“Nothing could stop it, nothing”: The Burden of Postsouthern History in Barry Hannah’s “Uncle High Lonesome”

Abstract

This paper considers Barry Hannah’s short story “Uncle High Lonesome” (1996) as a postsouthern reworking of the modernist “southern burden” paradigm. Close readings of Hannah’s work reveal conspicuously “southern” narratives of historical haunting, trauma and guilt, implying that the burden of history remains a useful means of understanding late twentieth century regional fiction. This paper argues for Hannah’s unique currency in ongoing critical debates, both in the new southern studies and in southern literary studies more broadly, about the future of “South” and the concept of inherited historical memory in a post-regional and post-historical culture. In proposing that Hannah’s story is tenaciously southern even while it highlights the ways in which the South is mediated and performed, this paper argues that the story offers a creative response to the notion that the regional and the postmodern exist in simple opposition.