The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age

393 Pages·2008·2.123 MB·English

by  Neil Campbell

THE RHIZOMATIC WEST
postwestern horizons
General Editor
William R. Handley
University of Southern California
Series Editors
José Aranda
Rice University
Melody Graulich
Utah State University
Thomas King
University of Guelph
Rachel Lee
University of California, Los Angeles
Nathaniel Lewis
Saint Michael’s College
Stephen Tatum
University of Utah
The Rhizomatic West
Representing the American West in
a Transnational, Global, Media Age
Neil Campbell
university of nebraska press • lincoln and london
© 2008 by the
Board of Regents
of the
University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the
United States of America
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Neil, 1957–
The rhizomatic West:
representing the American West
in a transnational, global,
media age / Neil Campbell
p. cm.—(Postwestern horizons)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8032-1539-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. West (U.S.)—In art.
2. Place (Philosophy) in art.
3. Identity (Philosophical concept) in art.
4. Arts, Modern—20th century.
I. Title.
nx653.w47c36 2008
700.45878—dc22
2008001903
Photo on pages ii–iii
© iStockphoto.com/Robert van Beets.
Set in Quadraat by Bob Reitz.
Designed by R. W. Boeche.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Theorizing the Rhizomatic West 1
1. Toward an Expanded Critical Regionalism
Contact and Interchange 41
2. Feasts of Wire
Rubén Martinez and the Transfrontera Contact Zone 75
3. Welcome to Westworld
Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West 113
4. “The ‘Western’ in Quotes”
Generic Variations 151
5. Dialogical Landscapes
“Outsider” Photography of the West 183
6. Strata and Routes
Living on Reservation X 229
7. Postwestern Generations?
Douglas Coupland’s “Plastic Radiant Way” 269
Conclusion: On “The Crystal Frontier” 299
Notes 325
Index 379
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. John Brinckerhoff Jackson, untitled photo 11
2. John Brinckerhoff Jackson, untitled photo 64
3. Malaquias Montoya, Undocumented 84
4. Neil Campbell, Texas-Hollywood 115
5. Neil Campbell, Leone’s Almería 116
6. Michael Ormerod, Frontier—Rarin’ to Go 205
7. Michael Ormerod, Albuquerque,
New Mexico, planning board 208
8. Michael Ormerod, Steppin’ in High Fashions 211
9. Nick Waplington, Truth or Consequences (1) 219
10. Nick Waplington, Truth or Consequences (2) 221
11. Andrew Cross, I-90 Exit 54, Washington 223
12. Andrew Cross, I-15 Exit 1, Nevada 224
13. Andrew Cross, Rugby, North Dakota—
The Geographical Centre of America 227
14. Mary Longman, Strata and Routes 240
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have helped, in many different ways, with the writing of this
book. I would like to begin by thanking Stephen Tatum for his generous
advice and understanding of my work, for his friendship and great com-
pany in diverse western places. Also a big thank you to fellow scholars and
friends in the fi eld of western studies, many of whom I have met through the
wonderful Western Literature Association: José Aranda, John Beck, Frank
Bergon, Krista Comer, Nancy Cook, Steve Cook, David Fenimore, Audrey
Goodman, Melody Graulich, Richard Hutson, Michael K. Johnson, Susan
Kollin, Nat Lewis, Susan Maher, Martin Padget, Zeese Papanikolas, Ladette
Randolph, Forrest Robinson, Alan O. Weltzien, and many others. Special
thanks go to Susan Bernardin for her advice on chapter 6, and to Paul Groth
for his permission to use the J. B. Jackson photographs from his personal
collection. For specifi c help with chapter 5, thanks go to Andrew Cross, Nick
Waplington, and Jason Shenai and Niall O’Leary at Millennium Images.
For fi nancial help to create time to write this book and to trav-
el to the American West, I would like to thank the Arts and Human-
ities Research Council, the British Academy, and the University of
Derby research awards scheme. Finally, as ever, my last words are for
my wife, Jane, for all her love, tolerance, and company along the way.

INTRODUCTION
Theorizing the Rhizomatic West
Nothing less is asked of the thinker today than that
he should be at every moment both within things and outside them.
Theodor Adorno
Culture is contested, temporal, and emergent. Representation and
explanation—both by insiders and outsiders—
is implicated in this emergence.
James Clifford
There’s nothing more unsettling
than the continual movement of something that seems fi xed.
Gilles Deleuze
A System of Westness
“Like people and schools of criticism, ideas and theories travel—from
person to person, from situation to situation, from one period to an-
other. Cultural and intellectual life are usually nourished and often sus-
tained by this circulation of ideas, and whether it takes the form of ac-
knowledged or unconscious infl uence, creative borrowing, or wholesale
appropriation, the movement of ideas and theories from one place to
another is both a fact of life and a usefully enabling condition of intellec-
tual activity.” Edward Said’s words suggest how ideas and theories travel
or are borrowed and used in different places for different purposes: “For
borrow we certainly must if we are to elude the constraints of our im-
mediate intellectual environment.”1 I take this as a starting point for this
book’s project, the examination of a traveling or mobile discourse, the
American West, while avoiding certain constraints in its examination. In
this I am exploring an anomaly in western studies between the “lines of
fl ight”—that is, mobility and migration existing both as ideas and as the
material conditions that transformed the region as tribes, immigrants,
nomads, conquerors, traders, trappers, farmers, and many other forms
of transient peoples passed through—and the mythic quest for rooted-
ness, settlement, and synthesis so often accepted as the outcome, the
fi nal point, and the essential identity of this fl uid movement. The de-
sire for fi xity, belonging, and integration has an impressive presence in
1