Intro -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Theorizing the Rhizomatic West -- 1. Toward an Expanded Critical Regionalism: Contact and Interchange -- 2. Feasts of Wire: Rubén Martinez and the Transfrontera Contact Zone -- 3. Welcome to Westworld: Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West -- 4. "The 'Western' in Quotes": Generic Variations -- 5. Dialogical Landscapes: "Outsider" Photography of the West -- 6. Strata and Routes: Livnig on Reservation X -- 7. Postwestern Generations? Douglas Coupland's "Plastic Radiant Way -- Conclusion: On "The Crystal Frontier -- Notes -- Index.

Using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of the rhizome, Neil Campbell shows how the West (or west-ness) continually breaks away from a mainstream notion of American "rootedness" and renews and transforms itself in various cultural forms. A region long traversed by various transient peoples (from tribes and conquerors to immigrants, traders, and trappers), the West reflects a mythic quest for settlement, permanence, and synthesis-even notions of a national or global identity-at odds with its rootless history, culture, and nature. Crossing the concept of "roots" with "routes," this book shows how notions of the West-in representations ranging from literature and film to photography, music, and architectural theory-give expression to ideas about identity, nationhood, and belonging in a world increasingly defined by movement across time and borders. The Rhizomatic West offers a new vision of the American West as a hybrid, performative space, a staging place for myriad intersecting and constantly changing identities.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.