James P. Burns - Böcker

This book is a genealogical inquiry into the present problem of violence, in the United States and internationally, through the lens of curriculum theory. It explores a constellation of problems including war, authoritarianism, post-truth, social disparities, and increasingly onerous surveillance technologies. Arguing that the current problem of violence is neither new nor aberrant, the author historicises the conditions of possibility that have produced the violence that presently confronts our world. Seemingly disparate issues such as ethnonationalism, authoritarian populism, Christian nationalism, neoliberalism, the proliferation of sophisticated surveillance technologies, and military Keynesianism are traced to historical features such as "Ur-Fascism," white supremacy, corporate capitalism, religious extremism, propaganda and public relations, institutional power, and the biopolitical "death function" endemic in modern societies. Through a sweeping, powerful, and in-depth analysis of violence in its genealogical trajectories in global setting, it promises to re-examine curriculum in a different light and open up new possibilities. As such, the book is an important curriculum study which supports curricular ethics as articulated by Bill Pinar, such as the situation of the self socially and historically, the reconstruction of one’s understanding of the self and the world, and the potential reconstruction of the social world as more peaceful and just. Significantly, the book contributes to a retheorisation of Foucault’s biopolitics as affirmative biopower imbued with ethics of truth-seeking as a technology of the self. It will appeal to scholars and students of curriculum studies with interests in curriculum theory, authoritarianism, non-violence studies, justice studies, ethnonationalism, and technologies of the self.

This book is a genealogical inquiry into the present problem of violence, in the United States and internationally, through the lens of curriculum theory. It explores a constellation of problems including war, authoritarianism, post-truth, social disparities, and increasingly onerous surveillance technologies. Arguing that the current problem of violence is neither new nor aberrant, the author historicises the conditions of possibility that have produced the violence that presently confronts our world. Seemingly disparate issues such as ethnonationalism, authoritarian populism, Christian nationalism, neoliberalism, the proliferation of sophisticated surveillance technologies, and military Keynesianism are traced to historical features such as "Ur-Fascism," white supremacy, corporate capitalism, religious extremism, propaganda and public relations, institutional power, and the biopolitical "death function" endemic in modern societies. Through a sweeping, powerful, and in-depth analysis of violence in its genealogical trajectories in global setting, it promises to re-examine curriculum in a different light and open up new possibilities. As such, the book is an important curriculum study which supports curricular ethics as articulated by Bill Pinar, such as the situation of the self socially and historically, the reconstruction of one’s understanding of the self and the world, and the potential reconstruction of the social world as more peaceful and just. Significantly, the book contributes to a retheorisation of Foucault’s biopolitics as affirmative biopower imbued with ethics of truth-seeking as a technology of the self. It will appeal to scholars and students of curriculum studies with interests in curriculum theory, authoritarianism, non-violence studies, justice studies, ethnonationalism, and technologies of the self.

This book explores the historicized complexities of myths of manhood through a curriculum study that examines the historical emergence of the current propagandization of attacks on manhood in US public life.Narratives about manhood and masculinity are often predicated on concepts of violence, such as the “war on men/boys,” which posits a “demasculization” of men that threatens the global white nation. In this book, Burns connects the current moral panic about manhood to a pattern of ethnonationalist and Christian nationalist ideas that pervade culture and contribute to homophobia, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, restrictions on academic freedom, free speech, and school curricula, and which were grafted onto pre-existing fears targeted against communists, socialists, and dissent. A central tenet of the curriculum studies field holds that reactivation of the past can help us to better understand the problems of the present. As such, this study connects contemporary revanchist hysteria about the need to rehabilitate manhood to similar religious, political, economic, militarist, racial, gendered, and sexualized mythologies of manhood deeply embedded in the history of the US. It also speculates on some possibilities for transcending the historicized mythologies of manhood through ethical and aesthetic engagement in the search for truth, self-cultivation, and reparation.This interdisciplinary and highly original volume will appeal to scholars, faculty, and post-graduate students in curriculum studies, teacher education, gender and sexuality studies, history, and religious studies.