New Orleans Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity

Remaking New Orleans Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity

THOMAS JESSEN ADAMS & MATT SAKAKEENY, editors New Orleans

Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity

duke university press Durham and London | 2019 © 2019 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Designed by Julienne Alexander Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Westchester Publishing Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Adams, Thomas Jessen, editor. | Sakakeeny, Matt, [date] editor. Title: Remaking New Orleans : beyond exceptionalism and authenticity / Thomas Jessen Adams and Matt Sakakeeny, editors. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018040997 (print) lccn 2018053730 (ebook) isbn 9781478003328 (ebook) isbn 9781478001829 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9781478002871 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: New Orleans (La.)—Social conditions—21st century. | New Orleans (La.)—Politics and government— 21st century. | New Orleans (La.)—Social life and customs—21st century. | New Orleans (La.)—In popular culture. | Ethnology—Louisiana—New Orleans. Classification: lcc f379.n54 (ebook) | lcc f379.n54 r46 2019 (print) | ddc 976.3/35—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040997

Cover art: Tavares Strachan, You Belong Here, Prospect 3, New Orleans, 2014. Blocked-out neon, 30´ × 80´. Courtesy of the artist. Contents

Acknowledgments ix

I ntroduction: What Lies beyond Histories of Exceptionalism and Cultures of Authenticity 1

THOMAS JESSEN ADAMS, SUE MOBLEY, & MATT SAKAKEENY

Part One Constructing Exceptional New Orleans

1 La Catrina: The exicanM Specter of New Orleans 35

SHANNON LEE DAWDY

2 Charles Gayarré and the Imagining of an Exceptional City: The iteraryL Roots of the Creole City 55

RIEN FERTEL

3 Phony City: Under the Skin of Authenticity 72

AARON NYERGES Part Two Producing Authentic New Orleans

4 “Things You’d Imagine Zulu Tribes to Do”: The Zulu Parade in New Orleans Carnival 93

FELIPE SMITH

5 The Saga of the Junkyard Dog 117

BRYAN WAGNER

6 Local, Native, Creole, Black: Claiming Belonging, Producing Autochthony 138

HELEN A. REGIS

7 The Contradictions of the Film Welfare Economy, or, For the Love of Treme 162

VICKI MAYER, HEIDI SCHMALBACH, & TOBY MILLER

Part Three What Is New Orleans Identity?

8 “Queers, Fairies, and Ne’er-Do-Wells”: Rethinking the Notion of a Sexually Liberal New Orleans 179

ALECIA P. LONG

9 Building Black Suburbs in New Orleans 199

VERN BAXTER & MARIA CASATI

10 Refugee Pastoralism: Vietnamese American Self-Representation in New Orleans 219

MARGUERITE NGUYEN Part Four Predictive City?

11 Boosting the Private Sector: Fe deral Aid and Downtown Development in the 1970s 241

MEGAN FRENCH-MARCELIN

12 What’s Left for New Orleans? The People’s Reconstruction and the Limits of Anarcho-Liberalism 261

CEDRIC G. JOHNSON

13 Neoliberal Futures: Post-Katrina New Orleans, Volunteers, and the Ongoing Allure of Exceptionalism 288

VINCANNE ADAMS

14 The Myth of Authenticity and Its Impact on Politics— in New Orleans and Beyond 307

ADOLPH REED JR.

References 327 Contributors 351 Index 355 Acknowledgments

this book grew out of a 2014 conference held at Tulane University titled “New Orleans as Subject: Beyond Authenticity and Exceptionalism.” Funding for the conference was provided by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, with additional support provided by the Tulane Office of Academic Affairs, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Newcomb College Institute, the Tulane Department of Music, the Tulane Department of Political Science, and the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. We’d like to thank conference participants Vincanne Adams, Vern Baxter, Maria Casati, Joel Dinerstein, Adrienne Dixson, Rien Fertel, Megan French-Marcelin, Cedric Johnson, Yuki Kato, Alecia Long, Vicki Mayer, Marguerite Nguyen, Aaron Nyerges, Larry Powell, Adolph Reed, Helen Regis, Kodi Roberts, Heidi Schmalbach, Felipe Smith, Randy Sparks, Steve Striffler, Christien Tompkins, and Bryan Wagner as well as the numerous audience members who helped make the event full of stimulating and lively discussion. Sue Mobley joined in helping to organize the conference and brought her deep knowledge not only to the introduction but to the entire editorial process. This book would not have been the same without her contributions. Kyle DeCoste offered invaluable support during the conference, editorial input on the introduction, and formatting of the final manuscript. Ken Wis- soker guided the publication with a steady hand, and we thank the entire team at Duke along with the two anonymous reviewers who provided critical and thorough feedback. We dedicate this book to gumbo, King Rex, foggy nights on the Missis- sippi, and memories of Marie Laveau. Introduction

What Lies beyond Histories of Exceptionalism and Cultures of Authenticity

THOMAS JESSEN ADAMS, SUE MOBLEY, & MATT SAKAKEENY

“New Orleans is a world apart,” notes a tourism website, “in many ways its own little city-state, part of the United States but at the same time so dif ferent from every other place in the country.” Could anyone familiar with the city have escaped this truism that New Orleans is a land unto itself, and could any of us who have been enchanted with this place deny experiencing its singularity in profound ways? Within the specter of American exceptionalism, in which the United States is idealized as an immigrant country of hard workers and liberal dreamers—“a special case ‘outside’ the normal patterns and laws of history,” as Ian Tyrrell has argued—New Orleans resides as a thing apart, the exception to the exception.1 From the beginning of its existence as a juridically American locale, those both inside and outside the city have marked it off as anathema to broader patterns of urbanity, culture, politics, economics, and, indeed, Americanness. Placed in opposition to a nation perpetually driven by progress, New Orleans is the “city that care forgot.” It can also be the “Paris of the South,” the “northernmost Caribbean City,” and the “most African city in the United States.” That New Orleans can be all of these is what makes this place different from any other place, or the United States as a whole. Or so the story goes. The response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 is a useful barom- eter of exceptionalism discourse and the importance it plays in the city’s identity vis-à-vis the nation. “Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this 2 concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools,” wrote veteran journalist Jack Shafer, while Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert observed from Washington, “it looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.”2 To be sure, the overwhelming response to the devastation in New Orleans was an outpouring of assistance, with thousands of volunteers and donors support- ing rebuilding efforts and contributing their dollars and sweat to the process of bringing a major American city back from the brink. Affective cases for

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, rebuilding were packaged under titles like Why New Orleans Ma tters and What Can’t Be Lost. Testifying on Capitol Hill about the “strategy neces- sary to rebuild Louisiana,” then Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, who would be elected mayor in 2010, explained to Congress, “Louisiana has an economic asset that other states can only dream of: a multifaceted, deeply rooted, authentic, and unique culture.”3 Though the calls for support ran directly counter to the desires of the conservative bulldozers, both relied upon a broadly shared perception of an inimitable city set apart from a normative America. How is it possible that the justification given for saving New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana was not that it’s a major metropolitan area, home to 1.3 million people, or the nation’s busiest port system, or perhaps the key nodal point in North America’s oil and gas infrastructure? From the other perspective, would senior politicians and influential opinion makers have called for the abandonment of the Bay Area following the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, or of lower Manhattan and northern New Jersey afte r Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012, or of the Houston metropolitan area inun- dated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017? Whether sinful or soulful, post-Katrina New Orleans was to live or die by the sword of exceptionalism, by how those in power assessed the value—not least in monetary terms—of its culture. New Orleans exceptionalism, its raison d’être, is grounded in notions of cultural authenticity embodied in creolized cuisine and architecture, jazz and other musical traditions, community parades and black Indian pro cessions, voodoo queens and Mardi Gras royals, public drinking and prostitution. We should state at the outset that as residents of New Orleans, each of us participates in the city’s multifaceted traditions and attends to various cultural formations in our research. This book is an attempt not only to draw out other, more neglected areas of local study but to highlight the affini- ties between scholars, popular historians, journalists, and tourism marketers who have narrowed in on select cultural formations, masking their incorporation into the market, and thus imbuing them with authenticity as defini- tively local and communitarian. This cultivated rendering of New Orleans 3 Introduction

- - - - y ss ss As ke wise cla tic. tic. n the re, jazz, re, the The contrib tu 5 agined as con a er im l science, and urban and urban l science, ca i ichotomies and to ask and to ichotomies lit at track the accumulative accumulative the track at th these d these astion of meaning in an other in of meaning astion r opening a nightclub on Bourbon a nightclub Bourbon on r opening e Davis’s Los Angeles, Hal Rothman’s Rothman’s Los Angeles, Hal e Davis’s rican New Orleanians, middle- Orleanians, New rican tic b tic afte cial formations are in fact products of fact products in are cial formations n Mik the ese Ame ous so ous ntury romantic literary tradition, continuously continuously literary tradition, romantic ntury nam nderstandings. The equation of historical excep of historical nderstandings. The equation ce sed studies— 4 ba ble u si ople look to us for what they have been led to expect [that] New New been led expect to they have [that] what ople look for us to social relations, marketing constructs, or cultural appropriation. appropriation. cultural or constructs, marketing socialrelations, Pe ist ist l w Orleans exceptionalism (Congo Square, Creole lit Creole (Congo Square, exceptionalism w Orleans e ta i In this book we argue that the New Orleans created by this feedback this by created loop, Orleans book New this the argue we In that More than a critique of area studies or scholarship specific to the city, the city, scholarship specific or to studies of area a critique than More nders it an incomparable cultural island. The more holistic and inclusive inclusive and holistic island. The more cultural it an incomparable nders is not our purpose to prove New Orleans’s typicality or exceptionality, or or typicality exceptionality, or Orleans’s New prove to purpose our not is t in which authenticity and exceptionality are perpetually reaffirmed, perpetuallyhas reaffirmed, are and exceptionality whichauthenticity in pos obscured other been has not so much authenticity cultural plus tionalism re in scholars working capacity inform to the has forth put we Orleans New and authenticity— of exceptionalism machinations the areas about other jured as an entity outside of history, outside of capital, and outside of politics. of capital, and outside outside jured of history, outside as an entity I vari its or how artificialworld, has Orleans of New Orleansness” very the “New how pursues that studies inspira take The editors terrain. unstable notoriously taken root city’s the in tion from other place- “Harlemworld”— John L. Jackson’s Vegas, Las and neighborhoods locales. of cities as distinctive construction of caricatures to do not conform subjects that and locating disaster) Katrina (Viet authenticity cultural philanthrocapitalists). wrestlers, pro black suburbanites, authenticity and exceptionalism on research to book this also contributes its itself, a city When exemplify concepts. except can as theoretical nothing NewOrleans— applied to often most adjective the invoke uniqueness—to social ground. sciences—on the and humanistic humanities the in concepts demonstrate how it exists as an au it exists how demonstrate Street, “ Street, cap is aligned Orleans with New Remaking invocation. their in is hidden what po anthropology, progressive history, scholarship in is rooteda nineteenth- in and economic development repackaged twin engines of tourism the through and social humanities sectors of the in research and supported by schemes, is the a consensus Such city comparison. the isolated has from that sciences New renders of an analytical tautologyresult authenticity which cultural in it au renders exceptionalism city’s the and exceptional Orleans observed Louislocal Prima musician give can them.” Orleans utors go about interrogating and recontextualizing the most salient symbols salient most the and recontextualizing go interrogating utors about of N Rather, this is an attempt to move beyond move to is an attempt this Rather, 4 The contributors in this volume show what New Orleans–as-exception can teach us about other locales, as they draw comparisons to other sites and frame specific claims to authenticity within and against legacies of intellectual thought. Ethnographic and cultural studies of New Orleans have eschewed the attendees of wrestling matches and the quotidian lives of suburban blacks in favor of Mardi Gras Indian ceremonies, Creole culinary traditions, and community parades known as “second lines” (see chapters 5, 9, 10,

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, this volume). This focus on the supposedly authentic and relatively unmedi- ated mirrors tendencies in anthropology and cultural studies that have been subject to sustained critique in poststructural readings. Similarly, historians of New Orleans have tended to focus on the distinctive context of the French and Spanish colonial city and its denizens, New Orleans’s nodality within the American slave trade, and challenges to the black-white color line, while eliding the variety of ways in which New Orleans is part of less exceptional but no less interesting developments in urbanity, inequality, and American politics. Together, we ask what putting a city on a pedestal of distinction accomplishes in terms of civic participation, identity formation, cultural production, tourism marketing, urban planning, disaster recovery, political gamesmanship, and more. In pursuing these themes within a discrete locale, we aim to intervene in the now robust multidisciplinary debates about New Orleans and con- tribute to current debates within the humanistic social sciences surrounding cultures of authenticity and histories of exceptionalism. New Orleans is a model site for tracking authenticity and exceptionalism as moving targets, seemingly rooted in place and yet ascribed to different cultural formations and subject positions over time. The individual chapters take upthese and other topics, proceeding in rough chronological order from the colonial period to contemporary New Orleans. This introductory chapter is intended as a selective genealogy that tracks the accumulation of exceptionalism and authenticity over three centuries, beginning with an overview of the twin concepts as they have been theorized in the humanities and social sciences.

Theorizing Exceptionalism and Authenticity In both scholarly and popular understandings of American urbanity, Chicago reigns as the most distinctly American city, aided in no small part through the work of the successive Chicago schools of sociology, anthropology, and political science. New York is the engine that moves the nation’s finance and high culture. Boston and Philadelphia are home to that most American of 5 Introduction ------ sis, tury. tury. of the the of Cen cade cade l flows that that l flows ca i . When plaçage. When lanta, Houston, Houston, lanta, lit At , making it a model , making e traditions of black e traditions New Orleans is con Orleans New ntury social analy 7 t— tic ce pending on which time which time on pending lled American lled American n t- Bel manc ca ersus plastic, gemeinschaft plastic, gemeinschaft ersus the firs for tic v tic bean, de n As we near the third de third the near we As rib 6 the reasingly stand as interchangeable repre asreasingly interchangeable stand inc mporary logical the it, is of scholar put outcome te mporary attachments to authenticity and the relation and the authenticity to mporary attachments te ioms within the very narratives and geopo very the narratives within ioms ess and modernity. This antimodernism can uneasilybecome This antimodernism and modernity. ess ntury, the megalopolises the Sun of the ntury, ess versus preservation, au preservation, versus ess gr ce gr t those id those p, mass consumption, migration, and the elusive lure of multicul lure elusive and the migration, consumption, p, mass a, and to the Atlantic and the Ca and the a, Atlantic the and to firs shi w Orleans, on the other hand, stands utterly outside the nation’s story nation’s the outside utterly stands hand, other the on w Orleans, e w Orleans continues to generate research that fetishizes collective mean fetishizes that research generate to continues w Orleans island of twenty- island oddlyAn Volksgemeinschaft N ner leans worthy of value and preservation is in its oppositionality to national oppositionality national its to is in and preservation of value worthy leans ts on a vision of culture and community as au and community of culture vision a on ts r ouisian w es Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami— twenty- sentatives of an American dream grounded in the imperatives of property imperatives the grounded in dream of an American sentatives o Ne New Orleanians are portrayed solely as vestiges from an African past rather past rather an African solely portrayed as from are vestiges Orleanians New and creolism when or formations, cultural cosmopolitan and complex than of accounts in romanticized sex are of interracial supposed exceptionality the in inherent gendered coercion the obscure ballsquadroon that the interrogate to time it is idioms, a localesuch is so definedby discursive of nature con tracking for site equated with racial primitivism, as when the per the as when racial primitivism, with equated derstand that “New Orleans [is] not an American city.” [is] Orleans not an American “New that derstand NewOrleans way this In industrial. the versus gesellschaft,the pastoral versus of moderniza narratives broader in other as consummate citya asthe stands New makes All that and rationality. liberalism, society, development, tion, O of pro values actualized them. bonds sociability of the and exceptionality ing asorganic. truly The city’s r philosophical, changing to anthropological, and attachments ship of such of its urban identities. As one real estate developer and a leading light of New light developer and a leading New of real estate As one identities. urban of its un to “recalibrate” must one Orleans New understand it, to put Urbanism New Thislanguageabout. hamstrung hasis writing similarly placeand one politics, get economics, issues and culture—as framed itself—in Orleans pro around the values enshrined in the Constitution. the in enshrined values the events, the Revolution itself. Cincinnati, St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, City, Salt Lake St. Louis, Denver, Cincinnati, itself. Revolution the events, Chicago (along with as well) all are part Francisco Turnerian and San of the and Cleve Detroit, Pittsburgh, west. march American intrinsically and thus so- might the as in symbolsstand land industrial of Los Angeles, as con one tural opportunity. sidered exceptional to the broader US but also to the American South and South American also the to but US broader the to exceptional sidered L 6 materialist theories. In her study of “salvage ethnographers” who sought to document folk cultures against the encroaching threat of industrial modernity, Regina Bendix identifies a broader tension in searches for authenticity, which are “oriented to ward the recovery of an essence whose loss has been realized only through modernity, [but] whose recovery is feasible only through methods and sentiments created in modernity.”8 Historically tied to the rise of bourgeois capitalism and the attendant estrangement of in-

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, dividuals from (imagined) organic communities, the very effort to capture authenticity leads to its perceived loss via processes of recognition, repro- duction, and especially commodification. As Lionel Trilling summarizes this deeply entrenched fetishization of the authentic, “Money, in short, is the principle of the inauthentic in human existence.”9 As the mystical “southern Babylon,” a place seemingly preserved so we might forget to care (about a Protestant work ethic, about accruing capital, about transgressing taboos, about untended levees), New Orleans is imagined as a place of pastness, somehow predating capitalist alienation and inauthentic (i.e., state-sponsored rather than community-sponsored) social welfare.10 A demarcated zone of festivity and excess—music and dance, food and drink, sociability and sex—is imbued with authenticity in the Rous- seauian sense as a fundamental, even primal, hu man endeavor that is idealized as antithetical to bourgeois social expectations. The ludic spaces of Mardi Gras, of Bourbon Street, or of a musical funeral procession appear as timeless, masking their incorporation into the very market forces they appear to subvert. New Orleans “performs as a simulacrum of itself,” Joseph Roach observes, “ap- parently frozen in time, but in fact busily devoted to the ever-changing task of recreating the illusion that it is frozen in time.”11 The city’s authenticity, its originality, is in its failure to fully Americanize and modernize, by preserving not only its historic buildings but also its time-honored traditions for reasons other than maximal profit making. This creates a metric, what David Grazian terms a “symbolic economy of authenticity,” in which an original, authentic experience resides at the opposite end of the spectrum from a staged, overtly commodified experience that smacks of “Disneyfication.”12 The search for authenticity as an end goal is a fool’s errand, tied to a romantic vision of meaning centered on an individualistic conception of truth through personal fulfillment. In its essential antimodernism, authenticity as value becomes, paradoxically, the highest value of modernity and beyond.13 Manufacturing authenticity for notoriety and profit has been a time-honored occupation for generations of New Orleanians and its many suitors. Authen- ticating New Orleans remains an imperative for musicians, chefs, and anyone 7 Introduction - - - - - ed A lar lar hat hat tic 16 u o en add tic ity t show t show l constitu l ca i cial relations. cial relations. lit e, New Orleans Orleans e, New mporary politics ist so ist te vic d by economic by d ex l ta i nize n and po ga tribution of wealth is the is the of wealth tribution l economy and culture are are and culture l economy tio ca ta dis i lit Though they attribute thispro Thoughtheyattribute sen hborhood, native of a par hborhood, native 17 anding” and, all as the with brands, brand are or are brand br ture.” uality Beyond and racialization. New lar neig lar fu u eq lar lar al city may not be manicured to the degree the al to not be city manicured may mporary po u tic te tic sed identity in ways that reaffirm locals’ lived locals’ reaffirm that ways in sed identity actu ba ntegral to the hegemony of cap hegemony ntegral the to nstructing Exceptional New Orleans,” “Producing “Producing Orleans,” New Exceptional nstructing are i are “Co So while the Starbucks corporation has cultivated a percep cultivated has corporation So Starbucks while the anding, in structural ew Orleans,” and “What Is New Orleans Identity?”— Orleans New and “What Is ew Orleans,” 14 br ts discuss how “authenticity has overtaken quality prevail as the overtaken has “authenticity how discuss ts The grounds of this of The grounds tic N tic l group, resident of a par resident l group, 15 y is more predictive than regressive. than predictive y is more tan n l su acia the Substantive critiques of con critiques Substantive A recurring yet submerged theme of New Orleans history image Orleans is how of New yet submerged theme A recurring s of authentication to recent neoliberal incorporations of culture, the long long the of culture, neoliberal recent to incorporations s of authentication mparable levels of romanticized exoticism in other sites, such as Japan as such Japan sites, other in exoticism levels of romanticized mparable ailability.” lar cit lar lace, and so on— o v of demobilization, dislocation, and upward re and upward dislocation, of demobilization, concentrated in “Predictive City?,” the last section of the book. of the section last the first The City?,” “Predictive in concentrated sections— three edge of con cutting the suggest that authors the Orleans, a member authenticity—as and exceptionalism how They demonstrate ency. of r experience—of being New Orleanians—is one of the many ways this par this ways many of the one Orleanians—is New being experience—of u ces basis of socialas repre the for allure identity history of marketing place- history of marketing Au the city has long been at the forefront of national patterns of urban planning planning of urban patterns of national forefront city been the long at has the and place- of Disneyland, but that is precisely what lends it salability lends as is precisely what real. that of Disneyland, but feeds real back into of perception domain the in manufacturing hance the symbolic authenticity of cultural forms. Shannon Dawdy finds finds Dawdy Shannon forms. of cultural symbolic the hance authenticity c p or the French countryside, but notes “what stands out in the New Orleans Orleans New the in out stands “what notes but countryside, French the or locals.” by be to idiom came appropriated which this to extent case is the else employed in a tourism industry that inflates authenticity within a highlywithin authenticity inflates that industry a tourism in else employed paradigm, business global this marketing In economy. experience curated con longer history a much has of “place- meanings parcultural this of change. ing purchase criterion, just as quality just asand cost, overtook overtook cost criterion, purchase ing a public secret among New Orleanians is that the mundanities of daily life are mundanities the that is Orleanians New publicamong secret and authenticity; stage of exceptionalism theater the on necessarily acted out ., Jean Inc Ethnicity, all city In the players. is a stage locals merely and the are have identities where sites survey numerous Comaroff John and Comaroff the basis of value- becomeincreasingly commodified,into made “both shared and claimed basis as emotion, the of shared collectivity, corporate lifestyle, imaginings shared the for tion of authenticity through individual handcrafted ser handcrafted individual through of authenticity tion 8 The attachment to exceptionalism and authenticity is at the very heart of neoliberalism, positing difference rather than exploitation as the central in- justice of the contemporary world. This dislocation is the precise manner in which capitalism frees itself from opposition. This collection is part of an accelerative force toward defamiliarizing New Orleans, moving beyond the celebratory mode of documenting the city’s beloved traditions while leaving their status as markers of identity unexam-

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, ined. We bring to the fore a speculative body of literature that has critically examined the city’s identity and questioned how it has been constructed. Approached anew as a city on the forefront of national trends in urban development, New Orleans becomes a rich site for understanding the quintes sential concerns of American cities, with implications far beyond the bound aries of Orleans Parish. The remainder of this chapter provides a detailed genealogy of the two interrelated and essentializing processes at the heart of this volume, the historicizing of the city’s past as exceptional and the ground- ing of this exceptionalism in cultural formations deemed authentic.

The Grounds of Exceptionalism and Authenticity in the Colonial and Antebellum Eras In most accounts, the founding of New Orleans in 1718 signals the literal and figurative arrival of the city’s exceptional status, as a French and then Spanish colony contiguous with North American British colonies and, la ter, the United States. The city’s place as a backwater in the French and Spanish empires allowed for improvisation and experimentation in social relations, while vulnerability to disease and hardship necessitated interdependence and intimacy. In this liminal milieu, the boundaries of racialization and sexuality looked decidedly more permeable than they would come to be in the Anglo-Protestant South.18 In her study Building the Devil’s Empire, Shan- non Dawdy excavated how New Orleans gained a “special reputation in the early eighteenth century” and then traced how this status has “endured and become part of the lore of the city.”19 Because the seeds of exceptionalism and authenticity were retroactively planted in this foundational period, and because the chapters in this book deal only passingly with the colonial and antebellum eras, our formulation of New Orleans’s longue durée starts with an extended analysis of the city’s beginnings. From the standpoint of the present, social and political dynamics of race, religion, and sexuality became imbued with an exotic character in many accounts that contrast colonial Louisiana with Anglo-Protestant governance 9 Introduction

------25 ve ve sla Such Such 22 21 aking place aking lace connected wise, t wise, lar p lar r the Louisiana Pur Louisiana r the u l status, Catholic social Catholic l status, tic afte ca i mingue refugees upended lit Do cades cades ntury New Orleans was comparable comparable was Orleans ntury New ween poween 23 ce bet The promise of promise The opportunityeconomic wn slave society” master- the slave wn where 24 e black population of New Orleans proper. proper. Orleans of New e black population blo l, economic, and social relations. fre ca i lit ived cultural practices. However, looking “seaward “seaward looking However, practices. ived cultural In this dominant formulation, New Orleans appears appears Orleans New formulation, dominant this In der le cash crop led to the importation of vast numbers of numbers of vast importation led the to le cash crop e black population in the slave South, the burgeoning of the South, slave the in e black population 20 fre viab ntury South Carolina. Both sites experienced a “frontier a “frontier experienced sites Both Carolina. ntury South ce ople to serve the restructuring of plantations for sugarcane pro sugarcane for of plantations serve to ople restructuring the e Creole identity with in- with identity Creole e pe rac to the the to libre gens de couleur ical change. A enth largest country. city the in enth With Etienne Bore’s 1795 development of a technique to reliably crystal to of a technique development 1795 Bore’s Etienne With With a population just above 2,500 in 1763, early New Orleans was a was Orleans above 2,500 New early just a population With 1763, in Prior to Americanization, New Orleans was a par was Orleans New Americanization, to Prior tural swath of French and Spanish territories stretching from Granada stretching territories and Spanish of French swath tural l adually reinvented its po its adually reinvented v r ad relatively dense outpost of colonial elites, artisans, traders, and sailors,nes colonialof traders, outpost elites,artisans, dense relatively of indigo and tobacco plantations. hinterlands adjacent tled among and a period of rapid entered Orleans New cane, lize immature sugar from r wholly exceptional as an unruly environment that laid the foundation for the the for foundation laid the that environment as an unruly wholly exceptional concentrated most a mixed- is not USA the “where perspective an Atlantic from landward,” than rather sug Thompson Mark L. as historian object the of comparison,” automatically geographicmassive a within outpost one asappears but Orleans gests,New and cu practice in a largely Protestant early republic, and the unparalleled presence unparalleled presence republic,the and early a largely in Protestant practice of African- of a variety to and comparable with other port cities in a sprawling intercoastal region. intercoastal a sprawling port in cities other with and comparable to enslaved enslaved dichotomy governed alldichotomy social relations. Saint- of influx an same time, the At duction. and adding population overall the doubling city, demographics of the the 3,102 inhab 17,242 to risen had Orleans 1803, New of 8,056 in a population From the it making 1810, in US decennialthe census in appearance first its in itants se through Florida and Mexico to California, and north to Canada. California, to to and north and Mexico Florida through in the United States. United the in , and ongo mestizaje creolization, of cultural context an Atlantic Within and local the practices, metropole of the between laws negotiation the ing continued to lure “carpetbaggers” south for de for south “carpetbaggers” lure to continued Orleans New city, a colonial from an antebellum to transitioning In chase. g to seventeenth- to a small city, with most interactions, economic and other interactions, most with city, a small face to face, rendered the law of the metropole secondary metropole exigencies of the the to law the face face, to rendered Race, study , her Orleans Sex,of daily life. In New in Early and Social Order argues eighteenth- Spear that Jennifer phase,” when slaves could be found in most skilled most sectors of a mixed could in econ be found slaves when phase,” omy, before settling into a “full- into settling before omy, 10 only aspect of the city that stood out was how exceptional this frontier slave society appeared when “refracted by an Anglo-American lens.”26 It was, of course, the emplacement of a Franco-Latin city within an Anglo-Protestant nation that juridically distinguished its development from Veracruz, Port- au-Prince, and other Atlantic hubs. Once New Orleans was accommodated into the North American context, its status as a port city further marked it as other in comparison to the frontier slave societies and well-established plan-

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, tation regimes that characterized the mid-Atlantic and Deep South. However, emphasizing the legal and cultural structure of the plantation misses the central role that New Orleans and other port cities played in the development of the nation at large. A primary motive for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 was control of the port, a strategic nodal point that vastly increased connections between Atlantic wo rld trade networks and internal frontier economies. The once liminal was now rendered integral to nation building, reorienting US economics and politics to include new global mar- kets, while reaping the fruits of one of the most fertile riverine valleys of the world. Traders expanded production along routes developed over centuries by Native Americans, with dependence on indigenous populations ultimately leading to warfare, enslavement, genocide, and deterritorialization, as happened throughout the Americas.27 Outside the city limits, the lives of the indigenous and the enslaved were further entwined by marronage, intermar- riage, and collaboration in uprisings. These activities fueled New Orleans’s long-standing reputation as a cultural island, literally surrounded by swamp- land, but again, the delineation between urban centers and liminal frontier zones was common to many Atlantic regions. As the sources of exceptionalism strengthened in this transitional antebellum era, the first glimmerings of some notion of authenticity or, at least, oppositionality to Yankee modernity began to be seen. Speculative hordes were “swarming in from the northern states,” as the last French governor of Louisi- ana put it, “each one turn[ing] over in his mind a little plan of speculation.”28 It was the accounts of cultural difference by travelers and shocked migr ants on the make that supplied the historical record with abundant evidence of New Orleans’s otherness. A recurring trope was the high concentration and visibility of black New Orleanians: enslaved and free; African, African American, and Creole. In published travelogues, essays, and diaries, events that were common throughout the Atlantic world—ring shout dances, slaves attending the opera, free people of color operating businesses, mixed-race women consorting with European men—were recontextualized as spectacles of difference within a new national context. Observers shared a sense of 11 Introduction - - - - - - - - e man man these these lenc hu men and men these ar these wo re not uncom re However, over over However, we nned nned 30 .” ski ca i ntury saw an increase an increase ntury saw elations as voluntary or or as voluntary elations men and black men— and black men ce re widespread and gener widespread re wo we ers and supports “the image “the and supports ers Emily Clark similarly finds finds similarly Clark Emily these r these enth enth 29 te driv men men onsenting relationships between relationships onsenting ntury Amer wo al and cultural conflicts conflicts betweenthe al and cultural ce ntury.” leg ce those c those etween white nt framing of framing nt ropean ropean Thisracial imaginary a in fancy trade drove te ntruy interracial sex, and especially interracial its ntruy Eu 31 re of toleration, and perhaps even at times ac times at even and perhaps of toleration, re ce sis wards racially exogamous relationships, racially exogamouswards relationships, su lly and structurally coercive aspects of coercive lly and structurally to ntury. Spear argues it was through this interface arguesinterface Spear this through it was ntury. those b those ople. ce ica pe bscures the economic the bscures e uding uding nom fre tic o tic n incl the men as promiscuous,” which as Joy James indicates “was manu “was indicates James which as Joy as promiscuous,” men rican men and non- men rican re increasingly quarantined in New Orleans, as national narratives narratives as national Orleans, New in quarantined increasingly re wo e, well into the nineteenth nineteenth the e, well into we agined confinement to a single locale functioned to absolve the na the to a single agined locale absolve to functioned confinement men involved. The per involved. men en. The city’s reputation for sexual license, which would provide fod whichwouldprovide license, sexual for reputation en. The city’s Ame im e inflicted by white men.” by e inflicted men whose racial ancestry would have earned them the color term qua color term the earned them racial whose ancestrymen would have wo tanc t derived from a brutal history of enslavement, enforced prostitution, and prostitution, enforced history a brutal from of enslavement, t derived The romanticization of interracial sex and specifically and sex plaçage interracial worked of has romanticization The Much of New Orleans’s reputation for transgression stems from a long- from stems transgression for reputation Orleans’s of New Much ntinued to receive a mea to ntinued p anding tension around the intersection of race and sex, of race specifically intersection a fixa the around tension anding ar wo angements, by focusing instead on the illicit allure and legendary and illicit allure the on instead beauty focusing of by angements, elationships— he culturally au culturally of black results, results, portrayed the city as an exotic other to a normative American experience. experience. American normative a to other city the portrayed as exotic an The the course of the nineteenth- of the course the “ liveddroon everywhere nineteenth- in sexual slaves, the establishment and expansion of quadroon balls include of quadroon to and expansion establishment the slaves, sexual of light- prostitution and the of outsiders, invitation the childr in than more was marketers, tourism Orleans of New generations for der p concubinage fueled by the particularities of elite white leisure, patriarchy, patriarchy, concubinage leisure, elite of white fueled particularities the by and racialized tourism. sexual lenc t and rape, while rendering invisible invisible while rendering and rape, racially exogenous eco the obscure to r racialized vio from [and] males, sexual white by factured deflectedattention in the hostility directed the in st between which relationships in a site “as city reputation the earned its that Euro- bewilderment that such a variegated racial structure existed on American American existed on a variegated racial such structure that bewilderment Americanness. and NewOrleansness between soil, fissure and opened a key beginning with intermixture, on tion began who arriving interlopers regimes Yankee and Spanish and the French nineteenth early the in relationships interracial that she notes But ally accepted.” eigh the US: the “Although elsewhere mon tion of both moral depravity and collective complicity vio moral of both depravity sexual in tion r co ce 12 Contextualizing Antebellum New Orleans What has solidified into a narrative of relative laxity around the policing of racial boundaries ignores a political history that is at once far more struc- tured and contested. As Joseph Roach argued, the image of New Orleans as a ludic space of vice masks how “transgression [is] carefully channeled into regulated conduits of time and space,” such as Congo Square dances, Mardi

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, Gras masquerades, and quadroon balls that remain “easily within the laws’ reach.”32 Racial policing was written into the Code Noir and was central to Governor Vaudreuil’s 1751 police regulations, as well as the brutal response to the German Coast slave uprising of 1811 and the manhunt for escaped slave Bras-Coupé in the 1830s, which the nascent police department used to jus- tify its bureaucratic growth.33 While claims to exceptionalism and cultural authenticity have largely presented the city’s racialization in terms of toler- ance and accommodation associated with a large population of relatively well-offfre e people of color, a counternarrative that encompasses a more diverse group of black New Orleanians has attended to the lived experience of racial domination and surveillance. From 1808 to 1865, New Orleans was the site of the largest slave market in the US, with approximately one million pe ople passing through its auction blocks from the upper South to the burgeoning cotton kingdom. The magnitude and significance of this second Middle Passage was “not only about Louisiana,” argues Walter Johnson, but “the making of the antebellum South.”34 At the state level, a series of laws—beginning in 1807 with “An Act to Regulate the Conditions and Forms of the Emancipation of Slaves” and regularly recurring until the “Act to Prohibit the Emancipation of Slaves” in 1857—would close loopholes to manumission and coartación. The legislative and juridical enclosure of blacks brought Louisiana, and New Orleans with it, firmly into the legal and social frameworks of the plantation South.35 This history of slave regimes, racial policing, and leg al restriction not only contra- dicts celebratory portrayals of New Orleans as a site of transgression but also loosens the grip on a culture of authenticity that has made the city appear wholly exceptional. In the decades preceding the Civil War, a cotton boom gripping the lower South made New Orleans a critical point of connection between urban centers of global capitalism and their peripheral hinterlands.36 While northern cities set about consolidating juridically fre e labor, New Orleans’s deepening investment in slave labor led to perhaps the city’s least-recognized historical uniqueness. At the same time, New Orleans, unlike any other city in the 13 Introduction - - - - istories istories ness and ness In other other In 40 37 lar h lar re “created a “created re nfrastructure nfrastructure tu a ist i ist er l else a busi ta i re a testament to both both to a testament re ing ing we th e laborers. By the time of the the of time the By laborers. e fre re buttressed by popu by buttressed re ter periods, inviting comparisons comparisons inviting periods, ter il War authors, including George including authors, War il la o define itself and its values and its against itself o define we Civ ca t ca i 39 The expansiveness of New Orleans’s cap NewOrleans’s of The expansiveness 38 nter to prevailing associations with antimodernism and cultural and cultural antimodernism with associations prevailing to nter cou It was a loosea was aggregate It post– of During this boom time New Orleans was commonly viewed as excep commonly was less Orleans New boom this time During leans. The alchemic reaction of race and sex swelled further in the publicthe in race and sex swelled of reaction The leans. further alchemic e character; but New Orleans is beyond every Orleans New but e character; r words, the social construction of New Orleans as a perpetual colonial Orleans space of New social the construction words, Amer not only allowed mainstream associated practices fueled itself very the transgressive narrative the an other, coloniality. with and positioned who old, quaint, and Lafcadio Hearn, Cable Washington moral to committed charming against relentlessly Orleans a country New tional than it would come to be it would come to seen in than tional circular feedback phenomenon,” writes Clark, “that fed the invention and fed invention the “that Clark, writes feedback circular phenomenon,” designed Orleans satisfy to market New the in of activities proliferation accounts.” earliest the by aroused quadroons with encounters for trading city.” trading Romanticizing Orleans New of Reconstruc aftermath and its War Civil the to up leading events the was It New of a romanticized invention propelled the that and Redemption tion O quadroon the of tropes literary The elaborate and commercial imagination. antebel in had debuted tragic the fictionalized figuremulatto of and the and 1840s the of fiction antislavery lum singled city the taboo. This as of sexual out a space lit that lik from travelers to Boston, New York, Charleston, and Savannah and, as suited and Savannah Charleston, York, New Boston, to travelers from wrote, 1853 in visitor One London and Paris. to economica major center, bald a more and business- the cityhave of and portions older French “The future Confederacy, developed large a wage of white Confederacy, including class laborers, future who Irish thousand The six immigrants. and Irish of German huge swaths 1830s the in perished digging Canal Basin New the nature complicated and the Deep South the within uniqueness city’s the that world the one localethe in perhaps from derived and benefits of costs or couldlarge feasibly slave of marshal forces secondthe largest than larger times four city itself the find would War, Civil na second income the in capita a per with South, treasonous locale the in Confederacy. the of in only city speaking literally the worth tion, runs runs city the of asantiquated marketability the from which derive preservation, retrogressive. even or 14 and material progress. Whether fashioning poetic histories that glorified the city’s Creole distinctiveness or exoticizing the African-derived cultural practices sustained unde r colonial rule, local writers cultivated a literary landscape that continues to shape the city’s legibility.41 To extrapolate from Frederick Starr’s collection of Lafcadio Hearn’s New Orleans writings, authors did not merely reflect perceptions of New Orleans as exceptional, they invented this very idea. Take Hearn’s description in 1879 of the deep affective divide be-

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, tween Creole Downtown and Anglo Uptown, where sat, in old-fashioned chairs, good old-fashioned people who spoke the tongue of other times, and observed many quaint and knightly cour- tesies forgotten in this material era. Without, roared the Iron Age . . . it was the year 1878 . . . and yet some people wonder that some other people never care to cross Canal [Street].42 In Hearn’s telling, the predominantly Creole neighborhoods below Canal Street had managed to ward off the impulsesto ward capitalist modernity— industrialization, rationality, and above all else inauthenticity—while Yankee values reigned supreme in the more Anglo neighborhoods Uptown (see chapter 3, this volume). Hearn’s contemporaries Charles Gayarré and Grace King also brought increased recognition to local folkways, as did successors like Lyle Saxon and Robert Tallant, exoticizing and feminizing the Creole Belle on the banks of the Mighty Mississippi.43 Writers tended to present the city’s economic infrastructure as itself representative of a cultural way of life that played out as an ideological struggle between Creole traditionalists and American progressives. “Through these artistic representations,” writes Dawdy, “New Orleans became a foil for the rest of the nation, an imaginary island of colonial dissipation within a country relentlessly committed to moral and material progress.”44 In contemporary New Orleans, the patina aesthetic of faded buildings and tarnished souvenirs perpetuates the im- pression of “the city that care forgot“ while simultaneously providing the grounds for selling nostalgia in the form of French antiques, Mardi Gras memorabilia, and other uncanny commodities. The contested figure of the Creole runs throughout diverse and sometimes competing sets of claims to New Orleans exceptionalism, and definitions of Creole identity have shifted across the colonial, antebellum, and postbellum eras.45 After the Civil War, for instance, Gayarré and his cohort of European descendants attempted to define a white vision of Creole, declaring, “It has become high time to demonstrate that the Creoles of Louisiana . . . have not, because of the name they bear, a particle of African blood in their veins.”46 15 Introduction

- - - - 48 re re za rose rose we ni those those ga At the the At p rule. 47 e French- ly train car, car, train ly l satire, this this l satire, dro rac ca on i lit n who formed the the formed n who lledone- rs, that came to define define to came rs, that ca o defeating Reconstruc o defeating otestants as a way of consol of asway a otestants othe these me these Pr eaking white males who who males white eaking cade t cade sp ared directives is the reor is the ared directives Despite their antinomies, white Creole Creole white antinomies, their Despite Wrapping Latin Catholic tradition in an in tradition Catholic Latin Wrapping re and often scathing po scathing and often re ed Louisiana Constitutional Convention, Convention, ed Constitutional Louisiana ntury. It was was It ntury. these sh these 50 51 tu ce The cultural conflict that spawned so much so spawned that conflict The cultural a 49 back er ple of l challenges and violent treason. In 1866 they 1866 In treason. l challenges and violent ntury, Homer Plessy, the son of mixed- son the Plessy, Homer ntury, eaking Creoles and founded what became known became known what founded and Creoles eaking ish lit ca ce sp i l orderings. gl lit ca i ill evoked by many tour guidestour and historians. many ill by evoked ble exam st i lit y Cable, Rodolpheand y Cable, Desdunes, ne Mardi Gras krewes of Comus, Momus, Rex, and Proteus Rex, and Proteus Momus, of Comus, Gras krewes ne Mardi li r Jim Crow, many Creoles of color sought to retain a circumscribed a circumscribed color of sought retain to Creoles many Crow, r Jim legal and po ized b lar ackness and whiteness, and how the city itself came to adhere to to adhere city to came the itself and how and whiteness, ackness l u Unde n of Mardi Gras by Protestant, English- Protestant, Gras by n of Mardi eaking Haitian émigrés, was arrested for boarding a whites- a boarding for émigrés, arrested was Haitian eaking orms. o power over French- over o power as the old- as the tio t War. Civil the of time the around and New Orleans became the nation’s testing ground for the Supreme Court Court Supreme the for ground testing became nation’s the Orleans and New decision legalizing racial segregation based so- the on sp disagreement over the nature of Creole distinctiveness looks in practice like like looks practice in distinctiveness of Creole nature the disagreement over of ra implementation of an obligatory the about over a papering consensus cial, and po class, central bloc that would dedicate the next de next would dedicate the bloc that central ancestral canon of En canon ancestral class, ethnicity, race, of hierarchies reinforce eliteswould of constellation a religion, over and gender for tion via via tion n a few white) than (and more of black hundreds on part attack of the a central Republican- of the supporters Authenticating Mardi Gras Mardi Authenticating vis A particularly idating and expanding power. and expanding idating cultural identity, but legally and practically their status was bound to that of that to bound was legally but status their and practically identity, cultural Creoles Catholic color white line, side of the other the On Americans. African Anglo- with recognizeto came interests common But it was an oppositional stance to the racial purity of the Creole category, category, Creole of the racial purity the to stance an oppositional it was But pop jazz gumbo, and plaçage of as city a Orleans and intermixture—of of New balls— quadroon has become foundational for claims to the city’s Creole Creole city’s the to claims for become has foundational Ferguson v. Plessy battle the was Orleans New discussed is how is less What distinctiveness. categories hardened into racial structures national remapping for ground of b and Anglo elites colluded in their essential agreement on white supremacy supremacy white on agreement and Anglo essential elites colluded their in as built the had Orleans New role expansive of the control and maintaining South. city cotton the for merchant close of the nineteenth nineteenth close of the 16 killing more than fifty and injuring hundreds.52 The Redeemers would go on to provide the penultimate salvo to defeating Reconstruction in Louisiana in their attempted overthrow of the state government and municipal police at the Battle of Liberty Place in 1874. Throughout the imposition of Jim Crow over the ensuing two and a half decades—culminating in the disen- franchising Constitution of 1898 and continuing well after—this ruling class would help enshrine Lost Cause myths in the city’s cultural consciousness.53

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, New Orleans was not alone in this effort, as throughout the South there emerged a conscious project of tethering a reimagined and romanticized white identity to the paramilitary arms of the southern Democracy, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia. Beyond what was clearly a cross-fertilization of membership, the direct link between white ter- ror organizations and the old-line krewes is traceable in their regalia (robes, hoods, and masks) and the inordinately ritualistic and secretive practices of their meetings, processionals, and balls.54 For more than six decades between Redemption and the legislative vic- tories of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, white elites continued their dominance over political and social interests. This period witnessed a brutal segregation calcifying as common practice within the city. Events like the citywide antiblack race riots in the aftermath of Robert Charles’s shooting of police officers in 1900 demonstrate that New Orleans was utterly typical of the profound violence that greeted African Americans across the South as Jim Crow came to power.55 A history of interracial labor radicalism—including the 1907 General Levee Strike and the 1929 Streetcar Strike—st and as re- markable moments within an otherwise unbroken history of disenfranchise- ment and segregation that exacted a brutal toll on black New Orleanians.56 While the size of the city and its independent black economic base allowed a certain degree of daily anonymity and removal from the harshest of Jim Crow violence found in rural areas, the difference was always one of degree on a spectrum of lived and feared brutality. The political ring that ran the city for much of these decades—the Regular Democratic Organization, or Old Regulars—combined a violent enforcement of white supremacy with the patronage of an open shop system that directed public spending to ward private gain. Of course, once a year many Old Regulars removed their suits and ties and donned the costumes of Comus and Rex, suggesting that cultural transgression could easily be the flip side of the coin of white supremacy and antidemocratic rule. As a festival celebration of transgression, Mardi Gras came to represent the pinnacle of exceptionality and cultural authenticity of New Orleans. 17 Introduction

- - - - - - n n 58 ss ss to to ne gle li cla ights sew re Club Club re these these su civil r civil ived festival ived festival der aditional power tr otestant supremacy supremacy otestant l machinations over over l machinations While the authentic While the Pr ca i 59 pression of Carnival.” pression lit tic ex tic n the ne krewes stopped parading rather rather stopped parading ne krewes li cluded from the then- the cluded from ter, official Mardi Gras opened up to in Gras to Mardi up opened official ter, arades, and cultural traditions. Middle- traditions. cultural and arades, la tradition of transgression, then, are stratified stratified are then, transgression, of tradition e: tic tic ties, p ties, those ex those ntury n tanc ce the sis er power that have sedimented over time. What began What time. over sedimented have that power er wn neighborhoodswn hand- elaborate in dressed to gainst Jim Crow formed the Prince Hall Masons (1863), (1863), Masons Hall Prince the formed Crow gainst Jim a- ss Creoles and African Americans who led the ongoing led ongoing who the Americans African and Creoles ss gle ov he meaning of that authenticity are moving targets. As Kevin targets. As Kevin moving are authenticity that of he meaning Later, in the 1960s, ethnic whites excluded from the old- the from excluded whites ethnic 1960s, the in Later, cla

gle a 57 pper- tic and t tic r own carnival socie carnival r own r the Civil War. A War. Civil r the chanalia, the ongoing and dynamic reinvention of Mardi Gras serves of Mardi reinvention chanalia, ongoing and dynamic the n In the same period of heightenedperiod of same segregation the between Reconstruc In authentic by some segments of the local population has, over time, be time, over has, local of the population segments some by authentic ac hei o legitimate selective and idealized perceptions of the city of the asim and idealized and fixed selective o legitimate perceptions n and u legal strug Zulu Social and the and Plea Aid (1894), Club Original Illinois come redefinedrecognized and au an as and po social changing for identities as a prism several centuries. fostered Orleanians New , black of Education Board v. and Brown tion t Working- Gras day. Rex before parades Mardi on which still (1916), marching Gras Indians, of Mardi “tribes” formed Americans African back- through symbolic in Woods Clyde combat. another one and confronting suits neighborhoodand as networks such social connects institutions a racial politics of re the always has authenticity Orleans, case of New the argues, Gotham “In Fox created again being and category hybrid is constantly been and a fluid that strug groups and other againauthorities, cultural as social movements, Today the King of Rex continues his symbolic reign of Rex asa continues King for honorary the mayor Today post– Zulu the of since King the rule with sharing ostensibly day, However, volume). this 14, and (see chapters 4 governance of interracial era and authenticity exceptionalism locus where place as its central a despite as au festival signature Orleans’s of New construction the come together, t mutable.” layers of strug layers Embeddedau this in African- and rituals as an affinityLenten Catholic between of Anglo- as a display reappropriated was traditions afte clude krewes founded by by founded krewes clude ity of the tradition rests upon its perceived timelessness as a premodern asa premodern timelessness perceived its upon rests ity tradition of the b krewes would form their own “super krewes” such as Bacchus and Endy as such Bacchus krewes” “super own their form would krewes initially was viewed as that form cultural “a how mion, demonstrating i bloc, and by the 1990s several old- bloc, 1990s the and by ordinance. an antidiscrimination with comply than 18 The neighborhood and ward complex of large extended families, social aid and pleasure clubs, churches, healers, businesses, schools, other organizations and clubs, brass bands, musicians, artisans, workers, labor leaders, Mardi Gras Indians and second lines provided an endless supply of community-centered leadership, development initiatives, and institutionalized planning.60 Jazz came to be recognized as the most celebrated cultural formation to emerge from these multifaceted and complex interactions, ultimately rede- Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, fining what constituted the locally authentic in explicitly racial terms. But the development of jazz also demonstrates how musical formation and innovation were linked to other constituencies and practices in these complex spaces, indicating the expansiveness of black cultural practice and the multi- plicity of blackness as a category that resisted containment within the reduc- tive strictures of racial binarism established by Plessy v. Ferguson.

Jazz and the Racialization of Cultural Authenticity In the antebellum period, the city’s musical identity was defined by the sheer abundance of musical offerings, representing the ethnic heterogeneity of its inhabitants, including ballroom dance and French opera, marching bands and slave dances, street criers and organ grinders.61 Since the early twentieth century, there has developed a broad consensus that New Orleans mu sic encompasses jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, brass band, and related styles that are bound together through an association not only with place but also with race. Since emancipation, changing interpretations of New Orleans culture have been linked to differing identifications with blackness, which might refer to slaves at Congo Square, mixed-race Creoles, urban migr ants from rural plantations, and other social identities that bear out the claim that New Orleans is “the most African city in the Unites States.”62 In Melville Herskovits’s paradigmatic model of acculturation, which identified African cultural retentions and calculated their variability across the New World, the United States was proposed as the nation with the highest rate of assimilation to Euro-American norms. But New Orleans was an exception where “those aspects of the African tradition peculiar to this spe- cialized region have reached their greatest development.”63 Starting in the 1930s, folklorists such as Zora Neale Hurston and Alan Lomax came to New Orleans in search of African residues that they and othe rs found in funer- als with music, voodoo and hoodoo rites, Mardi Gras Indian rituals, and more.64 An urban counterpart to the rural sea islands of Georgia and South 19 Introduction ------a re re er we otestant otestant Without Without sic, lit Pr 65 mu 66 raditions incubated incubated raditions ived dances of the en ived of the dances iented vision in keep in vision iented or der those t those l category. sic strictly in terms of black terms in sic strictly ca i mu lit e famously quipped, “I’m not sure, but but quipped,e famously not sure, “I’m Do counts, New Orleans jazz continues to be invoked in in be to invoked jazz continues Orleans New counts, lar ac lar sic comes from New Orleans,” he captured the status of his status the he captured Orleans,” New from sic comes mu efully inaccurate. A more complexly entwined local entwined complexly history A more been has efully inaccurate. o In relation to jazz, to linkage this relation forged dialectic which in In an either/or leans asleans a black city. ythm and blues singer Ernie K- Ernie singer and blues ythm re, food, and other cultural forms, now as a tool for the emerging mass mass as emerging now a tool the for forms, food, cultural re, and other r h questioning the primacy of black musical practices, Raeburn underscores underscores Raeburn practices, of black musical primacy the questioning Latin heterogeneity tracing, by and cosmopolitanism instance, for city’s the jazz as a black art In form. into incorporated repertoires and Creole rhythms which contests capaciousness, ingenuity its of jazz is in the formulation, this prin racethe as of defining imperative American and broader Crow Jim the tu of Association NewOrleans the by driven efforts, Earlier market. tourism business- focused a progressive, had on Commerce, Marketing Exceptionalism and Authenticity in the Tourist City and Exceptionalism AuthenticityMarketing in the Tourist Orleans began New in city leaders officialsbusiness and 1930s, the in Starting through generated romance and exploit the upon expand to terms of vernacularism, traditionality, and cultural memory in ways that do that memory and cultural ways in traditionality, of vernacularism, terms multi the accommodate or ingenuity of black invention the not interrogate inforcing the implicit bond between New Orleans as a musical city and New city as musical a New and bond Orleans between implicit the New inforcing O Afro- of forms musical the through up Congo in Square slaved jazz identifying an “incipient scholars and other Bruce Raeburn by excavated performers Sicilian, and Irish Jewish, Creole, of black American, community” jazz.of collaborating,always if not interacting, formation the in po and plicity as a cultural both of blackness systems linkages. port on railway and emphasis the Transport with ing hometown as a source of cultural origination and innovation while also re and innovation origination of cultural as a source hometown the cast have and musicians historians many African- the from maintained practices, vernacular Carolina, New Orleans became a primary site for locating musical and reli and musical became locating for a primary Orleans site New Carolina, past. But African an from gious derived practices forma distinct developed Orleans into of New zone contact urban the in When globally. circulated that and Americanness blackness of modern tions r allI think served that of slavery. as a refuge afterlife the and blues aesthetics in worship mu of white invention jazz the was that respond to Revisionists attempting largely and rightfully racist have beensicians dismissed as virulently both and w cipal arbiter of social difference. Nevertheless, in the bulkthe dis of scholarly in Nevertheless, cipal of social arbiter difference. and popu course 20 central to the association’s other major project of creating the city’s first master zoning plan and would eventually align with efforts to fund the second stage of the Centroport project in the new Industrial Canal. At this initial stage, tourism offered diversification to an economy based primarily in shipping while marketing the benefits of that economy. The economic collapse of the Great Depression, a gradual retraction of shipping and manufacturing, and postintegration white flight all contributed to a massive disinvestment

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, in the urban core. In the wake, tourism began assuming more and more significance in the city’s overall economic infrastructure. This shift in political economy gave rise to the city’s branding as a destination for authentic cultural pursuits.67 The historical materials for this refashioningwe re drawn from myriad sources, including the highly subjective historical accounts of Cable, Hearn, Gayarré, and others in the post–Civil War period; popular histories drawn from these accounts, like Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter; and folkloric studies by authors employed by the Works Progress Administration, such as Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant’s Gumbo Ya-Ya.68 Lynnell Thomas has shown how popular histories have been sha ped by contemporary tourism marketing as promoters’ selective mythologizing of the past has reinforced notions of be- nign racial exceptionalism: [An] emphasis on selected features of these eras—such as European cultural influences, the relative freedom of New Orleans’s black population, the city’s laissez-faire attitudes regarding race, the social sanctioning of interracial unions, and a large population of fre e blacks—lent itself to the construction of New Orleans as benefitting from the most liberal and refined elements of southern culture while avoiding its most brutal, in- humane, and inegalitarian features. As a result, New Orleans was often portrayed by tourism promoters, artists, and even historians as a racially exceptional city that was not sullied by the racial tension and conflict affecting other southern cities.69 Initially, the racial reconfigurations of white supremacy that followed the defeat of Reconstruction we re reified in deracinated discourse, but marketing strategies became more explicit about the racialized and creolized dimensions of culture over the second half of the twentieth ce ntury. City boosters have focused particularly on what they call the holy trinity—foo d, mu sic, and architecture—each deriving from an Afro-Creole cultural matrix. Starting midcentury, institutions such as Preservation Hall, the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Historic Voodoo Museum began exhibiting black cultural 21 Introduction ------sed cul ba e- At the same same the At 72 ss tourism. ss cla and rac Here we witness not witness we Here

y swamp drainagey swamp and 71 e industry jobse industry concen estaurants, and entertain and estaurants, The incorporation of the of incorporation The vic 70 ble b si l fiefdom in Plaquemines and and Plaquemines in l fiefdom ated commerce. ated ca i rel hotels, r hotels, ss black residents, meanwhile, con meanwhile, black residents, ss lit cla ged wa or to the suburbs occurring throughout the the throughout occurring suburbs the to or en recognitionen of place- ntury. The decline of manufacturing employ The declinemanufacturing of ntury. lab t and decidedly unexceptional parts of a broader parts of a broader t and decidedly unexceptional ce driv tan tegration riots of 1960 and ongoing fights against of 1960 riots tegration in ti- and as impor the an the t Greater New Orleans Black Tourism Network into the official the into Network Tourism Black Orleans New t Greater st ttles fought in and around New Orleans at the height of the civil civil height the of the at Orleans New around and fought in ttles den ba n ination for the consumption of black culture gave New Orleans a com Orleans gave New of black culture consumption the for ination gles— t pe tural authenticity alongside Atlanta and other Southern cities that posi that cities Southern and other alongside Atlanta authenticity tural The ond half of the twentieth twentieth the of half ond l mmunity of Pontchartrain Park (see chapter 9, this volume). this (see chapter 9, Park of Pontchartrain mmunity ntainers, drastically reduced drastically shipping-ntainers, gravated by white flight to suburban Jefferson, St. Bernard, and St. Tammany St. Tammany and St. Bernard, Jefferson, flight white suburban by to gravated de c mply an emerging consensus of New Orleans as the most African city in the city the in African most as the Orleans New of consensus emerging an mply o o g time, the city witnessed a massive growth in ser in growth a massive city the witnessed time, ment destinations catering to tourists. The erosion of the city’s tax wasbase the city’s of erosion The tourists. to catering destinations ment a po supremacist white Leander Perez’s St. Bernard parishes being the most famous among countless more quotidian quotidian more countless among famous most the being parishes St. Bernard strug parishes in the wake of the civil rights movement, school desegregation movement, rights civil of the wake the in parishes made pos development efforts,real and estate sumption paralleled a nationwide shift away from urban industrialism in the in industrialism urban from away shift paralleled a nationwide sumption se of outmigration the and ment port in employment. locally reduction exacerbated was a drastic by nation tech implementing in and delays modernization choices structural in Poor shipping of standardized adoption the particularly nological innovations, c technology. Middle- flood abatement gated East the and Orleans as neighborhood such New in enclaves centrated c A Model Postindustrial City Postindustrial A Model con touristic for Orleansa destination as New of branding intensified The traditions primarily for white consumption. Inclusion of a jazz of band,a Inclusion consumption. white for primarily traditions become has compul tribe virtually Gras Indian a Mardi or gumbo vendor, Ex World Louisiana 1984 the at appearance sory their but local at festivals, time. the at progressive considered was position of racial implications the also reordered sites. It other over advantage petitive cu emerging black middle- from profit to themselves tioned ture as a source of both cultural and monetary city cultural the of both Rebranding as capital. as a source ture a des United States but a market- but States United si tourism bureau in 1990 indicated a revised strategy to acknowledge “cultural a revised indicated strategy acknowledge to 1990 “cultural in bureau tourism equity.” tourism diversity and heritage city’s [as] the in trated in nonunion and thus low- and thus nonunion in trated rights era— rights 22 Southern whole.73 By the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the elections of Moon Landrieu and then Dutch Morial as mayor, New Orleans joined many other cities in developing an interracial political and professional-managerial class. It was this incorporation of the liberal imperatives of the Civil Rights Act within the city’s Democratic machine that both marked the end of de jure segregation and legitimated the progrowth, anti-redistributive political economic imperatives that continue to characterize municipal governance.74

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, Starting in the middle of the 1970s, New Orleans took advantage of Com- munity Development Block Grants and Urban Development Action Grants available for the redevelopment of low-income neighborhoods. As in many other American cities, leaders used the funds primarily to develop downtown economic and entertainment districts and leverage private-sector investment.75 As Megan French-Marcelin argues in this volume (chapter 11), the imperatives of urban competition, white flight, and inner-city blight led city leaders—black and white alike—to privatize city planning and cater to the whims of developers for the purpose of luring a tax base back to the city. Ironically, in a New Orleans where architectural distinction was a key facet of the tourism economy, this strategy replicated the modernism and aesthetic blandness of revitalization schemes common to many American cities during the period, most visibly with the Poydras Street high-rises in the Central Business District (cbd). By the last decades of the twentieth century, New Orleans was exemplary of the postindustrial neoliberal city in terms of urban planning, suburbanization, economic restructuring, housing privatization, and racialized poverty and blight.

Exceptionalism and Authenticity in Contemporary New Orleans The upwardly redistributive, federally bankrolled policies and programs begun in the 1970s were a harbinger for a feeding frenzy of privatization and investment opportunity in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with many of the same actors simply dusting off plans that had been shelved in the Reagan and Clinton eras. In an opportunistic acceleration of the hope vi program of poverty deconcentration, marginally damaged public housing was de- molished, and the contracts for rebuilding, maintenance, and management were given to developers such as McCormack Baron Salazar, bankrolled by the investment firm Goldman Sachs.76 These trendswe re most brazenly illustrated by President George W. Bush’s suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act in September 2005 that all but guaranteed that rebuilding would be done 23 Introduction - ------tyle rina rina s New - 78 Kat re partre of a chari we aginedleft and both by im ate but as a prime laboratory as for a prime but ate st istinctions of causality mask the real of causality the mask istinctions he French Quarter witnessed rent inten rent witnessed Quarter he French 77 s that is squarely within it. If, as contribu it. If, within is squarely s that ofit philanthropic companies. The scope of ofit philanthropic these d these ces pr nue and t nue mporary New Orleans as a modelneoliberal mporary Orleans New city in te iented strategies of recovery and redevelopment,” even if even of recovery strategies and redevelopment,” iented e as a representative example. The parts of the The neighborhoodparts of example. e as a representative or her Touted as the first black neighborhood in the United States, the area the area UnitedStates, neighborhoodblack first asthe the in Touted proaching con proaching 79 p hat “policymakers and government officials responded with strikingly strikingly officials responded with and government “policymakers hat ined the area of many residents and resources (see chapter 5, and resources residents of many vol area this ined the Since 2005, New Orleans has more than ever revealed ever not as a cul itself than more has Orleans New 2005, Since A a ivatized alternative to a social state increasingly increasingly a social to state alternative ivatized r tural oddity peripherynation- tural the of the at between Ave Claiborne similar, market- similar, and global of social a national vanguard abandon represents Orleans New and insecurity. ment housing,of speculation terms specifically the realurban estate global of crisis and exceptionalism of residues the historical find we intensification, and rent neighborhood,Tremé or the Sixth The ways. complex in play at authenticity stands Ward, suburbaniza following 1970s, the to back dating speculation and sification that schemes and redevelopment and displacement blighttion, remediation, dr ume). ity t looked Yorkers New of quotidian lives the everyday on effects of 9/11 the NewOrleanians. on effectsof Katrina corresponding the like nothing right as inefficient and backward. right as inefficient anyone example, comparative a For neoliberal centralized experimentation. as sociologists and Miriam Gotham Kevin September 11, to Katrina relating the “in type begin differences acknowledging must vast by have, Greenberg of intensity and the and hurricane) strike triggerof disaster (i.e., a terrorist Yet scale of destruction.” the at below living wages. As Vincanne Adams discusses in this volume (chap volume this in discusses wages. Adams below living at As Vincanne ter 13), a wpa assisted was not by housing of private rebuilding the of whom many of volunteers, thousands by program but for- by driven economy table suc the represented efforts rebuilding the deployed in philanthrocapitalism of light” points asa thousand “a for plan initial Bush’s of George H. W. cess p cation pioneers drawn by the area’s historic housing stock and proximity to to and proximity stock housing historic area’s the by pioneers drawn cation became increasingly attractive to preservationists, artists, and other gentrifi and other artists, preservationists, to became attractive increasingly York City and New Orleans resist comparison in many other ways, yet they ways, other many in comparison resist Orleans City and New York business the outside which an event in cities, as crisis paradigmatic both are a recoverycycle pro prompts noth neoliberalism argued has represents (chapter 14), Reed Adolph tor Jr. post- then opposition, freed effective capitalism from than more ing 24 the French Quarter and cbd. When Katrina struck, only select parts of the neighborhood were flooded, but the calamity enabled the destruction and redevelopment of the neighboring Lafitte and Iberville housing projects, while a real estate frenzy for architecturally significant homes accelerated the rebuilding process in the stretch of higher elevation along the Mississippi now dubbed the “sliver by the river.” Tremé has joined Harlem, Chicago’s Bronzeville, Pittsburgh’s Hill Dis-

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, trict, and Washington, DC’s Shaw neighborhood in what Derek Hyra calls “Black-branding,” a process by which “versions of Black identity are expressed and institutionalized in a community’s social and built environments” even as the neighborhoods lose black residents to displacement.80 This hyperlo- cal branding passes over the disinvestment of the late twentieth ce ntury and the historical (or current) presence of low-income residents to stitch mythical golden eras together. In New Orleans, black-branding connects a romanticized rendering of antebellum free people of color to the Jim Crow self-sufficiency of the Claiborne Avenue business district and the most re- spectable versions of contemporary black culture into a seamless continuum. Tremé in particular exemplifies how the global sweep of urban development schemes can be enhanced by local particularities based in race and culture. By 2012, when the Tremé 200 festival celebrated the neighborhood’s bicen- tennial with music, parades, and food, all but one of the live music venues, bars, and restaurants had been shut down through aggressive ordinances pushed by members of the Historic Faubourg Tremé Association. Tremé’s cultural and economic value depends on its continual reinscription as the country’s oldest black neighborhood, while it simultaneously finds itself at the cutting edge of real estate speculation and residential displacement that make it ever more wealthy and white and devoid of the spaces that nurtured the city’s cultural history. As with the aftermath of the Civil War, when a romantic literary tradition made the master narrative of exceptionalism and authenticity common sense, the aftermath of Katrina has galvanized New Orleanians into a deeper recognition and drive for preserving culture unde r the aegis of disappearing authenticity. The broad national and international presence of New Orleans as an icon of cultural distinctiveness—made famous by its increasingly high- profile musicians, the reception of David Simon’s television series Treme, its celebrity chefs, and the revival of hip forms of Southern gothic centered in and around the city like True Blood, True Detective, and Beasts of the Southern Wild—only serves to further place New Orleans and south Louisiana in the role of alien and exotic other (see chapter 7, this volume). The exceptional 25 Introduction - - - - - ch inno te ions, Teach Teach ions, ple of eerily pleeerily of . ings. Detroit ca izat i th cou mer trepreneurship modeltrepreneurship en else in A else in , and Bywater that that cbd, and Bywater trict, chnocratic solutions to social to solutions chnocratic rina creative class has moved has class creative rina t allure in the aftermath of the of aftermath the in t allure te tan t pace of life, untrammeled by the the by t pace of life, untrammeled Kat en er house Dis house ff New York York New the told Simon David 2010, in sed and high- rina transformation, add in a in add transformation, rina ss work prerogatives, and above all convince and above all convince prerogatives, work ss r the threat of homogenizedof modernization threat the r ba Treme cla Kat Mainstream publications, universities like Tulane, Tulane, like universities publications, Mainstream le- unde 81 ing professionals, social entrepreneurs, high- social entrepreneurs, professionals, ing midd d to send a travel or style reporter or, even better, enlist a enlist better, even or, style or reporter a travel send d to yle creative class and a desperate hope to retain them. The them. retain hope to a desperate and class creative yle st or rs entering this urban laboratory constitute a demographic laboratory urban constitute this rs entering The majority of the majoritypost- The of rebuild 82 rm rental units accommodates a mix of transplants and tourists and tourists a mix of transplants accommodates units rental rm othe a. te c i s are hegemonic.s are It has become somewhat of a biannual rite of passage for the nation’s passageof rite nation’s the for biannual a becomeof has somewhat It 83 ransplants to neighborhoods such as the Tremé, spiking housing costs costs housing spiking neighborhoods to Tremé, as such the ransplants lem Exceptionality still maintains an impor maintains still Exceptionality While filming the show the show While filming The city’s development focus has come to include efforts to attract a attract to efforts include hasto focus come development The city’s w t who may or may not share an investment in the New Orleansness of their of their Orleansness New the in an investment not share may or may who surroundings. into neighborhoodsinto Ware as such the exceptionalism of historical discourses in not asare steeped Tremé as the buildings of condominium A proliferation authenticity. architectural or and short- and scores of politicians thus revel in a wave of entrepreneurial efforts that that efforts entrepreneurial of wave a in revel thus politicians of scores and in and business spaces Coworking lists. Forbes city pushed the onto have a social- emphasizing most proliferated, have cubators trappings of upper- trappings places used make to , “Lots of American Magazine Times the reader that New Orleans is unlike anywhere anywhere is unlike Orleans New that reader the that offers a heady appeal to the nearly half of local start-up leaders who are who are leaders half of local start-up the nearly appeal a heady to offers that organ reform education dominant nation’s of the of one alums for Amer still Orleans steel and ships. New used make to cars. Baltimore used make to and sparking an intense (and ironic) debate about the sustainability of New of New sustainability the about debate ironic) (and an intense and sparking exceptionality Orleans’s volume). this (see chapter 6, Florida– Richard raised an age in market- when prob young urban- young status of the city, the cultivated patina of its built environment, and the en and the environment, built of its patina cultivated the city, the of status of of thousands tens helped has attract local of traditions cultural durance ne and vators, ences. levee audi especially mass for failures, a good in intended deal of writing lit snapshots of decaying buildings or exotic “creatures” like Mardi Gras Indi Mardi like “creatures” buildings of decaying exotic or lit snapshots newspaper of rec newspaper and send Orleans New into parachute to Yorker New transplanted recently The Ruins.” as the such “Love among titles with dispatches back exoticized straightforward:is artists/musicians/ formula interview a handful young of post- city’s chefsthe about homage pay to a di to sure make ans, 26 makes something. It makes moments.”84 Yet, unlike the relative prosperity of the postwar steel industry in Baltimore, where Simon based his previous series The Wire and Homicide, a livable wage based on creating moments has largely eluded New Orleanians and others throughout the US. Thegr eat and telling exception is New Orleans’s perceived plastic evil twin, Las Vegas, where the success of the Culinary Union Local 226 in un ionizing hospitality workers has produced at least the skeleton version for what such an econ- 85 Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, omy and politics might look like. There is more than alit tle irony to the fact that New Orleans—a city that incessantly pays homage to its culture bearers—does decidedly less to ensure their prosperity than a city, also built on moments, that wears mass production, inauthenticity, and a sense that the customer is always right on its sleeve. Yet, in this regard, New Orleans completely typifies a broader American experience (above and beyond Las Vegas) that has for centuries devalued labor that does not produce material commodities. The inequalities caused by this history are especially apparent in postcontainerization, post–oil bust New Orleans, where the economic dislocations are felt primarily by those whose labor is not defined as valuable and who have no institutional mechanism to shift such definitions. This creates a conundrum whereby the primarily black, low-income culture bearers whom the city depends upon to entice tourists and their dollars are poten- tially priced out and pushed out of the new New Orleans. As with much of what we have presented in this admittedly sweeping and selective history of a single city, we submit that this place with an obsessive dedication to its past is uncannily predictive of the future.

Conclusion Americanist scholarship has stubbornly clung to the idea that research into its collective endeavor illuminates some essential Americanness, that the corpus of, say, American economic history illuminates a national story and indeed a national identity.86 In the same way that American historical and literary scholarship has often unconsciously posited an exceptional America, much scholarship and reporting on New Orleans has sought some essential essence, something that defines the city as a whole. In this way, New Orleans has existed as a singular subject unlike any other American city. We would ask if this New Orleans has been continuously reimagined in a discursive feedback loop that constantly reaffirms its exceptionality. An ethnography of brass bands in post-Katrina New Orleans does not have to be a story about 27 Introduction

------ss ss tic ous n cla vis an vis the à- mporary te or exploita or lab minant ideal of our ideal of our minant ntury New Orleans might Orleans ntury New the do the ce New Orleans provides an au an provides Orleans New lfillment— 87 wentieth- l economy, interracial sociability, and sociability, interracial l economy, fu ca r saved from the supposedly encroaching supposedly encroaching the from r saved i rs to David Harvey have shown, middle- shown, Harvey have David rs to ers within the city the called has within vari ers for lit ge hnography has produced a vision of produced has a vision hnography New Or eithe bear cause of its position as position a locale of its ex definedby its cause lar et lar and early t and early t begins in discontent with a vapid modern cul modern a vapid with t begins discontent in Be Wha

ric—or, alternately, to be documented before the natives natives the before beto documented alternately, ric—or, .

. to

as searched meaningful face for of the the in experience mporary commentators as diverse as Betty Friedan, C. Wright C. Wright as as Betty diverse Friedan, mporary commentators ca h ca i te h scholarly and popu h scholarly sion with ‘meaning’ masks its absence from any frame of reference of reference frame any from absence masks its ‘meaning’ with sion arketing strategies. strategies. arketing ot As con Just as New Orleans has been has as isolated a singular Orleans asfor subject, New cultural its Just ss Amer ss agined, world. modern ntext. Likewise, a social history of African Americans and working- and a social Likewise, history Americans ntext. of African sumes New Orleans is a place with a singular meaning that can only becan singular a a placeis that with meaning Orleans New sumes bses y m s o playground for this existential crisis of modern culture and thus power and thus culture of modern crisis existential this for playground logic of con and therapeutic cultural broader fully the replicates outside the self. the outside im argued, Riesman scholars ranging from recent Mills, and David and more Rod Daniel to Doug Rossinow cla of mass meaninglessness and the bureaucracy, bogeyman of conformity, of authen “Seekers Lears writes, Jackson age. atomic the since T. J. culture leans as containing a unique and static culture, a vision deeply informed informed deeply a vision culture, and static a unique as containing leans b culture on research oticism, details Nyerges Aaron As informancy. of classical ethnographic iterations Roll interviewJelly 1938 Mor of Lomax’s Alan (chapter 3), volume this in stance anthropological broader the But as example. classic one stands ton a beto place a becomes It ume). of bourgeois and architectural cultural values—as much so in imperatives rhe preservation them. before cultures premodern of so many go way practices the and their style an analytic such is intellectu ethnography, classical Western like And vis- and distinctiveness exceptionality ally proving predicated upon Their vaguestthe religiousor but ethical lack any commitments. ticity often o self- for quest as another ends ture culture.” modern therapeutic sleeker, parsed by close (see chapter 6, ethnographic natives vol with this contact real estate development defined by a plethora of local, national, and of local,national, definedby a globalplethora development realestate Orleans. New essentially anything than rather currents New Orleans as singular Orleans entity;New also can it be a story about definedby deep and contingency environment an urban in and racism tion c nineteenth- late in whites po migration, be circular about tradition A long timeless. as and fixed been frozen frequently have mations of b 28 capitalism. The irony of so many homages to the city’s authentic character is that this very notion of the city as oppositional to the standardization of contemporary life is, in fact, integral to the very success of its place-branding. New Orleans sells moments moored in individualized self-fulfillment and disconnected from any larger political or ethical constituency other than vague references to an indeterminate and singular community. Moving beyond the dichotomous frameworks of exceptionalism and

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, authenticity requires greater attention to the multiple temporalities of social life. As an example, how might we understand the resurgence of a self- conscious New Orleans culture afte r Katrina? There is the long history of invented tradition and imagined community that looks remarkably similar across space and time, especially when said imagined community is perceived as under threat. There is the meaning that New Orleanians invest in their practices and the range of cultural expressions legitimized as authentic, shaped by and increasingly in concert with the prerogatives of touristic culture (see chapter 14, this volume). Ther e is the growing economic value in cultural distinction, not simply in regard to tourism but real estate and style, an outgrowth of the broad trend toward niche commodity production in postwar mass culture. New Orleans, as countless travelogues of the post-Katrina era make clear, represents the forefront of such distinction. Thatthese distinctions are indicative of New Orleans does not mean they are entirely unique to New Orleans, rooted in a singular locale, or unchanging over time. Further, an analytic lens that dynamically accounts for difference is not the same as one that statically identifies exceptionality. At a basic level, all places and cultural formations are different: they are produced by a series of contingent events and processes that occur over changing temporalities and in diverse contexts. While we can recognize that Omaha, Newark, Cleveland, Oakland, and New Orleans are all different from each other, with distinctive histories and internal cultural formations, to single New Orleans out as exceptional implies an essential similarity between the other four. Generations of scholars located in and around the city have made this precise move, either consciously or unconsciously. In so doing, a variety of other histories have become marginalized, not the least of which being the political, economic, and social processes, powers, and inequalities that exceptionality, along with its intellectual handmaiden, authenticity, have masked. The essays that follow are united in their attempt to break out of the intellectual confines ofthese dichotomies. They posit a city not of cultural essences and singular histories but of diverse peoples, Introduction 29 - - ases c / ople of ople ties and ties df. pe p . e fre 005 2 ournalism - j 8 / 1 c - it / du e . le, the population is thought is thought population le, the who take the number of number the take olumbia c . mis www e%20of%20the%20Lieutenant%20Governor Offic / or for nation building and capital expansion rendered rendered expansion and capital building nation for or l, and historical contexts of multiple temporal temporal of multiple contexts l, and historical lab ca i lit actices that are always contingent, rife with conflict, and and conflict, with rife contingent, always are that actices pr tate%20of%20Louisiana S eiser eiser 2012. thern Babylon” reference is in Long 2004. is in reference Babylon” thern / p reliance on slave slave p reliance on e and Pine 2007, 5. 2007, e and Pine ieu%20Congressional%20Address%20Accountability%2010 981; Halttunen 1982; Lasch 1978. 1982; 981; Halttunen d in Campanella 2014, 138. 2014, Campanella d in W pson 2008, 306. 2008, pson - r 2005. es Duany, quoted in Curtis 2009. Curtis quoted in es Duany, aroff and Comaroff 2009, 2, emphasis in original. in emphasis 2, 2009, and Comaroff aroff l 2014. sus of the City of New Orleans, exclusive of seamen and the garrison, American American garrison, the and of seamen exclusive Orleans, City of New the of sus nstein 1996. nstein rogue colonialism, see Dawdy 2008 and Powell 2012. On racialization and sexuality, and sexuality, racialization On 2012. rogue and Powell colonialism, 2008 seeDawdy zian 2003. On “Disneyfication,” see Souther 2006. see Souther zian “Disneyfication,” On 2003. ch Landrieu to House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, US House House US and Infrastructure, Transportation on Committee House to ch Landrieu trina ll 1992a; Powell 2012; Usner 1992. Usner 2012; ll 1992a; Powell vis 1992; Rothman 2002; J. Jackson 2001. Jackson J. 2002; Rothman 1992; vis wdy 2008. wdy wdy 2008, xv. 2008, wdy wdy 2016, 52. 2016, wdy ach 1996, 180. ach 1996, ndix 1997, 8. ndix 1997, ear 2009, 56. ear 2009, ark 2013, 130. 2013, ark illing 1972, 124. See 1998. also Michaels 1972, illing ka Landr ciety with slaves such as Baltimore or St. Louis. Berlin’s taxonomy of slave socie of slave taxonomy St. Louis. or Berlin’s as such Baltimore ciety slaves with Cl The dee Cen sec the - for enumeration population slave the that noting is worth It beto underrated.” districts. surrounding for higher is considerably than district ond Vida categorical terminology a so from Berlin’s Ira in distinct society, a slave Orleans New Da Ha Thom Da Sp ap “N.B. This notation: census the with appears Miscellaneous 10:364, Papers: State Gra Lears 1 Gilmor Banet Da Com On see 2009. Spear unaccountable as,pears some be by to incorrect, is not included; second the district color in and, the on Wei Andr Be Tr “sou The Ro Quote Da Mit / Tyrrell 1991, 1031. 1991, Tyrrell Shafe of Representatives, October 18, 2005, http:// /

1 3 5 2 8 9 7 6 4 11 15 13 12 21 18 25 23 19 17 16 10 22 14 27 26 20 24

and geographic scales. Notes meanings, and grounded in social,grounded in po 30 societies with slaves allows New Orleans to be distinguished from both Baltimore and St. Louis in this regard. Nonetheless, despite the importance of slavery to the surrounding plantation economies and its centrality to the internal slave trade itself, while more important than in eithe r of the aforementioned cities, slave lab or was nonetheless an an- cillary part of the internal urban economy within New Orleans. Indeed, New Orleans’s exceptional character has thus seemingly foreclosed possibly fruitful urban historical comparisons between the three cities of roughly equal antebellum size. 28 Laussat (1831) 1978, 103.

Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams, 29 Spear 2003, 76. 30 Clark 2013. 31 James 1996, 142. 32 Roach 1996, 252. 33 On racial legal regimes, see Gross and de la Fuente 2013. On Congo Square, see Evans 2011. On the slave uprising of 1811, see Rasmussen 2011. On Bras-Coupé, see Wagner 2009, 79–115. 34 W. Johnson 1999, 18. 35 Spear 2009, 219. 36 W. Johnson 1999; A. Rothman 2005; Marler 2013. 37 Nystrom 2010, 7. 38 Quoted in Stanonis 2006, 5. 39 See Dawdy 2016, e.g., 51. 40 Clark 2013, 149. 41 Fertel 2014. On exoticizing African-derived cultural practices, see Wagner 2009; Saka- keeny 2011b. 42 Hearn 2001, 147. 43 On literary tropes of exceptionalism, see Eckstein 2005; Lightweis-Goff 014.2 44 Dawdy 2016, 56. 45 On the history of “Creole” as a racial designation in Louisiana, see Tregle 1992. On the assimilation of Creoles, see Hirsch 2007. 46 Charles Gayarré, “Mr. Cable’s Freedmen’s Case in Equity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat, January 11, 1885, 3. See Fertel 2014. 47 Yet in Ronald Walters’s (1973) classic understanding of the Northern ideology of South- ern eroticism, New Orleans was but one part of a long tradition of Southern exoticiza- tion that served to legitimate Northern free-labor ideology. Richard Campanella (2008, 161–67) argues that New Orleans was the only city in the US to produce its own ethnicity, Creole. Yet if we widen our gaze to south Texas (Tejano), the broader Southwest (Chicano), individual states like Hawaii and California (Hapa) as well as perhaps even other individual cities like New York (Nuyorican) and Miami (Miami Cuban), New Orleans and south Louisiana look decidedly unexceptional in regard to the production of ethnicity. John Blassingame’s social history of black New Orleans life in the two decades following the victory of the US Army in New Orleans, despite being to this day the most sophisticated such history, also suffers from this romanticization of a variety of practices associated with this image of New Orleans. Ironically, his conclusions, as befits the generation of 1970s urban social historians of which he was a part, largely demonstrates New Orleans as exemplary of other urban patterns (Blassingame 1973). 31 Introduction - t n Grea Nelso mporary te a marching a marching er others 2006. For a For 2006. others Br tribution during the the during tribution a paramilitary conflict (see er dis ights period. celin 2015; chapter 9, this volume. this chapter 9, celin 2015; civil r civil Mar sic in New Orleans, see Floyd 1991 and 1991 see Floyd Orleans, New sic in .” Indeed, for the historically attuned onlooker, watching the the watching onlooker, attuned historically the for Indeed, .” til the post– the til mu mporary pageant of Reconstruction- te un aries ery traditional carnival krewe, evoke the Reconstruction- the evoke krewe, carnival erytraditional ev d in Thomas 2014, 45. 2014, Thomas d in as 2014, 7. as 2014, obert Charles and the riots, see Hair 1976. see Hair riots, and the obert Charles lack vernacular vernacular lack ns 2005. On the flip side of this white supremacist history, the regalia the organ and history, supremacist thiswhite flip of side the On 2005. ns 997. 997. ry 1936; Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant 1945. and Tallant ry Dreyer, Saxon, 1936; panella 2013. he “incipient jazz community,” see 2009a. Raeburn jazz community,” he “incipient he general levee strike, see Arnesen 1994. On the street car strike, see Mizell- strike, car street the On 1994. see Arnesen he general levee strike, dams 2014. dams dams 2013; chapter 12, this volume. this chapter 12, 2013; dams ham and Greenberg 2014, x. 2014, and Greenberg ham ham ham 2010. ham 2007a, 205. 2007a, ham . 2007a ham en 1966. ods 2017, 91. ods 2017, ion of the city’s black high school marching bands, prevalent in the con the in black high bands, prevalent school marching city’s of the ion llandsworth 2001; Reynolds1964. 2001; llandsworth rston 1931; Lomax 1950. 1931; rston ll 1992b, 59. ll 1992b, ra 2017, 75. 2017, ra rskovits 1941, 245. 1941, rskovits utcher utcher 2010. nold Hirsch (2007) suggests that group identity of Creoles of color dissolved gradu Creoles of identity group suggests that (2007) nold Hirsch well 1999. well 2012; Roumillat 2013. Roumillat well 2012; r a sustained interrogation of the politics of race and re of the interrogation r a sustained ooks and Young 1991; French- 1991; ooks and Young irclough 1995. e Mah 2014. e Mah anonis 2006. V. A V. Got Cr Hy Cam T. A T. Se Fa Fo Br St Asbu Thom Got Quote Society era and its aftermath, see Germany 2007. see Germany Society aftermath, and its era revisionist claim of the white invention of jazz, see Brunn 1960. of jazz, see Brunn invention white claim of the revisionist Wo Km Ha On R On t On Got Got Gill 1 2009. Saville 1996). Saville On b On He Hu t On izat Grasday Mardi the on Rex lead off parade Band High SchoolSt. Augustine Marching as appear can a con Po Gill 1 Ho Po Parso era in nearly nearly in era companies that Julie Saville has argued “attemp[ed] to form disciplined form solidarity to across argued has Saville Julie “attemp[ed] that companies bound plantation Domínguez 1986. Ar ally abolition from

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32 82 Hendrix 2015. 83 See Duany 2009; Watts and Porter 2013; Solnit and Snedeker 2013; Cowen and Seifter 2014. 84 Mason 2010. 85 H. Rothman 2002. See also Orleck 2005. 86 See Tyrrell 1991. 87 Lears 1981, 306. Adams, Mobley, & Sakakeeny Mobley, Adams,