{"title":"The racial shock of abolitionist John Brown","authors":"Jay P. Childers, Lisa Corrigan","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2023.2187746","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":"109 1","pages":"254 - 275"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2023.2187746","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
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.
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.