Historical Notes on the Proliferation of Southern Place as Organized in a Synoptic Rendering of Barry Goldwater’s Populist Political Theorizing

• In Event: With, in, and Beyond: Curriculum Studies of Southern Place Outside the Boundaries of Region

Abstract

Working from the perspective social psychoanalysis of the Southern place (e.g., Pinar & Kincheloe, 1991, Reynolds, 2013; Reynolds & Webber, 2009), this presentation takes up the documentarian methodology of synoptic rendering (Pinar 2006) regarding Southern place as organized around the populist political theorizing of Barry Goldwater (1960, 1962, 1978). Goldwater, particularly important in the political reorganization and proliferation of the Southern place and conservative popular politics, played a key role in the Republican hegemony since Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential victory especially ascendant during the Reagan Era.

Key in Goldwater’s popular political theorizing (1960, 1962, 1978) is a sublimated history of the Southern democratic party that found a “new home” in the Republican party for extreme self-reliance individualism, states’ rights, and White supremacist agendas in Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” that carried only the deep Southern states in his 1964 presidential campaign debacle. Following a line in Goldwater’s writings (1960, 1962, 1978) with special focus on his Conscience of a Conservative (1960) through the Reagan Era’s (now) transcendent extreme self-reliant and states’ rights “values,” Goldwater becomes a key historical figure in understanding the proliferation of the South to nation and beyond. Linking Goldwater into historicized understandings of the ascendency of Reagan Era Republican hegemony, these notes narrate the key role of reorganized Southern place – displaced from the South as universal “transcendent values” in the present – proliferate the South to nation and beyond for understanding the neoliberal historic bloc.
Demonstrated in Stephen Gill’s (1988, 1995) understandings of the proliferation neoliberal agenda, the United States, among several other European allies, became a chief exporter of the Statesian Reagan Era hegemony lasting through President George W. Bush’s administration and seemingly in transition under Barak Obama’s conservative democrat administration. Missing in Gill’s analysis and in discussions of the Southernization of conservative politics (e.g., Reynolds, 2013; Reynolds & Webber, 2009) is a clear understanding of why, how, and when, the South became Republican. A social psychoanalytic reading of a sublimated history of the Southern democratic party along with an understanding of Goldwater’s populist political theorizing of the South provides an important missing piece in the discussion of Southern place.

References

Goldwater, B. (1960). Conscience of a conservative. New York, NY: Hillman Books.

Goldwater, B. (1962). Why not victory? New York, NY: McGraw-Hill

Goldwater, B. (1978). With no apologies. New York, NY: William Morrow & Company, Inc.

Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum Theory? Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Pinar, W. (2006). The synoptic text today and other essays. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Pinar, W. & Kincheloe, J. (Eds.) (1991). The significance of place: Curriculum as social psychoanalysis. Buffalo, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.

Reynolds, W. (Ed.) (2013). A curriculum of place: Understandings emerging through the Southern mist. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Reynolds, W. & Webber, J. (2009). The civic gospel: A political cartography of Christianity. Rotterdam: Sense.

Author

• James C. Jupp, Georgia Southern University