Saving Grace: Race, Place, and Autobiography in Curriculum Studies

• In Event: Narrative Methods? Beyond Methods “Experts” in Relocating Narrativizing Philosophies in the Curriculum

Abstract

Autobiography sounds very grand but I don’t think grand folks are the ones to write it. I think no one should write one unless he’s called on by the Lord to do so. Therefore, you perhaps would be the one to write one. At least you know to what end your experience has tended. The gist and moral of all these unlucid remarks is that all writing is painful and that if it is not painful then it is not worth doing…

Flannery O’Connor, Habit of Being, p. 242

This presentation complicates autobiography toward the “reintegration of the curriculum studies field” by looking at the invisibility of race that has led to claims of a post-racial society. Framed by Miller’s (2010) notion of “Nostalgia for the Future” and drawing from her conceptualization of “flows and mobilities” (2010) and Pinar’s situating Southern place with/in Currere’s progressive and synthetical moments (2011), this paper looks at curriculum studies from the context of place, specifically through Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” I will read the character of Julian’s mother, through the contexts of Southern place that involve race, privilege, and interpersonal relationships. For Julian’s mother, race was not invisible, despite the deluded claims of her son, the progressive Julian.

From the out-of-place-ness of Julian’s mother, I suggest flows and mobilities that move beyond local and regional meanings—by looking at preconceptions about race and class likewise not bound by regional perceptions. Varied, partial, and contingent lived contexts flow through narratives of place, which never emerges as merely place, but as fluid narratives of place and time. As such, I speak to connections that Miller draws between nostalgia—by its nature a configuration of time and place—and the curriculum work of troubling the Southern veil of nostalgia. I will present these rather complicated ideas in a narrative engagement with the inter-generational racial perceptions and preconceptions between Julian and his mother.

This paper works tensions of place as a means of “working from within” (Pinar, 1972) curriculum studies. Drawing literary contexts from O’Connor’s Southern protagonist, the presentation considers ideas of with/in by also considering with/out—in an example of how autobiography—in the tradition of reconceptualist curriculum theory—remains situated within curriculum studies as in-the-making, as autobiography itself is in-the-making. O’Connor’s characters were presented with opportunities of sacramental grace, O’Connor’s own way of illustrating that people—with/in place—are in-the-making; nonetheless, O’Connor’s characters must do their own “work from within” to realize the promise of the possible.

References

Miller, J. (2010). Nostalgia for the Future: Imagining Histories of JCT and the Bergamo Conferences. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 26(2), 2010.

O’Connor, F. (1988). Everything That Rises Must Converge. O’Connor: Collected Works. New York: The Library of America.

O’Connor, F. (1979). The Habit of Being: Letters. Sally Fitzgerald (Ed.). New York: Farrar.

Pinar, W. (2011). What is curriculum theory? Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Pinar, W. (1972). Working from Within. Educational Leadership. January 1972.

Author

• Reta Ugena Whitlock, Kennesaw State University