Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Southern Studies
First Advisor
Kathryn McKee
Second Advisor
Judson Watson
Third Advisor
Catarina Passidomo
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Over the course of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Florida has come to signify the national aberrant—a weird place, operating under weird economic, social, and ecological conditions, (mis)managed by weird people. Popular narratives of “weird Florida,” present in fiction and journalism, and commodified by Florida’s salespeople, are not reflections of the state’s natural endowments but cultivated responses to conditions of late capitalist hyperrealities. These Florida stories reckon with life in simulated spaces, places in which the idea of Florida is more legitimate and more legible than the experience of Floridians themselves. Florida authors like Carl Hiaasen or Joy Williams, publications like The Bitter Southerner, and musician magnates the likes of Jimmy Buffett each identify untenable qualities of the hyperreal, but also the Floridian’s tactics for surviving the simulacra, or thwarting it, or finding a Florida outside of it. The idea of Florida can do ecological and political damage, but the fabled Florida Man, borne out of swamplands and vacationscapes, is equipped with tools for weird-survival. From their place outside of the normal, Floridians can contribute to a broader conversation about life after climate disaster and the degeneration of consumer economies, subjects which define the current political moment and the impending one. In a place that is at once “the drainpipe of America” and the frontline of “Make America Florida,” weirdness merits critical attention.
Recommended Citation
Moran, Riley Grace, "The Uncertain Future of the Florida Hyperreal" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2959.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2959