meaning and purpose, once given with the order of reality [creation], now find their source and aim in the rational will of autonomous humanity.”26 Indeed, such autonomy is the force behind urbanization. As we lost, or abandoned, the concrete, daily connection with the soil and earth, the humility and gratitude and sacrifice that characterizes the agrarian sensibility disappears.27 In the place of concrete interdependence, we have erected an abstraction that insulates us from the ground of existence and narrows our imagination.28

In emphasizing the identity of “human as farmer,” the Yahwist is not so much discarding religio-theological symbolism or mythic imagery, but rather placing them within the everyday life of the Hebrew peasantry. Here, an economy and culture of subsistence agriculture is both reflected in and reflects the religious text. This is not a minor point, as it suggests the presence of not only a counter-narrative to other Near Eastern mythologies, but a subtle, if unrecognized or ignored, subversion of urban ideology. That is, if the Yahwist constructs a narrative that “places” creation within the agrarian cultural traditions of the

Hebraic memory and imagination, the polemical critique of this argument reinforces its anti- urban perspective.29

25 Ibid., 134. 26 Ibid., 68. 27 Ibid., 75, 77. 28 Ibid., 86. 29 See also Andre LaCocque. The Captivity of Innocence: Babel and the Yahwist. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010). LaCocque writes, “In Mesopotamia, the very building of a city was a divine enterprise. The city literally reflected its model in heaven and the king as a builder was the agent of the gods….Babel as a name solicits our attention. It raises the issue of the axis mundi, for it means ‘the gate of the divine’…Babel is the apex of

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However, it is important that we not associate this anti-urban perspective with an overly determined definition of agrarianism or rural space. Part of my concern with

Wirzba’s agrarian theology of creation is how, or to what extent, it resonates with the particular history, culture, and topography of Appalachia. Assuredly, his argument is an invaluable critique of urbanization and a creative interpretation of the biblical narrative.

Further, as he weaves together ecological concerns, biblical hermeneutics, and cultural analysis, he presents us with an example of constructive theological reflection that combines intellectual rigor and practical application. We do not need to abandon this interpretation, but rather allow the spatial particularities of Appalachia to provoke it towards a more expansive significance. As I discussed in chapter two, a distinct form of agrarianism existed in the region prior to the widespread industrialization of the late 19th century, however the topography of the mountains necessitated a form that shared more in common with swidden farming than Midwestern and Piedmont varieties. Appalachian’s did not farm in open spaces bordered by patches of forest, but instead grew their crops within the forest; certain areas were more open than others, valleys for examples, but the gaps and hollers were relatively bound spaces. Domestication occurred in intimate proximity to wildness.

Accordingly, the importance of the “rural” as a space of resistance to urbanization necessarily depends on an understanding of such space as not entirely bound to an agrarian economy or culture. If, as Wirzba contends, “creation” is the “moral and spiritual topography” of humanity’s kinship with other creatures, then the “topographical” character of “creation” extends beyond the agrarian imagery of the Yahwist narrative. While we should assuredly emphasize an analogical, as opposed to direct, comparison between ancient

arrogance. In involves the harnessing of all humanity for a single purpose devised by a totalitarian regime, with all the means it can muster…The Babelians do not aim for self-individuation but self-deification (14, 16, 19).”

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Hebraic peasantry and agriculture and 19th century Appalachian homesteads, the particularity of the latter lends itself to an altered meaning of “agrarianism.”

What are the limitations of the “agrarian interpretation” when confronted by a pile of dead leaves? Or sunning mud turtle? Or flowing creek? Or wild brier? Or stony ridge?

Or chaotic brush? Or mountain holler? Such “things” are certainly “part” of the distinct expressions of Appalachian agrarianism, but their life is not exhausted in or through an agricultural paradigm. The potential of “creation” to subvert or resist the ontological hegemony of urbanthropocentrism requires that we attend to the presence of such a diverse

“range” of creatures. Creation only occurs through the everyday confluence of creaturely flesh and the mountain fold is where such creatureliness becomes. It is the intertwining of elementality and wildness. It is that theological imagining of conviviality that disrupts urbanization’s representations of space and anthropocentricism’s ontological categorization.

IV. Toward a Theology of Creatures: From the Perspective of Appalachia

By way of contextualizing the following let us gather together the key points from the preceding pages. In chapter one I argued for the importance of “rural space” as a challenge to the violence of urbanization. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of space, I defined “rural space” as a space of encounter between humanity and nature. In this context, “rurality” or “rusticity”, contra the pejorative assumptions of urbanization, does not reference provincial ignorance or cultural vulgarity, but rather an existential sensibility of openness between humanity and nature. Here, I emphasized the extent to which

“Appalachian rural space” cannot be circumscribed by the important, yet ultimately limiting, association with “agrarianism.” That is, while I recognize and embrace the importance of an agricultural economy and culture to the character of rural space, it is not the defining feature

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of Appalachia. As a space of representation, “rural space” evokes the depth to which the human existence is woven into “natural life.”

Chapters two and three particularize this argument by focusing on Appalachia. In the second chapter I address the distinct forms of urbanization and industrialization in the region, specifically resource extraction. Focusing on the technologies of the railroad and company town, I argue that the peripheralization of the region’s unique form(s) of agrarianism should be considered within the context of urbanization, such that the development of the coal industry cannot be understood except as the expansion of metropolitan norms. In contrast, I emphasize what I call a “rural Appalachian mythology” – the central fact of existence and Appalachia’s rural past reveals the depth to which its inhabitants understood their “being” in relationship to the land and earth.

In chapter three I examine the religious dimensions of this point. Drawing on

Deborah Vansau McCauley’s historical analysis of Appalachian mountain religion, I emphasized the environmental dimensions this tradition and, through an interdisciplinary reading of Edna Alexander’s mystical vision of brown leaves, argued that the tradition manifests a particular “elemental imagination” and material symbolism that challenges the pretense of benevolence claimed as justification for the industrialization and evangelization of the region.

I began each of these chapters with a historical vignette from Appalachia – the striking miners at Black Mountain, KY (chapter one), the transformation of the Yellow

Creek Valley into Middlesboro (chapter two), Edna Alexander’s mystical vision (chapter three), and the denominational work of the brush breakers (chapter four). There are two primary reasons why I made this decision. One, it provides a certain kind of narrative coherence to my argument; by opening each chapter with a specific historical scene or

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moment from Appalachia I seek to orient the reader to the context that informs my perspective. Two, they provide a concrete piece of material culture to apply my theoretical analysis; while I appreciate them on their own, I am more interested in how they can be re- imagined as embodiments of “creaturely flesh.” In what follows, I want to return to some of the examples, and look at them differently.

A. Strange Kinship with a Mud Turtle: Animal Creatureliness

Recall the example of the mountain preacher and his defense of immersive baptism.

Confronted by his congregation what they considered to be an overwhelming emphasis on the practice, the preacher decided to demonstrate his faith and trust in the Holy Ghost’s inspiration by agreeing to change his “subject” to whatever page of the bible he happened to turn to, in this case Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (“And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land”). Engaging in the predominant preaching style of Appalachian mountain religion – extemporaneous, spontaneous, and open to the Spirit’s inspiration – the preacher connected the passage to his experience of seeing a “mud-turtle” sunning in a creek and claimed that, just as the turtle did not tentatively or partially dive into the creek, so the individual and community must continue to practice immersive baptism.

Indeed, while the mountain preacher clearly interpreted his encounter with the turtle as “sign” from God that immersive baptism was a correct practice, thus justifying his insistent preaching on the subject, it is equally important to recognize the particularity of this moment. Here, the mountain preacher’s definition of baptism and interpretive approach to the scriptures must be situated in relation to a particular creature inhabiting a particular rural space. In my discussion of this example in chapter three I emphasized the extent to which the mountain preacher was indicative of the ethos and sensibility of Appalachian mountain

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religion, specifically the overlapping of “environment”/“topographical space” and religious

“identity” and “experience.”

However, what happens if “the voice of the turtle” from the scriptures is actually the embodied presence of the mud turtle? What happens if we read this particular example as pointing to “spirituality” of the turtle? What kind of “voice” is she speaking with? What might she be saying to the mountain creature? How might we understand her? What happens if the encounter between the mountain preacher (human) and the mud turtle

(animal) occurs through a shared creaturely flesh? What if the “mud turtle” is not merely a symbol of “immersive baptism,” but a singular creature?

Here the “mud turtle” confronts the human with the “strange-ness” of its own flesh.

In the scene it does not verbally acknowledge the mountain preacher; it does not provide any kind of vocal affirmation to his concerns. Based on the account, we can rightly surmise that the preacher was probably not thinking about immersive baptism when he encountered the creature. It was only in the expository moment, in connection to the specific scriptural passage, that he interpreted the experience in religious terms. Indeed, looking at the scriptural passage upon which the mountain preacher turned to – Song of Solomon 2:11-12, perhaps allows us to deepen this connection between the “Spirit’s presence,” the theological symbolism of baptism as a practice of renewal, and the presence of the turtle. Recalling the interpretive creativity used by the mountain preacher – connecting the image of the “turtle dove” from scripture with the actual “mud turtle” – allows us to see the latter as a kind of embodiment of divine presence.

On her rock, in the creek, the turtle is a creature with its own spatiotemporal- emotional experiences. She suns herself, in part, because her body is intimately dependent on her environment. Her dive into the creek is simply part of her everyday life, a return to

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the space within which she dwells. Here, we must see her flesh is a literal intertwining of the elements. She carries a dome of fused bone upon her back, a bodily witness to her evolutionary peculiarity and ancient ancestry. Her name – “mud turtle”/kinosternon subrubrum – while given by someone else in this case – evokes the porous boundaries between water and earth, animal and mud, animal and human. Her creatureliness is incarnated in her keeless carapace, molted skin, clouded iris, and webbed feet. And on that rock and in that creek, the mountain preacher encounters the turtle in its creaturely singularity as “something alien, irreducible to our purposes (or any other ends it might serve as a means to), and independent.”30 Such irreducibility is fundamental to its existence as creature, and while we do not have access to it, encountering her as a “creature” entails imagining that she is beckoned and sustained – that is to say created – by the same Holy

Ghost that creates, sustains, and inspires the preacher, albeit in an altogether particular and strange way.

An Appalachian theology of creaturely flesh insists on, and perhaps helps cultivate, an imagining that we might share in the turtle’s existence, that we might participate with her in a “strange kinship.” Perhaps more importantly, to encounter the turtle as a singular creature is to open ourselves to an existence that is indelibly shaped by life’s elementality.

Such an imagination requires, as the example of the mountain preacher reveals, the actual possibility of an encounter with this creature.” The “preacher” and the “mud turtle” exist – independently, intimately – within the particularity of Appalachia’s rural space. They are creatures of Appalachian flesh.

30 Mick Smith. Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 108.

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B. Elementality of Leaf and Brier: Vegetal Creatureliness

Edna Alexander has a mystical vision of a prophetess in brown clothes. She feels compelled to adopt this attire, to conform the “pattern” and “way” of the prophetesses” dynamic spiritual and profound witness. Out of her own humility she does not immediately dye her clothes, but rather enter an intense three year period of prayerful discernment, wherein she has two other visions of Jesus and Elijah dressed in brown. Upon dying her clothes, she becomes aware of the congruity between her appearance and the dying leaves along her holler road. Her vision is a unique combination of a unique religious sensibility and perhaps silent environmental awareness.

Jim Wayne Miller creates a poetic eponym named after a central cultural/topographical figure of the region. His “Brier poems” are a retrieval of what had become a pejorative name leveled against Appalachian migrants to the Midwest. While this particular collection of works addresses a variety of subjects and experience from an

Appalachian perspective, they also include poems from the perspective of the figure

“Preacher Brier.” In identifying the “human” with the “vegetal,” Miller proposes a kind religious/profane syncretism that destabilizes the boundaries between the two.

While the descriptive location of their experience and connection to plant life is primarily cultural – religious and poetic – Alexander and Miller do help us re-consider the particular existence of vegetal life. In chapters three and four, I noted that their identification with the leaves and brier draw us into a profoundly environmental sensibility.

Assuredly, they do not explain their experience in such terms, either explicitly or implicitly, yet nonetheless there remains an acute attention to and appreciation non-human life.

Indeed, the primary takeaway of both examples is the extent to which “vegetal being” – as elemental flesh – is intertwined with human identity. In their identification with a pile of

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dead leaves or the mountain brier, Alexander and Miller not only embody the kind of existential sensibility that characterizes the rural Appalachian mythology discussed in chapter two, they point to the profoundly religio-theological dimensions of becoming with vegetal life. More profoundly, both represent an attunement to the creaturely theology that I believe is unique to and essential for Appalachia.

In “grafting” themselves onto a vegetal being, Alexander and Miller find themselves in a kind of “somatic solidarity” between beings.31 While we can legitimately describe such a process or experience as a distinct environmental attunement, I contend that it is more fruitful to consider the “leaf” and “brier” as singular creatures with whom Alexander and

Miller share flesh. Indeed, her vision and his poetry indicate an openness and receptivity to the elemental materiality of these vegetal creatures that is grounded in humility and patience.32 However, while Alexander’s vision is a powerful witness to the elemental flesh of vegetal being, it is important that we not limit ourselves to the particularities of the moment.

The brown decay and all it embodies – the transitory state of decomposition; the possibility of fertility; the muddled boundaries between life and death – does not fully exhaust the creatureliness of the leaf.

What happens if we go back in time ever so slightly? What happens if we try to imagine the brown leaves as still hanging off their branches? What happens if we imaginatively infuse them with a different color? Here we must imagine the pile of brown

31 Pritchard, 314. 32 David M. Robinson. Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 181. Robinson’s discussion of Henry Thoreau’s essay “Autumnal Hints” provides emphasizes the extent to which Thoreau explicitly folds his sense of self into the leaf: “Thoreau’s transformation of the leaves into exemplary selves, and his descriptions, both precise and evocative, of the successive waves of color in the New England autumn, carry the essay forward and gain the reader’s assent. But within these strands of argumentation and description he also weaves sites of brief but memorable narrative in which he recounts what we might call his own experience of the leaves, unique moments of engagement in which he shares something that could be considered a relationship with them. These moment are enactment of a profound sympathy and openness: they suggest that such experiences of the leaves are an essential avenue of completion for the human personality (188-189).”

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leaves as they previously were – a conflagration of reds, yellows, and oranges woven throughout the forest. The initial response to Appalachia’s fall colors, assuredly, one of its most beautiful features, is frequently wonder and awe, ecologist Jennifer Frick-Ruppert reminds us that they also reveal a key part of the plant’s biology. The green color that we observe during spring and summer is actually indicative of an energy loss for the plant; in reflecting, rather than absorbing that particular wave length the leaf misses a significant source of energy. To counteract this process the leaf relies on accessory pigments, which capture some of that lost energy and transfer it to the chlorophyll. As temperatures drop and the chlorophyll degrades, the accessory pigments – carotenoids (orange/yellow) and anthocyanin (red) – are exposed.33 In this autumnal shading they “point beyond themselves…in several directions…and all [us] to recognize the history of a particular leaf as part of the cycle of the season, and thus an achievement that is both uniquely individual and a single element in a vast, harmonious configuration of reality.”34 The leaf’s transformation

– from green to red/yellow/orange to brown – embodies a singular creatureliness, a

“coming into [its] own” apart from its beauty or function in human culture.35 Such color(s) reveal the depth of the fleshy intertwining with not only Creator, but other creatures – sun, water, earth – and express both the possibility and actuality of creation.36 It does not exhaust the leaf’s creatureliness, but rather is a particular embodiment of its existence, of its flesh.

The meaningfulness of Alexander’s vision and her encounter with the dead leaves should therefore be understood as a meeting of creatures. And within such a context, we must consider and recognize each leaf in its own creaturely flesh. They are not abstract

33 Jennifer Frick-Ruppert. Mountain Nature: A Seasonal Natural History of the Southern Appalachians. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 123-124. 34 Robinson, 187. 35 Ibid. 36 Michael Halewood. “Reality, Eternality, and Colors: Rimbaud, Whitehead, Stevens” in Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness. Edited by Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 16-17.

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signifiers or components of a passive landscape or mere scenery. They are, like the brier – and every other plant in Appalachia and beyond – particular incarnations of the Holy Ghost.

Indeed, where does the “sacred” occur in Preacher Brier’s sermon? He is not, like most

Appalachian preachers, officially ordained or academically trained. He does not carry the traditional markers of piety or reverence; his “pulpit” and his “message” indicate the kind of

“street preaching” that is frequently derided (oftentimes legitimately so). Yet, Miller’s poetic eponym is not merely a creative flourish or unique name. It is not simply a subtle critique of fundamentalist religion or evangelical Christianity. It is not only the evocation of a particular culture and history. Most profoundly, his “name” points to an ontological destabilization between the boundaries that separate “human” and “vegetal.” While Miller’s “Brier” is obviously human, the simple fact of his “name” opens the possibility that “Preacher Brier” is the actual brier plant that dwells in Appalachia. “Brier” and “brier” are intertwined in the

“flesh” as creatures of the same place.

Let us return one last time to Edna Alexander’s vision. If we imagine Miller’s

“preacher Brier” within the context of a particular type of Appalachian vegetation – a wild blackberry bush – then we must likewise recognize that such vegetal life emerges from the soil that is rhythmically created by the decomposition of a pile of brown leaves. Indeed, I contend that Alexander’s dream of the prophetess dressed in brown, her desire to conform to this model, her subsequent vision of Jesus and Elijah dressed similarly – each element of her mystical vision – reaches its apotheosis in the pile of decaying leaves. Thus, the spiritual values of humility, compassion, and grace that flow out of Alexander’s distinct understanding and expression of discipleship are equally so materialized in the creaturely flesh of the leaf. I contend that we can legitimately read this moment as an example of an existential intertwining between the human and vegetal. This scene of course does not erase

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the distinction between humanity and plants, but rather simultaneously acknowledges and creates an intimacy that is most fully experienced within a rural space. Perhaps more importantly, Miller’s “Preacher Brier” and Alexander’s “dead leaves” help decenter the human from the concerns of theological reflection. That is, from a constructive theological perspective, the “brier” and “leaf” are embodiments of their own singular creatureliness, of the elementality of flesh. They are the porosity between earth, air, water, and sun, and as such provoke us to reconsider our own belonging in creation.

C. The Wild Regolith of Mrs. Allen’s Homestead: Lithic Creatureliness

Mrs. Allen has just breastfed her youngest child. She steps outside her cabin into the warmth of the sun and places the boy on the ground, repeating a ritual that she has performed for each her children. She uses her feet to keep him steady and the boy is content. However, this scene is not simply a part of their daily rhythm, nor is it merely one example of how rural families interact with/in their space. It indicates something deeper – it is a moment that enacts their cultural and existential connection to the land, one that is affirmed when the mother leans down and tells her child that it is time he “got to know” this land. The profundity of the gesture is perhaps only recognizable from within a certain sensibility, is perhaps only sensible for those whose everyday life is rooted in the soil. How is that this child, one young enough to still breastfeed, could “know” the land? What would such “knowledge” consist of and why is it important? What does it mean for the “organic” to “know” the “inorganic?” Is the appeal to “knowledge” a limitation on this relationship?

As I discussed in chapter two, Robert Coles only gradually came to recognize that the “land” is the “central fact of existence.” There I emphasized the extent to which this scene could be read as embodying a distinct type of “Appalachian rural mythology.”

Drawing on Roger Cunningham’s definition of “myth” as narrative of “transexperiential,

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intersubjectivity” symbolism I argued that Mrs. Allen’s moment with her son offers the contemporary Appalachian a “memory” around which we might “know” our story. My appeal to this scene was therefore focused on the possibility of constructing an alternative imagery and language so as to counter industrialization’s emptying of Appalachia’s agrarian past. Such a point remains valuable, but if we fail to account for the material substrate upon which is occurs then the subversiveness of this narrative loses part of its appeal. Mrs. Allen’s

“giving” of her child over to the land must also be seen as an intimate act of trust in her homestead’s “blanket of stone” (regolith).

Certainly, the land figures as the literal source for her family’s livelihood. It yields flora, shelters fauna, and provides much of material for their home. As with all her children,

Mrs. Allen wants her son to understand this existential fact – they cannot really live apart from the land. In placing her son upon this soil, she is letting him know that they are “of” this singular piece of wild flesh. Moreover, the “knowledge” that he gains is comforting in its simplicity and imposing in its implication: his body and this lithic soil are intertwined in a circulatory transformation of growth and decay. Indeed, the boy’s physiological capacity to actually rest upon the ground is dependent upon the lithic frame that supports his flesh, itself an indication of a kind of material kinship between the calcium in his bones and the calcium in the soil. Even so, such intimacy cannot exhaust the creatureliness of these stones.

Indeed, to speak of the “stone” as a being of “creaturely flesh” is to acknowledge that it exists apart from the needs and desires, the intentions and activity of humanity. If the regolith of Mrs. Allen’s homestead offers its own unique form of maternal affection, it also embodies a resistance to the hoe and plow. Indeed, there are pieces of Appalachian soils that are too rocky to cultivate without substantial transformation of the land; varying degrees of “excavation” would be necessary to make farming possible. Yet it is precisely this point

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that necessitates a different theological imagery from that of agrarianism. In its wild flesh, lithic being embodies a creatureliness that decenters the pretension of human desire and need. To speak of the stone as a “creature” is to push “strange kinship” to its limit. While certainly difficult, it is far easier to imagine an ontological intertwining with animals, and perhaps plants. It is altogether disorienting to extend such an image to rocks. However, as the interaction between Mrs. Allen, her son, and the ground reveal, there are examples from throughout Appalachian history that bring the human into physical contact with the lithic.

Perhaps more importantly, the relationship between Mrs. Allen, her son, and the ground, is not circumscribed by agricultural processes or standards. The regolith’s “maternal affection” is comforting and haunting. It is wild and resistant. It is coarse and subversive. And it beckons humanity into a kind of existence that it can experience but never fully know.

Indeed, if humility and grace characterize the Appalachian religious sensibility, and we can rightly surmise that they are values shared by Mrs. Allen, then we cannot dismiss the possibility that the rocks themselves somehow cultivate and provoke such an attitude or response. Here, the “lithic as creaturely flesh” opens the human to an encounter with spectral carnality of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, it is an embodiment of God’s hallowed excess.

Indeed, herein lies the theological import of my argument. To speak, as I have attempted to do in both the previous and current chapters, of a “lithic creature” is to draw the human into a deeper encounter with stone. It is to insist that the lithic is not the epitome of inert or passive material. It is to hazard the thought that “dead stone” is not really dead, but rather differently “alive.” It is to entertain, however paradoxical the thought, that the “stone” is existentially and experientially intertwined in the sacred movement of the

Holy Ghost. Indeed, the radical character of “Appalachian mountain religion” is such that it draws our attention to the intertwining of “topographical space” and religious imagination,

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beliefs, and practices. Thus, while the examples of Goegmagog’s cliff (chapter four) and

Mrs. Allen’s homestead (chapter two) might appear to be non-religious/non-theological, the can only be seen as such from a perspective that either ignores or denies the intimate relationship between “space” and “religion” that is unique to Appalachia. Consequently, the

“cliff” – or “ridge” to draw us more closely to Appalachian topography – and the “regolith” are religio-theological sources precisely because they provoke us to dwell along the periphery of systematic Christian theology.

Because my primary concern in this dissertation is urbanthropocentrism – the spatial and ontological centering of the human which has been used to justify and perpetuate the destruction of non-human beings – the spatial hermeneutic that I employ has led to look for sources and examples that emphasize moments and possibilities that might allow us to critique and move beyond this problem. Accordingly, I have sought to embrace the marginality of Appalachian Christianity that was imposed on the tradition by urban-based denominational missionaries. Indeed, the elision of this tradition that was achieved by this movement necessitates an appeal to sources that might not be apparently theological. More

Moreover, my argument in the preceding pages does not claim to be exhaustive but rather opens the self (and theological reflection) to that which is fundamental to Appalachian existence and Appalachian mountain religion – the mountain(s).

V. Where Creatureliness Becomes: The Mountain Roots of Appalachia’s Creatures

And yet, the creatureliness of the turtle, the leaf, and the stony soil, of Edna

Alexander, the mountain preacher, and Jim Wayne Miller, makes little sense apart from space within which the live. Indeed, it is the actual “space” – the mountains – that Alexander and

Miller call home, and that Pierson entered into as a denominational representative, which actually enables the former’s religious sensibilities. The very name of the religion –

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“Appalachian mountain religion” – while admittedly attributed to the region by a historian roughly 100 years later, nonetheless indicates the centrality of the mountains to the religion’s development and character. Assuredly, as “background” or “landscape,” the mountain(s) is fundamental in the development of this particular type of Christianity; immersive baptism within the living waters of mountain streams, for example. Additionally, the mountain(s) are the physical, topographical boundaries that the “brush breakers” like Pierson sought to overcome. Whether considered within a sociological or historical or cultural context, most approaches to the mountain(s) have, as I discussed at the beginning of this chapter, considered them primarily as containers of human action or agency. The mountain(s) are assumed to be, like plants and stones, figures of passivity or stasis; they are assuredly not

“alive” in any meaningful sense and therefore do not actively contribute or participate in the creation of Appalachia’s religion.

What if they did though? What if the mountains were not only not a passive container or landscape, but somehow alive and therefore participants in the religion that bears their name? My appeal to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the “flesh” and the figure of the “creature” is an attempt to contemplate an affirmative answer to such questions. If there is anything like an Appalachian rural mythology, it is unrecognizable apart from the interwoven existence of the rather protean, but nonetheless material, thing called

“Appalachian-ness” – an identity, if we might call it that, which is thoroughly, irrevocably intertwined with the “existence” of the mountains. Or at least it should be; perhaps it once was.

The foregoing discussion of urbanization, industrialization, and denominational evangelization has been pursued precisely because they represent and embody a distinct form of anthropocentricism. Similarly, my interest in rural spaces, Appalachia’s agrarian

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history, and Appalachian mountain religion is motivated by a concern with how they might contribute to an alternative conceptualization of humanity’s relationship with the environment. More importantly, both of these points are intended to lead us into an encounter with the mountain(s). Thus, mountaintop removal is figured as the height of urbanthropocentrism. And while this phenomenon has been and remains disastrous from an economic, cultural, and environmental perspective – whether in the expansion of a single industry’s power, the abandonment and/or commodification of culture, the overwhelming degree of pollution and biodiversity loss – it is equally, if not more, problematic from a theological perspective. Here, urbanthropocentrism in Appalachia must be read as a detachment from and disembodiment of the fleshy intertwining between human, animal, vegetal, and lithic. Accordingly, it is a rejection and denial of the latent vitality that once placed humanity in contact with the earth. It is the excoriation of flesh – human, animal, vegetal, and lithic. It is the disappearance of the mountains.

From the perspective of the industrialist or the home missionary, the Appalachian

Mountains were the liminal space of American culture and civilization. Indeed, as

Cunningham notes, within Judeo-Christian thought, some considered “mountains” to be a geographical instantiation of defilement and rebellion, in short of sin.37 For these individuals, mountains

were like tumors and wens, and had come into being at the Fall…Since Man (the restriction in gender is intended) was the lord and microcosm of the world, “Man’s” sin had extended to the world, cutting it off from God’s grace; the chief outward and visible sign of this fall of the macrocosm was the existence of mountains. Thus these rough, uncultivatable areas, which were themselves “useless” and made communication difficult and dangerous, became external symbols of the subject’s consciousness of his own divided self and tumored soul.38

37 Cunningham, 91-92 38 Ibid.

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Cunningham’s primary point here is to offer a counter-narrative and thus question its validity. There are, however, two points about this passage that I want to emphasize.

One, his reference to “rough, uncultivatable areas” – that is, the assumption of many

Christians that “mountain soil” could not support life – indirectly points to the limitations of an agrarian interpretation of creation. I do not claim that Wirzba (or any other agrarian writer) would agree with this accusation; both Wirzba and Wendell Berry, for example, are explicit in their recognition of the importance of “wild” or “uncultivated” spaces for an agrarian culture. Additionally, Wirzba points to the whirlwind’s confrontation with Job as emblematic of the creation’s inherently wild character.39 Rather, my point here is that the mountain soil – its regolith – is not so much “uncultivatable” but instead differently cultivated. The agrarianism that Wirzba argues for, drawing as it does on the work and life of

Wendell Berry and echoing the vibrant experiences of centuries’ worth of culture, is thoroughly appropriate for the Carolina Piedmont or Kentucky bluegrass or Midwestern prairie. However, there are interpretive limitations to this perspective. Despite similarities,

Appalachia is unique for precisely because of its topography, which in turn necessitates a kind of “forest farming” – a combination of cultivating, wildcrafting, and hunting and gathering – that requires an adaptation to the uneven terrain. Within such a spatial context, a traditional agrarian theology of creation cannot adequately account for its peculiarity; we need a theological imagery that not only resonates with a great intimacy and connection to the soil (agrarianism) but envelops that which exists outside the purposes of agriculture. In short, a theology of Appalachian creatures will not only account for the region’s agrarian past, but in so doing embrace its inherent wildness.

39 Wirzba, Paradise of God, 27, 44-45.

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Two, what would happen if we accept and re-frame this seemingly pejorative definition? What would happen if we affirm an inherent rebelliousness in the mountain(s), but contend that it is not the kind assumed in the passage above? In short, what would happen if we replace “rebellion” with “wildness?” Here, the mountain(s) do not so much

“rebel” against creation or other creatures or a creator, but rather against the abstract conceptualization of urbanthropocentrism.40 If the mountains are, as denominational brush breakers assumed, locales of primitive, chaotic, and hence dangerous religiosity, it is because the mountains themselves bely the pretense of abstract thought. We must not overlook the implications of this point.

The imagery that I have thus far evoked – rural space and natural life; cultural history and rural mythology; religious sensibility and an elemental imagination; ontological flesh and non-human being – reflect the importance of this elemental wildness. “Rurality” is tied to topography. Historical memory and cultural mythology emerges from its physical space.

Religion’s elemental dimensions are rooted in the land. Mrs. Allen, Edna Alexander, Jim

Wayne Miller, the mountain preacher – the “environmentalism” or “ecocriticism”, whether implicit or not, that each articulate does not refer to a vague sense of humanity’s relationship or connection to something called “nature” or the “environment” but rather grows, both materially and symbolically, out of the hollers and ridges of their particular place. The

“maternal stone” and “dead leaves” and “preacher brier” and “mud turtle” are only encountered within the mountains. And the mountain(s) can be said to create their meaning.

They provoke and confront us with a presence so radically different, yet so intimately intertwined, with our own. They are assuredly “parts” of creation but only so as “creatures.”

40 Michael Marder. “On the Mountains, Or the Aristocracies of Space.” Environment, Space, Place. Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 2012), 68.

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I am arguing not only that the mountains are important and valuable and worthwhile, but as enfleshed beings they are peculiarly yet irrepressibly alive. More pointedly, such a life reveals the fragility and vigor of creaturely life. Indeed, the imagery of

“flesh” and “creation,” while invaluable in their challenge to the reductionist framework of urbanthropocentrism, are themselves inadequate apart from some sense of subjectivity and agency. That is, if the epigraph from Nan Shepherd in the introduction is to be taken seriously – that the mountain(s) should be engaged as a “friend” – then the language of

“flesh” and “creation” do not adequately evoke this kind of relationship. It is, to a certain extent, difficult to “befriend” something called creation.

Accordingly, Appalachian conviviality – the sheer fact of “living with” that characterizes life in the mountains – occurs between creatures. Here, the “creature” is that figure which opens “human life” to “a…relationship in which the other…is given the duration it needs to disclose itself.”41 The “object” – be it animal, vegetal, lithic – is recognized by the “subject’ in its own singular existence apart from the latter’s conceptual framework. Thus, in her encounter with the ‘pile of dead leaves” as “object,” Edna

Alexander’s “subjectivity” can be seen as potentially emptied of anthropocentric pretense and she is confronted by a bodily/enfleshed presence that not only illuminates her religious vision, but expands her sense of self. “Subject” and “object” seem to shift in both her dream and daily experience(s). Within this context, the assumed hierarchy between

“subjectivity” and “objectivity” is destabilized. The identity of the “object” and “subject” thus becomes porous and fluid, or we might say existentially intertwined to the point that we cannot be certain of either identity. This point assuredly challenges the abstract concepts of

41 Ibid., 100.

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urbanthropocentrism, particularly with regards to the concrete action or ethical behavior.

Yet I fear it remains dependent on an anthropocentric framework.

That is, if “creatureliness” or the “creature” entails a conceptual destabilization of representation and classification, to what extent is the language of “subject-object” legitimate?42 Is the “creature” an object that is encountered in “patience” and “hope?” Or is it the ontological premise and telos for subjectivity?43 Does it actually make sense to refer to one creature as “object” and another as “subject” if the very concept of “creatureliness” requires a reconsideration of the philosophical and theological categories that we rely on?

Indeed, does not “creatureliness” subvert such categorical thinking?

Certainly, the “creature” is a linguistic concept by which we articulate or express a particular kind of relationship; it could be described as an alternative “category.”

Furthermore, it may be somewhat linguistically burdensome to completely abandon

“subject” and “object” completely. And yet, the “hope” of creatureliness is that we might not only speak differently about our relationship with the world – with leaves, wild briers, wild mountains – but that we might imagine ourselves as incarnate in the same flesh. Within this context, redemption is figured as a fundamentally “decentering” experience, an emptying of human pretense and destabilization of ontological hierarchy. To be a “creature” is to experience a perennial “becoming” of the Holy Ghost, of birth and death and re-birth through elemental collision, wherein the figures we call “human” are recognized as singular, although not superior, expressions of a common corporeality.44 Indeed, the entire point of emphasizing the concept is to place humanity within a relational conviviality that both rejects and subverts anthropocentricism. Life is nothing if it is not “creaturely.”

42 Matthew Abbott. “The Creature Before the Law: Notes on Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence.” COLLOQUY: text theory critique 16 (2008), 86. 43 Wirzba, From Nature To Creation, 96. 44 Julia Lupton. “Creature Caliban.” Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 51, No.2 (Spring 2000), 1-2.

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A “creaturely theology” is thus more than an expansion of reflection and critique beyond human subjectivity. It is more than a re-imagining of human identity and meaning.

It is more than a shared sense of animality. While it assuredly all these things, it is equally so the evocation of hope and love, of finitude and vulnerability, of wildness and kinship, embodied through the singularity of each creature. It is a confession – an

“acknowledgement with” – that existence happens in and through and because of a creaturely flesh. Here, theology as “speech about God” not only emphasizes the ideas of

“God as creator” or “world as creation,” it “materializes” such doctrines in the fleshy relationships of creatures. A constructive theology of creaturely flesh reveals the extent to which the existence of humans, animals, plants, and stones is dependent on not only an acute sense of the “divine presence”, but an overwhelming appreciation for “profane existence.” Indeed, the picture of “creatureliness” that have presented insists on the intertwining of the sacred and the profane, such that the porosity that characterizes the relationship between creatures also characterizes the relationship between creature and

Creator, sacred and profane.45 The rural spatiality of Appalachia can thus be seen as a congregation of creatures living and dying within one another.

If “Appalachian mountain religion” is what its name conveys, defining the middle term in connection to “creaturely flesh” intensifies its very peculiarity. As beings of lithic flesh, the mountain(s) embody the wild elementality that Merleau-Ponty considers

45 In an article considering the religious dimensions of new materialism, specifically as it relates to “feces,” Karen Bray writes, “What might it mean to think of an expelled God – one no longer found in the proper name of God, but in the movements of decomposition and recomposition found in the cycles of material life?...This dishonored God is one that becomes brain and shit, vibrates in the material powers of decomposition and recomposition; and occupies with us and feels…It is this God – the God of the compost pile – that lures us to resist the anti-earth ideologies and theologies that are devouring us. For this is a God that will risk being devoured in order to find deep solidarity with those of us too often gobbled up and disposed as waste (128-129).” Karen Bray. “Becoming Feces: New Materialism and the Deep Solidarity of Feeling Like Shit” in Religious Experience and New Materialism: Radical Theologies, ed. Rieger J. Waggoner. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 128-129.

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characteristic of Being. In their utter corporeality, they confront the human with a primeval presence, something that has existed for eons prior and bear within the vast evolution of history. And yet, as “flesh” they are equally vulnerable, fragile, susceptible to ruination and despoliation. As “creatures”, they are not only “created beings” and thus, from a religio- theological perspective, endowed with sacred value and worth, but are emblematic of hope, patience, and redemption. Here, the Brush – itself an ostensibly vegetal symbol – has to be read in relation to the mountain topography. If the mountain(s) is the Brush, then the vegetal is the lithic, and both are enfleshed. To evoke the “creaturely flesh” of the mountain(s) is to return the leaves, briers, creeks, ridges, soil of a distinctly rural spatiality.

As Edna Alexander is intertwined with a pile of dead leaves, as Jim Wayne Miller is intertwined with the prickly brier, as all Appalachians are intertwined with the “brush,” their existence is constituted in and through the mountains. Appalachian mountain religion is thus named not simply because it denotes a geographical or spatial eponym, but rather because in such naming it reveals the particular existential sensibility of its theological imagination. The mountain(s) are not simply the place, they are not simply the background for human culture. In their creatureliness they create other creatures. The mountain(s) is the creatureliness of creatures. In its own singular flesh it incarnates a multiplicity of creatures. For the Appalachian, everything is lithic, just as everything is vegetal and animal and human. The “brown leaf” is simultaneously the grey stone, green moss, blue water, orange sun. Appalachians must embrace this creature. They must embrace its wild elementality. They must share in its creatureliness. Only then will they come to recognize that they are creatures of mountain flesh.

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VI. Conclusion

My argument in this chapter has proceeded in three primary moves. First, I discussed the importance/value of “creation” as a theological alternative to the concept of

“nature.” Drawing primarily on the work of Norman Wirzba, I emphasized the extent to which “creation” situates humanity within deeper, more intimate relationship with the land.

Within this context, the “agrarian” interpretation of the biblical creation narratives, particularly Genesis 2, figures the human as a servant of the soil, wherein his/her “tilling” and “keeping” is an act of devotion, as much as it is an act of subsistence. However, while

Wirzba’s argument is a valuable resource for challenging “urbanthropocentrism,” it is limited in its applicability to the Appalachian context.

Second, I offered an alternative “theology of creation” that acknowledges and embraces the agrarian interpretation, while seeking to account for the particular character of

“Appalachia.” Here I returned to the figures/vignettes of the “mud turtle,” “brown leaf”,

“brier”, and “mountain homestead,” noting in particular the extent to which they embody

“creaturely flesh.” In re-imagining this various examples of Appalachian mountain religious culture, I have sought to add a different perspective and alternative voice to agrarian theologies of creation. These figures cannot be fully encountered as elements of an agricultural way of life; their “wildness” and “elementality” places them at the margins of our cultural and conceptual frameworks. In their animality, vegetality, and lithic-ness, each of these “creatures” embodies a particular form of life that simultaneously challenges and embraces the “human.” Accordingly, the spirit of the mountain preacher, the vision of

Edna Alexander, the poetry of Jim Wayne Miller, and the care of Mrs. Allen are re-imagined as evocations of and encounters with their wild singularity.

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Third, I situated this “creatureliness” within the mountains. Here, I argued that, if the turtle, leaf, brier, and stone are singular creatures (which they are), then their existence is dependent on the topographical space within which they live. The “mountain(s)” is the creaturely creation of creatures. In its sheer presence, in its existential facticity, it helps make possible the creatureliness of other beings.

Let us return one more time to Powell Mountain. Its sandstone ridgeline and limestone face evoke the ancient processes of sedimentation. Its lithic slope is covered in oak and sycamore, rhododendron and honeysuckle. Its folds and gaps are home to deer, black bears, wild turkeys, screech owls, black snakes, salamanders, and fireflies. Lithic, vegetal, animal – all become in this mountain. And the mountain becomes in them. As you walk in its shadow, you are invited participate in its sedimentary life, “to reconstitute [your] own materiality as [creature]” into an existence at the margins of urbanthropocentric abstraction.46 Indeed, while numerous peaks around you have been felled by mountaintop removal, this particular ridgeline remains relatively intact; it has not yet been flattened, although there are large patches of clear-cut forest along its slope. For the moment, you are singular creature (human) in the fold of a multiplicity of creatures (turtle, leaf, brier, stone) which are within the fold of a singular creature (mountain) which is the multiplicity of creatures (human, animal, vegetal, lithic). Existence is this patch of Appalachia is a rhythmic weave of creaturely flesh.

46 Stephanie LeMenager. “Sediment” in Veer Ecology: A Companion for Environmental Thinking, ed. Jeffery Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 171.

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CONCLUSION

“I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.” - Vievee Francis

“We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; we must unhumanize our views a little, and becomes as the rock…that we are made from.” - Robinson Jeffers

Over the past month or so, I have been contemplating my knuckles. They are somewhat prominent, I frequently “crack” them, and have always been concerned that the habit has contributed to both their appearance and the overall shape of my hands; they are relatively small, wide, and actually remind me of my mothers. Physiologically, the “crack” is not the signal of bone-on-bone friction, but rather the release of gas from the lubricating membrane that surrounds the joints. Moreover, while certainly not beneficial, there is little research to suggest that the action contributes to long-term arthritic complications or pain. It is more than likely contributed little to that actual shape of my hand. All of which is entirely not the point.

Rather, my curiosity has been drawn to the contour they make when my fingers are curved or my hand is clenched. Driving a car, holding a pen, feeding my daughter, typing this sentence – it is in these everyday moments that I am struck by a rather odd thought: from particular angles my knuckles resemble a mountain ridge.

Looking at my hand directly provides a rather two-dimensional image, while turning it slightly adds a certain kind of depth. Nonetheless, I stare at the ebb and flow of the bone

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and I start to imagine the ebb and flow of Appalachia. And while this imagery is thoroughly simplified and requires a certain amount of intentional movement to obtain the desired the affect, we should remind ourselves that the inverse of the knuckle – the fleshy area at the base of the finger – was at one point called a mons, whose etymological lineage also provides us with the word “mountain.” I have not lived in the mountains for nine years, yet perhaps I never left them. This dissertation has been an attempt to reckon with this awareness.

As I discussed in the Introduction, the argument that has unfolded in these pages is simultaneously personal and professional. In analyzing, describing, and reflecting on the particular culture and topography of Appalachia – and more specifically their intertwining – I have sought to provide the reader with a different reading of the region’s past and present.

Moreover, in drawing on Appalachia’s unique religious traditions, specifically those described by Deborah Vansau McCauley as “Appalachian mountain religion”, to construct an explicitly theological argument, I wanted to expand the boundaries of what constitutes

“academic theology”, “Appalachian scholarship”, and “ecocritical theorization.” Let us recap this interdisciplinary approach.

In chapter one, I argued for “rural space.” Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of space, I claimed that the “rural” – as lived space of everyday life – provides humanity with a better space to encounter and interact with “nature.” At this point I continued to use/employ the concept “nature,” specifically in reference to Lefebvre’s interest in the festivals of agro-pastoral communities. My intention here was to see the “peasant festival” as prefiguring a relationship between humanity and nature that challenges the homogeneity of urbanization and anthropocentricism. “Rural space” exists at the level of “natural life” not only because of its agrarian or agro-pastoral economy but, more profoundly, because of a concrete symbolism that intertwines humanity and nature.

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Chapter two shifted focus to the Appalachian context. Engaging a variety of sources from Appalachian Studies, I argued that the industrialization of the region should be seen as a particular manifestation of the broader of urbanization. Here, I focused specifically on the opening of the mountains through the construction of railroads and the subsequent construction of coal camps. While both of these particular developments were inevitably tied to the expansion of industrial capitalism, they also facilitated the entrance of a

“metropolitan ideology.” More specifically, this period in Appalachia’s history represented a fundamental transformation of the region’s agrarian past. The industrialist and the local color essayist were thus instrumental in the perpetuation of what Rodger Cunningham describes as the patterns of “peripheralization’ that have shaped the culture and psychology of Appalachia.

The third chapter was the hinge, wherein I introduced the religio-theological dimensions of my argument. Focusing specifically on the work of Deborah Vansau McCauley, I provided an eco-critical reimagining of Appalachia’s late 19th century religious traditions. In particular I argued that the beliefs and practices of “Appalachian mountain religion” represent an important resource for articulating a theological critique of urbanthropocentrism. Here, I focused specifically on the mystical vision of Edna Alexander and argued that her encounter with a pile of brown leaves provides us with an acutely ecological religiosity and a profound rebuke of the abstract theology of the denominational home missionaries.

Building on this imagery, I turn to the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his reflections on “the flesh” in chapter four. Here, I argued that the concept of “nature” is fundamentally inadequate for challenging urbanthropocentrism. Rather, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical concept of “the flesh” provides us with a more robust and dynamic imagery

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within which to articulate the relationship between human and non-human beings. More pointedly, I claimed that his philosophy helps us describe vegetal and lithic life as “enfleshed.”

This aspect of my argument provided a critical foundation for my constructive theology of creatures.

Chapter five was the culmination of the preceding work. Here, the rural space of chapter one, the Appalachian rural mythology of chapter two, the ecological reimagining of

Appalachian religion of chapter three, and the philosophical argument for vegetal and lithic flesh, become key elements in a theology of Appalachian creatureliness. I entered into dialogue with Norman Wirzba’s agrarian theology of creation and argued that, while an important resource for challenging the modern idolatry of “nature,” his work can only offer so much to the Appalachian. Rather, the particular topographical features and rural culture of the region necessitates an alternative theological imagery. Here, I turned to the figure of the creature/creatureliness, such that as enfleshed beings, the humans, animals, plants, and stones living in Appalachia are “creatures” within a “creature” – the mountain.

This argument has been an attempt to think about a theology of creation from within a particular place (Appalachia) and in relation to a particular “thing” (the mountain). I have sought to “put down” what my encounter with the mountain(s) has provoked within. I have sought to “decenter” not only the human subject qua human subject, but perhaps more intentionally articulate an alternative sense of self that places us in deeper intimacy with the animal/vegetal/lithic. The elementality and wildness of the flesh is materialized in the creaturely mountain, and because we are intertwined in such flesh, likewise materialized in us.

Whether described as a “theology of Appalachian creatures” or an “Appalachian theology of creatures” or a “creaturely theology of Appalachia” – I think there is a degree of interchangeability – the focus has remained the same: how can I speak a theological word for

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the mountains and region that I call home? Indeed, it is the object of my question – those mountains in that place – that has guided my concern. “Rural space” is important as an alternative to/critique of urbanization, but only if it leads to a different way of living in the mountains. Pre-industrial Appalachian cultural history must be understood and appreciated, but only if it gives us a sense of how previous generations of mountaineers interacted with the mountains. Appalachian mountain religion must be seen as a fascinating example of a uniquely American form of Christianity, but only if we are able to recognize and employ its complex ecological sensibilities to experience the mountains anew. The “flesh” is a more dynamic philosophical concept to describe the ontological overlap between human and non- human beings, but only if it is deepened to such an extent that the mountainous ground upon which we tread is considered enfleshed. “Creatureliness” evokes the fragile giftedness of life, but its impact can only be felt when we recognize the depth to our creatureliness emerges within the mountain’s creatureliness.

I have contributed a constructive theology of creatureliness that emphasizes the deep connections that abound between “space” and “creature.” In writing from the particular place of Appalachia, I have demonstrated that theological arguments for “creation” must account for the distinctive topographical or environmental character of particular spaces.

Accordingly, I have introduced the concept of “creaturely flesh” as a different theological imagery to describe the relationship and encounter between human and non-human beings.

My “theology of creaturely flesh” is therefore an example of a theology of creation that accounts for the elemental wildness of animals, plants, and stones, so to emphasize the existential intertwining between human and non-human creatures.

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