Judgment, Cataclysm, and Resistance in the Regional Imaginary by Anthony Dyer Hoefer (review)

In this work, Anthony Hoefer argues that Southern rhetoric consistently employs the use of apocalyptic imagery when the speaker seeks to communicate an indescribable idea. Thoughts of peace or destruction, condemnation or approval, and the changes of each decade are described in terms of their relationship to a perceived spiritual atmosphere guiding towards a definite end. This end, the author argues, serves as a foundation upon which those who interpret the “signs” may formulate and offer a worldview menacing in its threat of apocalyptic end but possessing a promise of paradise for those social members belonging to the side of the speaker. Hoefer succeeds in his analysis of the fundamental foundations for the Southern obsession with and use of apocalyptic imagery in the written and spoken word. The work sifts through this phenomenon as Hoefer proposes that apocalypse is the only discourse available when discussing topics typically overlooked or undermined by the popular voice of a community. He cites Joe Christmas from Light in August and Bone from Bastard Out of Carolina as essential examples of marginalized citizens seeking a platform for their voice.

Hoefer builds his theoretical apparatus upon the offerings of several Southern scholars. Samuel Hill’s Southern Churches in Crisis, Donald G. Mathews and Beth Barton Schweiger’s Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture, and Timothy E. Fullop and Albert J. Raboteau’s African American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture each take root in the ideas and arguments of the text. The writings of Malcolm Bull are most influential with his argument that apocalypse “can be used to conceal and reveal” in order to protect a specific social order (11). This effort by society to maintain a binary order, specifically regarding racial segregation, results in a continuous use of apocalyptic rhetoric as a tool by which these divisions may be maintained.

The text is divided into an Introduction, two main parts made up of chapters covering specific works of literature, and an Epilogue that connects the themes of the text with Hurricane Katrina and its effects upon the Southern coast. By structuring his work as an analysis of consecutive literary works, Hoefer creates an organized piece encompassing several canonical offerings of Southern literature. The first part of the text consists of two chapters covering the works of Faulkner and Richard Wright, respectively. Hoefer dissects works such as Light in August in order to determine the role of apocalyptic rhetoric as a means of maintaining racial and social divisions. By incorporating these oral devices, Hoefer argues, Faulkner seeks to demonstrate the destruction inevitable in a society continuing to harbor a bivalent worldview. Most unique in this analysis is the claim that Faulkner posits Southern apocalyptic rhetoric with three key contrasting discourses: Puritanical millenarianism, twentieth century millenarian nationalism, and the “apocalypticism of high modernism” (23). By exposing the depiction of each ideology in Light in August, Hoefer demonstrates the influence of the apocalyptic imaginary upon perhaps the most influential writer of the American South. The second chapter concentrates upon the early writings of Richard Wright. Their Marxist philosophical foundations are depicted as an example of the use of apocalyptic discourse as a means to push forward and reignite a revolution not necessarily grounded on theological theory. For Wright, Apocalypse does not represent an untimely, devastating end. In opposition to its horrific connotation in Light in August, Hoefer argues, Wright’s works celebrate this end as a renewing transformation of society.

The second half of the text focuses upon recent works of the American South. Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits and the short story “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead” demonstrate, according to the author, “how apocalypse functions to contain and conceal histories that would trouble the stability of family and community” (104). This fear that a way of life will abruptly change or end characterizes most of southern apocalyptic rhetoric. The South, as Hoefer states, “is...