Racism and ‘Free Speech’

Anshuman A. Mondal (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

264 Seiten

2025
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-47053-8 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

‘Free speech’ has become central to discussions about racism, and is increasingly weaponised against anti-racist movements. This book argues that the weaponization of ‘free speech’ across the political spectrum, particularly by the far-right/alt-right, has been central to the resurgence, rehabilitation and normalisation of racism within the mainstream politics of western liberal democracies in the last decade. The dilemma then, for anti-racist movements, is how to respond to such a challenge — for if ‘free speech’ allows racism, then it follows that the elimination of racism is not possible.

Anshuman A. Mondal argues that liberalism has made it look as if there is something called ‘free speech’ when, in fact, speech is enabled by the structures of power within which we are all embedded. These structures determine who gets to say what, and whose voices are heard. They create and sustain racism, and anti-racism should look beyond the mythology of ‘free speech’ and focus instead on creating expressive regimes that foster racial and social justice by reshaping social discourse and transforming racialized structures of power.

Anshuman A. Mondal is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of East Anglia. His research focusses on the construction of modern social and political identities, and the cultural politics attendant upon them. His books include Nationalism and Post-colonial Identity: Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt (2003), Amitav Ghosh (2007), and Young British Muslim Voices (2008). Since 2008, he has published extensively on the politics of ‘free speech’ and is the author of Islam and Controversy: The Politics of Free Speech after Rushdie (2014).

Acknowledgements
Preface
A note on form and structure

1 What can you say?
2 Are you kidding me?
3 What the hell is going on?

Part 1 Opening

Part 2 ‘Free Speech’
The paradoxes of liberty
The rhetorical foundations of liberalism
The trope of infinite and perpetual openness
On persuasion
What do they know of freedom who only freedom know?
The indistinction of liberty
Freedom and foreclosure

4 On tolerance
5 Cancel culture

Part 3 Anti-/Racism
Speech/silence/ing
Speech and silence: an anti-racist dialectic
Racism is/not …
How racism does its thing
Racism is what racism does
What did you say?
Whiteness and the transcendental imagination
Racism’s gothic imaginary
Why anti-racists don’t need ‘free speech’
Empowerment, not ‘freedom’

6 Coconuts
7 On statues, memorials and monuments
8 The paradox of (counter-)hegemony …

Part 4 Shapes
A one-dimensional freedom
Discursive liquidity: the shaping of discourse

9 The case against no platforming is not an open and shut one
10 Safe spaces
11 On harassment and bullying
12 Paul Gilroy in Finsbury Park

Part 5 Closing
Some final thoughts on liberalism and anti-racism

References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	11.05.2025
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	414 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-350-47053-8 / 1350470538
ISBN-13	978-1-350-47053-8 / 9781350470538
Zustand	Neuware