[lbo-talk] The North's burden of enlightening the South (was Re: The "NAFTA Superhighway" Urban Myth)

[Bill Hoffman]

Given the radically different historical and economic trajectories of
development in the southern and northern (and western, for that matter)
regions of the country, it would be awfully surprising if there were not
profound sociocultural differences as well, and the "internal colonization"
perspective would likely provide much more insight into these differences,
and suggest grounds for (admittedly unlikely) progressive politics in the
south than facile claims that Texas is "unsurpassed as a hotbed of
anti-intellectualism" (which does not offend me, as I take it as a lame
attempt at humor that is derivative of Bill Maher, but lacks his sense of
timing). A bit of historical materialist perspective, as quaint as that is,
would be in order. The underdevelopment of the south following the Civil War
created a sharecropper peasantry of both white and black, and peasants tend
to be socially and culturally uber-conservative.

I would like to live in an area unaffected by neoliberal conversion of
"retirement" into "computer" systems, but I find that the seagoing utopias
described in Mike Davis's "Evil Paradises" are not panning out.

I don't really mind the dismissive atittude towards the south -  I have no
interest in spending much time in the "old south", although I live in Texas,
In 25 years, I think I've heard the "lost cause" mentioned only in jest, and
I think southerners much prefer to wallow in football than history. At least
Mr. Remick isn't getting his history from "Birth of a Nation. "

11/18/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> I don't want to get up on a Yankee high horse - we've got a lot to
> answer for too - but the South is different somehow, isn't it? Chris
> Kromm, who was on this list in its early days and is now director of
> the Institute for Southern Studies, was thinking for a while of doing
> a book for Verso on the South as an internal colony, with all the
> associated maldevelopment. There's something to that, no?
>
> Doug
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