Eugene Genovese - Shift To The Right

Shift To The Right

Starting in the 1990s, Genovese turned his attention to the history of conservatism in 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 the Southern Agrarians. In the 1930s, these critics and poets collectively wrote I'll Take My Stand, their critique of Enlightenment humanism. He concluded that by recognizing human sinfulness and limitation, the critics more accurately described human nature than did other thinkers. The Southern Agrarians, he noted, also posed a challenge to modern American conservatives, with their mistaken belief 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. Where he once denounced liberalism from a radical left perspective, in this later phase he did so as a traditionalist conservative. His change in thinking included re-embracing Catholicism, the faith in which he had been raised, in December 1996. His wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese had also shifted her thinking and converted.