Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering

by Travis D. Boyce (Editor), Winsome M. Chunnu (Editor)

Overview

Historicizing Fear is a historical interrogation of the use of fear as a tool to vilify and persecute groups and individuals from a global perspective, offering an unflinching look at racism, fearful framing, oppression, and marginalization across human history.The book examines fear and Othering from a historical context, providing a better understanding of how power and oppression is used in the present day.
 
Contributors ground their work in the theory of Othering—the reductive action of labeling a person as someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the Other—in relation to historical events, demonstrating that fear of the Other is universal, timeless, and interconnected. Chapters address the music of neo-Nazi white power groups, fear perpetuated through the social construct of black masculinity in a racially hegemonic society, the terror and racial cleansing in early twentieth-century Arkansas, the fear of drug-addicted Vietnam War veterans, the creation of fear by the Tang Dynasty, and more.
 
Timely, provocative, and rigorously researched, Historicizing Fear shows how the Othering of members of different ethnic groups has been used to propagate fear and social tension, justify state violence, and prevent groups or individuals from gaining equality. Broadening the context of how fear of the Other can be used as a propaganda tool, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, anthropology, political science, popular culture, critical race issues, social justice, and ethnic studies, as well as the general reader concerned with the fearful framing prevalent in politics.
 
Contributors:
Quaylan Allen, Melanie Armstrong, Brecht De Smet, Kirsten Dyck, Adam C. Fong, Jeff Johnson, Łukasz Kamieński, Guy Lancaster, Henry Santos Metcalf, Julie M. Powell, Jelle Versieren
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646420018
Publisher:	University Press of Colorado
Publication date:	02/21/2020
Edition description:	1
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Travis D. Boyce is chair of African-American studies at San Jose State University. His research interests are in contemporary African American history and popular culture, especially the intersection of race, fashion, and social media in the sporting world. He has authored or coauthored chapters in several edited collections and peer-reviewed journals. His most recent work, “Reproducing Lynching and Spectacle: The Burning and Desecration of Colin Kaepernick’s Jersey,” is part of the edited volume Racism and Discrimination in the Sporting World.
 
Winsome M. Chunnu is director of Multicultural Programs at Ohio University. Her areas of expertise are educational policy, policy implementation, race and politics, and popular culture. She has coauthored chapters in several edited collections and her work has been published in TheJournal of Pan African Studies, the Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies, the International Journal of Qualitative Methods, and the International Journal of Education and Research.

Table of Contents

"I Want to Get Rid of My Fear": An Introduction Travis D. Boyce Winsome M. Chunnu 3

Defining the "Other"/Pathologizing Differences

1 "Up to No Good": The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Fear of Black Men in US Society Quaylan Allen Henry Santos Metcalf 19

2 Southern Perils: Chinese Views of Their Southern Territories during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) Adam C. Fong 35

3 Microbe Culture: Germ Politics and the Unseen Racial History of Nature Melanie Armstrong 52

Reinforcing or Spreading Fear of the "Other"

4 "They'll Take Away Our Birthrights": How White-Power Musicians Instill Fear of White Extinction Kirsten Dyck 73

5 "… or Suffer the Consequences of Staying": Terror and Racial Cleansing in Arkansas Guy Lancaster 88

6 Making "The Case against the 'Reds'": Racializing Communism, 1919-1920 Julie M. Powell 101

7 Toward a Post-Racial Society, or a "Rebirth" of a Nation? White Anxiety and Fear of Black Equality in the United States Travis D. Boyce Winsome M. Chunnu 122

How Fear, Once Created and Spread, Is Used for Political Ends

8 A Pharmacological Gulf of Tonkin: The Myth of the Addicted Army in Vietnam and the Fear of a Junkie Veteran Lukasz Kamienski 157

9 The Strategies of Fear, the Commercialization of Society, and the Rise of the Factory System in the Low Countries during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Jelle Versieren Brecht De Smet 176

10 Aliens, Enemy Aliens, and Minors: Anti-Radicalism and the Jewish Left Jeffrey A. Johnson 194

About the Contributors 209

Index 213