Item Details

abstract

In the years since the initial publication and subsequent expansion of The 1619 Project, discourses debating the proper narratives of American collective history have run rampant — as have the accusations of racial biases, anti-American propaganda, and the commodification of white guilt from figures ranging from former President Donald Trump to former Civil Rights participant Bob Woodson, who in 2020 sought to counter The 1619 Project with his initiative, 1776 Unites. While the authors of Unites have opposed 1619 primarily on the grounds listed above, in this thesis, I argue that the opposition to 1619 is more due to the Project’s efforts to insurge against racial ignorance by uncovering the histories and events that many U.S. Americans would prefer to stay buried, histories of the afterlife of slavery. Utilizing developments in the theorization of racial ignorance as actively produced by social epistemologies, I argue first that 1619 functions as a counter-memory in its insurgency. I then consider how 1776 Unites performs its counterinsurgency; to do so, I also modify the framework of strategic rhetorics of whiteness to consider how in opposing 1619, 1776 attempts to foreclose the futurity of antiracist work.

subject

Cultural Memory

Postracialism

Racial Ignorance

Social Epistemology

The 1619 Project

Whiteness

contributor

Tabackman, Robert Nathan (author)

Kelsie, Amber E (committee chair)

French, Nate T (committee member)

Atchison, Robert Jarrod (committee member)

date

2022-05-24T08:36:09Z (accessioned)

2022-05-24T08:36:09Z (available)

2022 (issued)

degree

Communication (discipline)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/100757 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

title

1619 VS 1776: UNSETTLING THE ARCHIVE, AND THE REPRODUCTION OF RACIAL IGNORANCE THROUGH NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALIST EPISTEMOLOGY

type

Thesis