The racial shock of abolitionist John Brown

IF 1.3 2区 文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION Quarterly Journal of Speech Pub Date : 2023-03-22 DOI:10.1080/00335630.2023.2187746
Jay P. Childers, Lisa Corrigan
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Abstract

ABSTRACT Abolitionist John Brown remains a cultural touchstone over 160 years after his execution for leading the Harpers Ferry Raid in October 1859, largely because that event and Brown’s behavior after it played a part in leading the nation into civil war. To understand that legacy and his role in sparking the Civil War, this article examines the discursive field that animated around Brown within the context of the racial sensorium of his time. We argue Brown still attracts interest because he was a distinctive antebellum racial figure who catalyzed major shifts in the country’s racial sensory landscape by offering a mode of radical whiteness grounded in white mobility, the use of violence, electrifying words and deeds, and shockingly bold intimacies with Black people. Ultimately, by examining the discursive field that surrounded Brown from his time in Kansas to after his execution, we demonstrate how his radical sensibilities shifted the somatic politics of racial confrontation in the antebellum period and show that John Brown became an amplifying cultural force through which both Northerners and Southerners felt the question of slavery in new ways.
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废奴主义者约翰·布朗的种族冲击
1859年10月,废奴主义者约翰·布朗因领导哈珀斯渡头袭击事件而被处决,160多年后,他仍然是一个文化试金石,这主要是因为那次事件和布朗之后的行为在导致国家陷入内战中起了一定作用。为了理解这一遗产以及他在引发内战中所扮演的角色,本文考察了在他那个时代的种族感觉背景下围绕布朗展开的话语领域。我们认为,布朗仍然吸引着人们的兴趣,因为他是一个独特的战前种族人物,通过提供一种基于白人流动性、使用暴力、激动人心的言行以及与黑人惊人的大胆亲密关系的激进白人模式,催化了这个国家种族感官景观的重大转变。最后,通过考察从布朗在堪萨斯到他被处决后围绕着他的话语领域,我们展示了他的激进情感如何改变了战前时期种族对抗的肉体政治,并展示了约翰·布朗成为一股放大的文化力量,通过它,北方人和南方人都以新的方式感受奴隶制问题。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.80
自引率
36.40%
发文量
39
期刊介绍: The Quarterly Journal of Speech (QJS) publishes articles and book reviews of interest to those who take a rhetorical perspective on the texts, discourses, and cultural practices by which public beliefs and identities are constituted, empowered, and enacted. Rhetorical scholarship now cuts across many different intellectual, disciplinary, and political vectors, and QJS seeks to honor and address the interanimating effects of such differences. No single project, whether modern or postmodern in its orientation, or local, national, or global in its scope, can suffice as the sole locus of rhetorical practice, knowledge and understanding.
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