1. Rhetorical Malewashing of Racialized Violence in the United States: (Mis)Remembering the Ku Klux Klan.
- Author
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Marsh, Mallory L.
- Subjects
- *
PASTICCIO , *COLLECTIVE memory , *WHITE supremacy , *RACE discrimination , *MASCULINITY - Abstract
Advancing the concept of rhetorical malewashing, in this essay I argue expunging women's efforts from the telling of historical racialized violence constructs a flawed and incomplete account of white supremacy by dismissing white women's racist agentic capacities. As an extended granular example, I highlight how contemporary public memory of the Ku Klux Klan omits the fundamental role white women served in both the organization's endurance and the orchestration of its campaign of terror. Examining a pastiche of modern memory texts from popular culture that constitute our present public imaginary of the Klan, I attend to how such texts reflect our tendency to reduce racialized violence to an exclusively masculine phenomenon. I conclude by addressing implications of such reductionist beliefs, including our constricted ability to grapple with white supremacy's more insidious feminine form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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