Disappearing Grounds and Backgrounds of the Gulf

Chapter 3, “Disappearing Grounds and Backgrounds of the Gulf,” uses the concepts of background and foreground to read texts that address land loss in the Gulf wetlands. The chapter constellates an analysis of erosion in John James Audubon’s Louisiana writings and paintings of the early nineteenth century alongside George Washington Cable’s late nineteenth-century short story “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” (1883). Both authors situate erosion as attached to concerns over a disappearing whiteness via the plantation. As a productive counter to these narratives, the second half of the chapter considers Houma artist Monique Verdin’s photographic work in Return to Yakni Chitto (2019), where she composes landscapes that draw attention to the quotidian background that creates the present conditions of the foreground. Together, these texts allow an understanding of Gulf Coast erosion that disrupts popular narratives of land loss that are often tied to anxieties about the disappearance of white supremacy.