Eugene Genovese

Eugene Genovese
Born	Eugene Dominic Genovese (1930-05-19)May 19, 1930 Brooklyn, New York,U.S.
Died	September 26, 2012(2012-09-26)(aged 82) Atlanta,Georgia,U.S.
Alma mater	Brooklyn College(BA) Columbia University(MA,PhD)
Spouse	Elizabeth Fox-Genovese ​ ​ (m.1969; died 2007)​
Awards	Bancroft Prize(1975)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Rochester Rutgers University Sir George Williams University

Eugene Dominic Genovese(May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012)was an Americanhistorianof theAmerican SouthandAmerican slavery.He was noted for bringing aMarxistperspective to the study of power,class and relations betweenplantersand slaves in the South.His bookRoll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Madewon theBancroft Prize.He later abandoned the left and Marxism and embracedtraditionalist conservatism.He wrote during theCold Warand his political beliefs were viewed by some as highly controversial at the time.

Early life and education

Genovese was born on May 19, 1930, inBrooklyn, New York.His father was an immigrantdockworkerand Eugene was raised in a working-classItalian Americanfamily.

In 1945, at the age of 15, he joined theCommunist Party USA,and was active in the youth movement until he was expelled in 1950, at the age of 20, for disregarding party disciplineor, as he said, "for having zigged when [he] was supposed to zag."He earned hisBachelor of ArtsfromBrooklyn Collegein 1953 and hisMaster of Artsin 1955 and aPh.D.inhistoryin 1959, both fromColumbia University.He taught at another dozen universities, includingYale,CambridgeandRutgers.

He was later discharged from army service for hiscommunistleanings.

Career

Genovese first taught at Brooklyn's Polytechnic Institute from 1958 to 1963. During the early years of theVietnam War,when there was a growing range of opinions about the war and theCivil Rights Movement,he was a controversial figure as a history professor atRutgers University(1963–67), and at theUniversity of Rochester(1969–86), where he was elected chairman of the Department of History.

From 1986, Genovese taught part-time at theCollege of William and Mary,Georgia Institute of Technology,University of Georgia,Emory UniversityandGeorgia State University.He was an editor ofStudies on the LeftandMarxist Perspectives.He was famous for his disputes with colleagues left, right and center.DefeatingOscar Handlinin 1978, he was elected as the first Marxist president of theOrganization of American Historians.

In 1998, after moving to thepolitical rightin his thinking, Genovese founded The Historical Society, with the goal of bringing together historians united by a traditional methodology.

Controversy during the Vietnam war

At an April 23, 1965,teach-inatRutgers Universitywhere he was teaching, Genovese stated, "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist. Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impendingViet Congvictory in Vietnam. I welcome it. "This comment was widely reported and generated a backlash of criticism. Politicians questioned Genovese's judgment and sensitivity to the responsibility inherent in being a Rutgers professor.Richard M. Nixon,then out of office and living in New York, denounced him, and the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey,Wayne Dumont,challenging GovernorRichard J. Hughes,used Genovese's statement as a campaign issue, demanding that Hughes dismiss Genovese from the state university. Bumper stickers saying "Rid Rutgers of Reds" popped up on cars across the state. Genovese insisted that he did not mean to say that he hoped American servicemen would be killed. No state laws or university regulations had been broken, and Genovese was supported by fellow faculty members on grounds ofacademic freedom.He was not dismissed from his teaching position.

Rutgers PresidentMason Grossrefused to re-examine the university's position, and Dumont lost to Governor Hughes. President Gross' defense ofacademic freedomwas honored by theAmerican Association of University Professors,who presented him and Rutgers with itsAlexander MeiklejohnAward in 1966. Genovese moved to Canada and taught atSir George Williams Universityin Montreal (1967–69). In 1968, Genovese signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest"pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

At the 1969 convention of the American Historical Association, radical historiansStaughton LyndandArthur Waskow,speaking on behalf of the Radical Caucus, introduced and later withdrew a resolution demanding an end to not only to the war in Vietnam but also to an “immediate end of all harassment of the Black Panther Party”. A substitute resolution introduced by the radical scholar Blanche W. Cook "deplored and condemned" the war and urged withdrawal of all American troops. It was Cook's resolution that eventually came to a vote.

During the discussion on the resolution, Genovese gave a speech, saying that although he opposed the Vietnam war, if the radicals' resolution passed, the bulk of historians in the AHA, who favored the war, would be forced to resign from the group. Noting that the majority of Americans also supported the war, Genovese said that those citizens were as moral and deserving of being heard as the war's opponents. The Radical Caucus, he said, were a bunch of "totalitarians." Genovese ended his speech by saying that the time had come for historians to isolate and defeat the New Left and "put them down, put them down hard, once and for all."When the vote was finally taken, the resolution lost, 647 to 611.

Slavery studies

In 1968, Genovese wrote a critical historiography of the major studies of slavery in the Americas from a hemispheric perspective. He considered the demand by Marxist anthropologistMarvin HarrisinThe Nature of Cultural Things(1964) for a materialist alternative to the idealistic framework ofFrank Tannenbaum,Stanley Elkins,Gilberto Freyre,and others. Tannenbaum had first introduced the hemispheric perspective by showing that the current status of blacks in various societies of the Western Hemisphere had roots in the attitude toward the black as a slave, which reflected the total religious, legal, and moral history of the enslaving whites. Tannenbaum ignored the material foundations of slave society, most particularly class relations. Later students have qualified his perspectives but have worked within the framework of an "idealistic" interpretation. Harris, on the other hand, insisted that material conditions determined social relations and necessarily prevailed over counter-tendencies in the historical tradition. Harris' work revealed him to be an economic determinist and, as such, ahistorical. By attempting to construct a materialism that bypassed ideological and psychological elements in the formation of social classes, he passed into a "variant of vulgar Marxism" and offered only soulless mechanism.

In the 1960s, Genovese in his Marxist stage depicted the masters of the slaves as part of a "seigneurial" society that was anti-modern, pre-bourgeois and pre-capitalist. In 1970, Stampp reviewing Genovese'sThe World the Slaveholders Made(1969) found fault with the quantity and quality of the evidence used to support the book's arguments. He took issue with the attempt to apply a Marxian interpretation to the Southern slave system.

In his best-known book,Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made(1974), Genovese examined the society of the slaves. This book won theBancroft Prizein 1975. Genovese viewed the antebellum South as a closed and organically united paternalist society that exploited and attempted to dehumanize the slaves. Genovese paid close attention to the role of religion as a form of resistance in the daily life of the slaves, because slaves used it to claim a sense of humanity. He redefined resistance to slavery as all efforts by which slaves rejected their status as slaves, including their religion, music, and the culture they built, as well as work slowdowns, periodic disappearances, and escapes and open rebellions.

Genovese appliedAntonio Gramsci's theory ofcultural hegemonyto the slave South. AsDennis Dworkinexpresses it, "Like [E.P.] Thompson... Genovese deployed Gramsci's ideas. For Genovese, the slaveholding society of the Old South was rooted in exploitative class relationships, but most important was the cultural hegemony of slaveholders, their paternalistic ideology establishing both the potential and limits for a semiautonomous slave culture of resistance."

Genovese placed paternalism at the center of the master-slave relationship. Both masters and slaves embraced paternalism but for different reasons and with varying notions of what paternalism meant. For the slaveowners, paternalism allowed them to think of themselves as benevolent and to justify their appropriation of their slaves' labor. Paternalist ideology, they believed, also gave the institution of slavery a more benign face and helped deflate the increasingly strong abolitionist critique of the institution. Slaves, on the other hand, recognized that paternalist ideology could be twisted to suit their own ends by providing them with improved living and working conditions. Slaves struggled mightily to convert the benevolent "gifts" or "privileges" bestowed upon them by their masters into customary rights that masters would not violate. The reciprocity of paternalism could work to the slaves' advantage by allowing them to demand more humane treatment from their masters. Religion was an important theme inRoll, Jordan, Rolland other studies. Genovese noted thatEvangelicalsrecognized slavery as the root of Southern ills and sought some reforms, but from the early decades of the nineteenth century, they abandoned arguing for abolition or substantial change of the system. Genovese's contention was that after 1830, southern Christianity became part of social control of the slaves. He also argued that the slaves' religion was not conducive to millenarianism or a revolutionary political tradition. Rather, it helped them survive and resist.

King (1979) argued that Genovese incorporated the theoretical concepts of certain 20th-century revisionist Marxists, especially the ideas ofAntonio Gramsciand his construct ofhegemony.Genovese's analysis of slavery, the blacks, and the American South elicited criticisms of various portions of his work, but historians agreed on the importance of his contributions. Areas of criticism included Genovese's placing of the master-slave relationship at the center of his interpretation of the American South, his views on southernwhite guiltover slavery, his employment of Gramsci's construct ofhegemony,and his interpretations of southern white class interests, slave religion, the strength of the slave family, the existence of slave culture, and the theory of the generation of black nationalism in the antebellum years.

In his 1979 bookFrom Rebellion to Revolution,Genovese depicted a change in slave rebellions from attempts to win freedom to an effort to overthrow slavery as a social system. In the 1983 book that he co-wrote with his wife,The Fruits of Merchant Capital,Genovese underscored what he regarded as tensions between bourgeois property and slavery. In the view of the Genoveses, slavery was a "hybrid system" that was both pre-capitalist and capitalist.

Shift to the right

Starting in the 1990s, Genovese turned his attention to thehistory of conservatismin the South, a tradition which he came to adopt and celebrate. In his study,The Southern Tradition: the Achievements and Limitations of an American Conservatism,he examined theSouthern Agrarians.In the 1930s, these critics and poets collectively wroteI'll Take My Stand,their critique ofEnlightenmenthumanism.He concluded that by recognizing human sinfulness and limitation, the critics more accurately described human nature than did other thinkers. He argued that the Southern Agrarians also posed a challenge to modern American conservatives who believe in market capitalism's compatibility with traditional social values and family structures. Genovese agreed with the Agrarians in concluding that capitalism destroyed those institutions.

In his personal views, Genovese moved to the right. While he once denounced liberalism from a radical left perspective, he now did so as a traditionalist conservative. His change in thinking included abandoning atheism and re-embracingCatholicism,the faith in which he had been raised, in December 1996. His wife, historianElizabeth Fox-Genovese,had also shifted her thinking and converted to Catholicism.

Marriage and family

In 1969, Genovese marriedElizabeth Fox(died 2007), a historian. In 2008, he published a tribute to her,Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage.Genovese died in 2012, aged 82,from a "worsening cardiac ailment" inAtlanta, Georgia.

Publications

• Genovese, Eugene D. (1965),The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South,Middletown, Connecticut: Weslayan University Press.Second Edition.
• Genovese, E. D. (1968), "Materialism and Idealism in the History of Negro Slavery in the Americas",Journal of Social History,1(4): 371–94,doi:10.1353/jsh/1.4.371,ISSN0022-4529
• Genovese, Eugene D. (1971),In Red and Black: Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History
• The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation,1969
• Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made,1974Winner of the Bancroft Prize in History.
• Fox-Genovese, E.; Genovese, E.D. (1976), "The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective",Journal of Social History,10(2): 205–220,doi:10.1353/jsh/10.2.205(with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
• From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World,1979
• Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism,1983(With Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
• The Slaveholders' Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820–1860,1992
• The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism,1994
• The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War,1995
• A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South,Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures, 1998
• The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview,2005(with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
• Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage,2008
• Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order,2008.
• Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South,New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011 (with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
• The Sweetness of Life: Southern Planters at Home,New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017 (edited by Douglas Ambrose)

Bibliography

• Baca, George. (2012). "Eugene Genovese and a Dialectical Anthropology."Dialectical Anthropology,36:245-262.online
• Boles, John; Nolen, Elelyn Thomas, eds. (1987),Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honour of Sanford W. Higginbotham,Louisiana State University Press.
• Davis, David Brion (October 5, 1995), "Southern Comfort",The New York Review of Books:43–46.
• ——— (2001),In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery,pp. 110–20.
• Hudson, Cheryl; Namusoke, Eva (2017).Eugene D. Genovese's Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made.CRC Press.p. 100.ISBN9781351351058.
• King, Richard H; Genovese, Eugene (1977), "Marxism and the Slave South: a Review Essay",American Quarterly,29(1): 117–31,doi:10.2307/2712264,ISSN0003-0678,JSTOR2712264;full text in Jstor.
• Kolchin, Peter (2004), "Eugene D. Genovese: Historian of Slavery",Radical History Review,2004(88): 52–67,doi:10.1215/01636545-2004-88-52,S2CID143661301.
• Lichtenstein, Alex (Summer 1997)."Right Church, Wrong Pew: Eugene Genovese & Southern Conservatism".New Politics.6(3). Archived fromthe originalon 2013-07-09.Retrieved2013-04-26.New Series.
• Linden, Adrianus Arnoldus Maria van der (1994),A Revolt Against Liberalism: American Radical Historians, 1959–1976,pp. 167–220.
• Livingston, James (2004), "Marxism' and the Politics of History: Reflections on the Work of Eugene D. Genovese",Radical History Review(88): 133–53online.
• Meier, August; Elliott, Rudwirck (1986),Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915–1980,University of Illinois Press.
• Parish, Peter (1989),Slavery: History and Historians,New York: Harper.
• Radosh, Ronald (1978), "Eugene Genovese: the Rise of a Marxist Historian",Change(interview),10(10): 31–35,doi:10.1080/00091383.1978.10569535,ISSN0009-1383,Genovese, the first Marxist to be elected President of the Organization of American Historians, discusses Marxism's changing status on American campuses, and traces his career from his membership in the Communist youth movement to his becoming History Department Chairman at the University of Rochester.
• Roper, John Herbert(1996), "Mar xing through Georgia: Eugene Genovese and Radical Historiography for the Region",Georgia Historical Quarterly,80:77–92.online
• Shalhope, Robert E (July 1970), "Eugene Genovese, the Missouri Elite and Civil War Historiography",Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society,26:271–82.
• Shapiro, Herbert (1982), "Eugene Genovese, Marxism, and the Study of Slavery",Journal of Ethnic Studies,9(4): 87–100,ISSN0091-3219,The work of Eugene Genovese is widely perceived within and beyond the historical profession as a product of creative Marxist scholarship, especially now that hisRoll, Jordan, Rollhas become for many reviewers "a definitive benchmark in the historiography of slavery." A close analysis of works such asThe Political Economy of Slaveryshows his greatest lacunae: the minimizing of the significance of black struggle and the magnifying of whatever elements of passivity can be found among blacks insofar as they actively participated in the Civil War. Accommodation and the plantation as community are overdone themes.online
• Stampp, Kenneth M (1970), "Interpreting the Slaveholders' World: a Review",Agricultural History,44(4): 407–12,ISSN0002-1482.online
• Steirer, William F (1974), "Eugene D. Genovese: Marxist-Romantic Historian of the South",Southern Review,10:840–50.online

External links

• Mark Noll on Eugene Genovese and Henry May
• "Reviewing a collection of Genovese's essays",The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War(article), Mises institute
• AppearancesonC-SPAN