It is a great irony that “the South” is technically, locationally southern in just one, rather limited context: within the borders of the United States. It is an even greater irony that any region of the United States, no matter how poorly treated, should develop its own parallel subaltern critique of “Northern capital,” emphasizing dispossession and disadvantage at the hands of supposedly meddling, self-righteous outsiders, and romanticizing the past over the present. Many “Souths,” then, in very different locations define themselves against a wealthier and healthier “North,” with its strong-armed “Yankee imperialists,” and its troublesome chauvinism. This does not mean, however, that we should simply point our fingers at Mississippi or Louisiana, noting their own imperial appetites, following their gaze southward. The great challenge of the future is not just to write about the dominant role played by “the South” in the Caribbean, in Central America, or South America, but also to consider the people, cultures, and institutions of those “other” places as equal partners in the making of hemispheric and world history, literature, music, and art, and to weigh as well the role of this more accurately named “South” in shaping the United States.

This is an excerpt from Matthew Pratt Guterl’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 233).