Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i2.6390
Joanna Wilson-Scott
This article presents two twenty-first-century novels that deal with particularly charged and contemporary expressions of violence in the United States: Matthew Quick’s Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock and the threat of armed students in school, and John Updike’s Terrorist and the threat of Islamic extremism. High profile acts of violence of this kind in the United States leading up to and into the years following the turn of the millennium prompted significant concern surrounding the identification of would-be perpetrators, including those in the premeditating stage of their intended attacks. This article argues that stepping away from the violent act and focusing instead on the violent mind situates premeditation as an integral part of violence and its conceptualization. Further, interest in the internalized aspects of violence can be seen as a response to very real socio-cultural concerns in the United States. In order to achieve this analytical focus, the article adopts the legal concepts of mens rea (the guilty mind) and actus reus (the guilty act), interweaving them with literary criticism in order to suggest that novels can serve as Momusian windows into the premeditating stage of violence through immersion into the violent mind. In so doing, they contribute more robustly to broader understandings of violence in the United States as it evolves from concept to action.
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Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i2.6391
Seung-Mee Hwang
Surrounded by the hubbub of the 2008 presidential election, playwright Young Jean Lee considered a topic for the next project of her nonprofit experimental theater company and decided to write a black identity politics show that addressed the issues of commodity racism and perceived colorblindness. Her objective, in collaboration with five African American actors, was to expose both conscious and unconscious racial stereotyping deeply rooted in American culture and to lead the audience to connect the abstract element of racial stereotyping to the actual experiences of minority individuals. This article focuses on the development process of the 2008 project and connects it to the social, cultural and political influences that guided the process to demonstrate how the production fits into the historical landscape of dramatic literature and to illustrate the power of the performing arts as a catalyst to initiate public dialogue and to bring to the forefront the questioning of discriminative societal attitudes and practices.
在2008年总统大选的喧嚣中，剧作家杨珍·李(Young Jean Lee)为她的非营利性实验戏剧公司的下一个项目考虑了一个主题，她决定写一部黑人身份政治剧，讨论商品种族主义和感知的色盲问题。她的目标是与五位非裔美国演员合作，揭露深深植根于美国文化中的有意识和无意识的种族刻板印象，并引导观众将种族刻板印象的抽象元素与少数民族个人的实际经历联系起来。本文将关注2008年项目的发展过程，并将其与指导该过程的社会，文化和政治影响联系起来，以展示该作品如何适应戏剧文学的历史景观，并说明表演艺术作为启动公众对话的催化剂的力量，并将对歧视性社会态度和实践的质疑带到前沿。
{"title":"Confronting Colorblind Commodity Racism: Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment","authors":"Seung-Mee Hwang","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i2.6391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i2.6391","url":null,"abstract":"Surrounded by the hubbub of the 2008 presidential election, playwright Young Jean Lee considered a topic for the next project of her nonprofit experimental theater company and decided to write a black identity politics show that addressed the issues of commodity racism and perceived colorblindness. Her objective, in collaboration with five African American actors, was to expose both conscious and unconscious racial stereotyping deeply rooted in American culture and to lead the audience to connect the abstract element of racial stereotyping to the actual experiences of minority individuals. This article focuses on the development process of the 2008 project and connects it to the social, cultural and political influences that guided the process to demonstrate how the production fits into the historical landscape of dramatic literature and to illustrate the power of the performing arts as a catalyst to initiate public dialogue and to bring to the forefront the questioning of discriminative societal attitudes and practices.","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41555833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i2.6392
A. Rezaie
This article analyzes Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (1985)—the first product of Cormac McCarthy’s borderlands immersion—by deploying the concept of “toxic masculinity,” an exaggerated masculinity related mythically to the role of the cowboy/warrior/pioneer, which creates recklessness and eventually perpetuates violence. In other words, it explores how perfunctorily embracing, or endeavoring to fulfill, hegemonic masculine ideals bring about self-destructive behaviors in McCarthy’s monolithically male characters on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s. Even though the term “toxic masculinity” was seldomly used in the 1980s when McCarthy wrote this novel, he clearly anticipates and historicizes the evolution of American masculinity as embodied by the cowboy/warrior/pioneer into a form of toxic masculinity. By doing so, he presages the gradual cultural recognition that such masculinity is not the generic standard against which all versions of gendered identity should be measured but is in fact toxic, pathological, political, and problematic. By exposing toxic cowboy mythology and deploying it to construct alternative masculinities, McCarthy questions the Frontier Thesis and Manifest Destiny while disrupting the toxic assumptions about manhood and masculine identities they were intended to uphold. The new vision McCarthy presents in Blood Meridian challenges the development of American national identity based on the vicious conquest of impoverished, discriminated, oppressed, and racialized Others and exploited, feminized nature.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i2.6398
American Studies In Scandinavia
{"title":"American Studies in Scandinavia – Special issue on the Arctic","authors":"American Studies In Scandinavia","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i2.6398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i2.6398","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46696824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i1.6222
Ari Räisänen
This article examines the ways in which Phil Klay’s short stories “After Action Report” and “War Stories” generate counternarratives that challenge and fragment populist representations of soldiering, war, and Americanness. In doing so, the analysis reveals new ways of approaching the contemporary American civilian-military disconnect. The article examines this disconnect in a framework based on Fredric Jameson’s theories that reveals the text’s underlying military unconscious: a type of political unconscious that rises from the lived-in social realities of veterans and active duty personnel. The military unconscious is complemented by what I term the hegemonic soldier: the ideological construct which informs the dominant cultural representations of soldiering and war, and which reinforces itself through representations in a fashion similar to the idea of nostalgic recreation. By applying these concepts, the analysis can uncover the counternarratives that stem from the texts’ military unconscious. The first case study examines the ways in which Klay’s “After Action Report” ruptures the military institution’s hegemonic discourse of killing by providing alternative discourses that allow the soldier subject to resist the hegemonic soldier, and reassert ownership over their experiences. The second case study examines how “War Stories” reveals and critiques the latent presence of the hegemonic soldier in contemporary American society. The hegemonic soldier is shown to be an omnipresent force that appears even in narratives that seek to subvert it. Together, the case studies demonstrate veteran literature’s unique potential in understanding the development of contemporary American culture.
{"title":"Flanking Maneuvers: The Counternarratives of the Military Unconscious in Phil Klay's “After Action Report” and “War Stories”","authors":"Ari Räisänen","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i1.6222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6222","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the ways in which Phil Klay’s short stories “After Action Report” and “War Stories” generate counternarratives that challenge and fragment populist representations of soldiering, war, and Americanness. In doing so, the analysis reveals new ways of approaching the contemporary American civilian-military disconnect. The article examines this disconnect in a framework based on Fredric Jameson’s theories that reveals the text’s underlying military unconscious: a type of political unconscious that rises from the lived-in social realities of veterans and active duty personnel. The military unconscious is complemented by what I term the hegemonic soldier: the ideological construct which informs the dominant cultural representations of soldiering and war, and which reinforces itself through representations in a fashion similar to the idea of nostalgic recreation. \u0000By applying these concepts, the analysis can uncover the counternarratives that stem from the texts’ military unconscious. The first case study examines the ways in which Klay’s “After Action Report” ruptures the military institution’s hegemonic discourse of killing by providing alternative discourses that allow the soldier subject to resist the hegemonic soldier, and reassert ownership over their experiences. The second case study examines how “War Stories” reveals and critiques the latent presence of the hegemonic soldier in contemporary American society. The hegemonic soldier is shown to be an omnipresent force that appears even in narratives that seek to subvert it. Together, the case studies demonstrate veteran literature’s unique potential in understanding the development of contemporary American culture.","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48836546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i1.6223
Kanyl Go
The present essay examines W. E. B. Du Bois’s multi-genre work, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920) and maintains that the author’s failure to see the realization of his vision for an intra-class and interracial working-class coalition in early twentieth-century United States turns him to interracial heterosexual romance for its symbolic fulfillment in the book. Observing Darkwater’s rhetorical innovation, my paper contends that its sociological segments on contemporary white male workers’ violence enacted against their black counterparts are thematically closely related to its romantic story, “The Princess of the Hither Isles.” Thus, this essay suggests that Du Bois’s frustration over the destruction of interracial working-class male bonds encourages him to seek an alternative discursive space in which he is allowed to map out his sexualized and gendered vision of anti-racist solidarity. I also note Du Bois’s anxiety-ridden negotiation of male discourses as a black man who simultaneously occupies disempowered racial and empowered gendered positions.
{"title":"Interracial Homosocial Bonds and Interracial Heterosexual Romance in W. E. B. Du Bois’s Darkwater","authors":"Kanyl Go","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i1.6223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6223","url":null,"abstract":"The present essay examines W. E. B. Du Bois’s multi-genre work, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920) and maintains that the author’s failure to see the realization of his vision for an intra-class and interracial working-class coalition in early twentieth-century United States turns him to interracial heterosexual romance for its symbolic fulfillment in the book. Observing Darkwater’s rhetorical innovation, my paper contends that its sociological segments on contemporary white male workers’ violence enacted against their black counterparts are thematically closely related to its romantic story, “The Princess of the Hither Isles.” Thus, this essay suggests that Du Bois’s frustration over the destruction of interracial working-class male bonds encourages him to seek an alternative discursive space in which he is allowed to map out his sexualized and gendered vision of anti-racist solidarity. I also note Du Bois’s anxiety-ridden negotiation of male discourses as a black man who simultaneously occupies disempowered racial and empowered gendered positions.","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47837396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i1.6221
Adam Hjorthén
This article explores the meanings and significances of memories of settler histories in transatlantic relations. Looking specifically at the medium of monuments, it asks what functions they have played, and continue to play, in relations between the United States and certain European countries. The first section of the article offers an anatomy of transatlantic monuments, outlining its key characteristics through a discussion of some prominent examples that range from Christopher Columbus to Leif Eriksson and the Plymouth Colony. In the second section, this typology is further explored through an in-depth analysis of the 1938 monument of the New Sweden colony (1638–1655) designed by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles. The third section deals with memory and ethics, focusing on the analytical consequences and contemporary ramifications of applying a transatlantic perspective on monuments of settler histories. The article argues that a framing of memories of European settlement in America as transatlantic encourages us to rethink its meanings and functions, but also to reappraise questions of responsibility. As monuments of settlement appear to be politically relevant in Euro-American relations, we need to address consequential questions of inclusion, authority, accountability, and agency, that are central to an ethics of memory in transnational settings.
{"title":"Transatlantic Monuments: On Memories and Ethics of Settler Histories","authors":"Adam Hjorthén","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i1.6221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6221","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the meanings and significances of memories of settler histories in transatlantic relations. Looking specifically at the medium of monuments, it asks what functions they have played, and continue to play, in relations between the United States and certain European countries. The first section of the article offers an anatomy of transatlantic monuments, outlining its key characteristics through a discussion of some prominent examples that range from Christopher Columbus to Leif Eriksson and the Plymouth Colony. In the second section, this typology is further explored through an in-depth analysis of the 1938 monument of the New Sweden colony (1638–1655) designed by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles. The third section deals with memory and ethics, focusing on the analytical consequences and contemporary ramifications of applying a transatlantic perspective on monuments of settler histories. The article argues that a framing of memories of European settlement in America as transatlantic encourages us to rethink its meanings and functions, but also to reappraise questions of responsibility. As monuments of settlement appear to be politically relevant in Euro-American relations, we need to address consequential questions of inclusion, authority, accountability, and agency, that are central to an ethics of memory in transnational settings.","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49368697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i1.6526
E. Valovirta
{"title":"Ramón E. Soto-Crespo's The White Trash Menace and Hemispheric Fiction","authors":"E. Valovirta","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i1.6526","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6526","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41316388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i1.6525
Anne Mørk
{"title":"Nichole M. Bauer's (ed.) Politicking While Female: The Political Lives of Women","authors":"Anne Mørk","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i1.6525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6525","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68562747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.22439/asca.v53i1.6224
Niko Heikkilä
{"title":"Racial Myths and the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan","authors":"Niko Heikkilä","doi":"10.22439/asca.v53i1.6224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v53i1.6224","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46305338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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