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Since the rise of Donald Trump and other right-wing authoritarians
worldwide, we have been told to “resist.” But this kind of
opposition looks surprisingly like restoring the status quo. Under
the banner of resistance, liberals and progressives have encouraged
voting for Democrats, reading the mainstream media, trusting the
science, putting up yard signs, buying the right products, and
celebrating a “return to normal.” How was “resistance”
diluted, and where can we find alternative forms of resistance for
present and future struggles? Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin offer a
clear-eyed critical account of how neoliberalism has redefined
resistance to thwart social movements and consolidate power. Elites
have domesticated and coopted some once-radical concepts and
practices into “restorative resistance” that bolsters support
for an unjust social order while marginalizing, racializing, and
criminalizing many others. Olson and Zamalin argue that true
resistance to racial neoliberalism must instead be deeply
antirestorative: collective, horizontal, counterhegemonic,
radically democratic insurrectionary movements that cannot be
redirected into shoring up the existing order. This “unruly
world-building”—exemplified by Occupy Wall Street, the Movement
for Black Lives, Indigenous activism at Standing Rock, and
more—pushes us to live, think, and dream beyond profit
maximization, democratic civility, and individual freedom.
Powerfully and accessibly written with manifesto-like urgency, The
Ends of Resistance shows how marginalized voices and social
movements deepen our thinking for confronting power.
Since the rise of Donald Trump and other right-wing authoritarians
worldwide, we have been told to “resist.” But this kind of
opposition looks surprisingly like restoring the status quo. Under
the banner of resistance, liberals and progressives have encouraged
voting for Democrats, reading the mainstream media, trusting the
science, putting up yard signs, buying the right products, and
celebrating a “return to normal.” How was “resistance”
diluted, and where can we find alternative forms of resistance for
present and future struggles? Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin offer a
clear-eyed critical account of how neoliberalism has redefined
resistance to thwart social movements and consolidate power. Elites
have domesticated and coopted some once-radical concepts and
practices into “restorative resistance” that bolsters support
for an unjust social order while marginalizing, racializing, and
criminalizing many others. Olson and Zamalin argue that true
resistance to racial neoliberalism must instead be deeply
antirestorative: collective, horizontal, counterhegemonic,
radically democratic insurrectionary movements that cannot be
redirected into shoring up the existing order. This “unruly
world-building”—exemplified by Occupy Wall Street, the Movement
for Black Lives, Indigenous activism at Standing Rock, and
more—pushes us to live, think, and dream beyond profit
maximization, democratic civility, and individual freedom.
Powerfully and accessibly written with manifesto-like urgency, The
Ends of Resistance shows how marginalized voices and social
movements deepen our thinking for confronting power.
The twenty-first century presents unique political challenges, like
increasing concern over racially based police brutality and mass
incarceration, continuing economic and gender inequality, the rise
of conservative and libertarian politics, and the appropriate role
of religion in American politics. Current scholarship in American
political thought research neither adequately responds to the
contemporary moment in American politics nor fully captures the
depth and scope of this rich tradition. This collection of essays
offers an innovative expansion of the American political tradition.
By exposing the major ideas and thinkers of the four major yet
still underappreciated alternative traditions of American political
thought-African American, feminist, radical and conservative-this
book challenges the boundaries of American political thinking about
such values like freedom, justice, equality, democracy, economy,
rights, identity, and the role of the state in American life. These
traditions, the various authors show in different ways, not only
present a much fuller and more accurate characterization of what
counts as American political thought. They are also especially
unique for the conceptual resources they provide for addressing
contemporary developments in American politics. Offering an
original and substantive interpretation of thinkers and movements,
American Political Thought will help students understand how to put
American political thought into conversation with contemporary
debates in political theory.
The twenty-first century presents unique political challenges, like
increasing concern over racially based police brutality and mass
incarceration, continuing economic and gender inequality, the rise
of conservative and libertarian politics, and the appropriate role
of religion in American politics. Current scholarship in American
political thought research neither adequately responds to the
contemporary moment in American politics nor fully captures the
depth and scope of this rich tradition. This collection of essays
offers an innovative expansion of the American political tradition.
By exposing the major ideas and thinkers of the four major yet
still underappreciated alternative traditions of American political
thought-African American, feminist, radical and conservative-this
book challenges the boundaries of American political thinking about
such values like freedom, justice, equality, democracy, economy,
rights, identity, and the role of the state in American life. These
traditions, the various authors show in different ways, not only
present a much fuller and more accurate characterization of what
counts as American political thought. They are also especially
unique for the conceptual resources they provide for addressing
contemporary developments in American politics. Offering an
original and substantive interpretation of thinkers and movements,
American Political Thought will help students understand how to put
American political thought into conversation with contemporary
debates in political theory.
This book demonstrates how certain African American writers
radically re-envisioned core American ideals in order to make them
serviceable for racial justice. Each writer's unprecedented
reconstruction of key American values has the potential to energize
American citizenship today.
Within the history of African American struggle against racist
oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has
depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future
beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer
powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical
concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen
who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of
the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers a groundbreaking
examination of African American visions of social transformation
and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures
associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism,
Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian
tradition continues to challenge American political thought and
culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal
Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra's cosmic
mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and
Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the
antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright.
Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically
immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both
an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power
relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege
across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope
for combating injustice.
An introduction to antiracism, a powerful tradition crucial for
energizing American democracy On August 12, 2017, in
Charlottesville, Virginia, a rally of white nationalists and white
supremacists culminated in the death of a woman murdered in the
street. Those events made clear that racism is alive and well in
the United States of America. However, they also brought into sharp
relief another American tradition: antiracism. While racists
marched and chanted in the streets, they were met and matched by
even larger numbers of protesters calling for racism's end. Racism
is America's original and most enduring sin, with well-known
historic and contemporary markers: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow,
redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality. But racism has
always been challenged by an opposing political theory and
practice. Alex Zamalin's Antiracism tells the story of that
opposition. The most theoretically generative and politically
valuable source of antiracist thought has been the black American
intellectual tradition. While other forms of racial oppression-for
example, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Latino racism-have
been and continue to be present in American life, antiblack racism
has always been the primary focus of American antiracist movements.
From antislavery abolition to the antilynching movement, black
socialism to feminism, the long Civil Rights movement to the
contemporary Movement for Black Lives, Antiracism examines the way
the black antiracist tradition has thought about domination,
exclusion, and power, as well as freedom, equality, justice,
struggle, and political hope in dark times. Antiracism is an
accessible introduction to the political theory of black American
antiracism, through a study of the major figures, texts, and
political movements across US history. Zamalin argues that
antiracism is a powerful tradition that is crucial for energizing
American democracy.
American political thought has been shaped by those who fought back
against social inequality, economic exclusion, the denial of
political representation, and slavery, the country's original sin.
Yet too often the voices of African American resistance have been
neglected, silenced, or forgotten. In this timely book, Alex
Zamalin considers key moments of resistance to demonstrate its
current and future necessity, focusing on five activists across two
centuries who fought to foreground slavery and racial injustice in
American political discourse. Struggle on Their Minds shows how the
core values of the American political tradition have been
continually challenged-and strengthened-by antiracist resistance,
creating a rich legacy of African American political thought that
is an invaluable component of contemporary struggles for racial
justice. Zamalin looks at the language and concepts put forward by
the abolitionists David Walker and Frederick Douglass, the
antilynching activist Ida B. Wells, the Black Panther Party
organizer Huey Newton, and the prison abolitionist Angela Davis.
Each helped revise and transform ideas about power, justice,
community, action, and the role of emotion in political action.
Their thought encouraged abolitionists to call for the eradication
of slavery, black journalists to chastise American institutions for
their indifference to lynching, and black radicals to police the
police and to condemn racial injustice in the American prison
system. Taken together, these movements pushed political theory
forward, offering new language and concepts to sustain democracy in
tense times. Struggle on Their Minds is a critical text for our
contemporary moment, showing how the political thought that comes
out of resistance can energize the practice of democratic
citizenship and ultimately help address the prevailing problem of
racial injustice.
American political thought has been shaped by those who fought back
against social inequality, economic exclusion, the denial of
political representation, and slavery, the country's original sin.
Yet too often the voices of African American resistance have been
neglected, silenced, or forgotten. In this timely book, Alex
Zamalin considers key moments of resistance to demonstrate its
current and future necessity, focusing on five activists across two
centuries who fought to foreground slavery and racial injustice in
American political discourse. Struggle on Their Minds shows how the
core values of the American political tradition have been
continually challenged-and strengthened-by antiracist resistance,
creating a rich legacy of African American political thought that
is an invaluable component of contemporary struggles for racial
justice. Zamalin looks at the language and concepts put forward by
the abolitionists David Walker and Frederick Douglass, the
antilynching activist Ida B. Wells, the Black Panther Party
organizer Huey Newton, and the prison abolitionist Angela Davis.
Each helped revise and transform ideas about power, justice,
community, action, and the role of emotion in political action.
Their thought encouraged abolitionists to call for the eradication
of slavery, black journalists to chastise American institutions for
their indifference to lynching, and black radicals to police the
police and to condemn racial injustice in the American prison
system. Taken together, these movements pushed political theory
forward, offering new language and concepts to sustain democracy in
tense times. Struggle on Their Minds is a critical text for our
contemporary moment, showing how the political thought that comes
out of resistance can energize the practice of democratic
citizenship and ultimately help address the prevailing problem of
racial injustice.
Within the history of African American struggle against racist
oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has
depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future
beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer
powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical
concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen
who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of
the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers a groundbreaking
examination of African American visions of social transformation
and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures
associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism,
Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian
tradition continues to challenge American political thought and
culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal
Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra's cosmic
mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and
Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the
antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright.
Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically
immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both
an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power
relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege
across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope
for combating injustice.
An introduction to antiracism, a powerful tradition crucial for
energizing American democracy On August 12, 2017, in
Charlottesville, Virginia, a rally of white nationalists and white
supremacists culminated in the death of a woman murdered in the
street. Those events made clear that racism is alive and well in
the United States of America. However, they also brought into sharp
relief another American tradition: antiracism. While racists
marched and chanted in the streets, they were met and matched by
even larger numbers of protesters calling for racism's end. Racism
is America's original and most enduring sin, with well-known
historic and contemporary markers: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow,
redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality. But racism has
always been challenged by an opposing political theory and
practice. Alex Zamalin's Antiracism tells the story of that
opposition. The most theoretically generative and politically
valuable source of antiracist thought has been the black American
intellectual tradition. While other forms of racial oppression-for
example, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Latino racism-have
been and continue to be present in American life, antiblack racism
has always been the primary focus of American antiracist movements.
From antislavery abolition to the antilynching movement, black
socialism to feminism, the long Civil Rights movement to the
contemporary Movement for Black Lives, Antiracism examines the way
the black antiracist tradition has thought about domination,
exclusion, and power, as well as freedom, equality, justice,
struggle, and political hope in dark times. Antiracism is an
accessible introduction to the political theory of black American
antiracism, through a study of the major figures, texts, and
political movements across US history. Zamalin argues that
antiracism is a powerful tradition that is crucial for energizing
American democracy.
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