Dread
The Phobic Imagination in Antislavery Literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23212704 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Don James Mclaughlin (0000-0002-4650-5747, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 21-48 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | J19 (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2166-742X • E-ISSN: 2166-7438 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jnc.2019.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W2953963420 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 16 |
This article examines how abolitionists developed a rhetorical tradition premised on the neologisms colorphobia and Negrophobia in order to posit an affective basis for race prejudice. These concepts functioned initially as puns on hydrophobia, the historical name for rabies, named for the dread of swallowing known to accompany the disease. In other words, colorphobia harbored a precise metaphor in its etymology, picturing the slave system as a mad dog in the throes of a rabid breakdown, spreading race prejudice in the form of an infectious fear. Exploring the forms this rhetoric could take, I demonstrate that while satire thus served as the dominant mode early on, phobia’s emphasis on fear soon began to inspire strategies of public health activism too. Political discourse in the U.S. began to incorporate scientific investigations of fear as a psychological state. I conclude by arguing that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Dred is the most significant work of literature to respond to this rhetorical trend. Skeptical of the move to isolate fear as an exclusively pathological feeling, Stowe endeavors to repurpose a phobic aesthetic in the form of the novel’s protagonist Dred, originally spelled “Dread,” to explore the potential uses of fear as a political affect.
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Feeling · Hypocrisy · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Prejudice (legal term) · Psychoanalysis · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Skepticism · Sociology · Humor Studies and Applications · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology
The normal and the pathological
Marxism and literature
The Biopolitics of Feeling
Black Skin, White Masks
Hatred of democracy
Early African American Print Culture
Creative Conflict in African American Thought
The Samson Figure in Milton's Samson Agonistes and Stowe's Dred
The Medical Case Narrative
Failure to Deliver
Heartfelt Thanks to Punch for the Picture
Apocalyptic Sentimentalism
The Dream of the Great American Novel
Who's Afraid of Virginia's Nat Turner? Mesmerism, Stowe, and the Terror of Things
On the Case
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |