{"title":"When Puppies start to hate: the revanchist nostalgia of the Hugo Awards’ PuppyGate controversy","authors":"Max Dosser","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2267656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2267656","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn 2015, two groups of right-wing authors and fans – the Sad and Rabid Puppies – flooded the Hugo Awards with literature they deemed “popular” and anti-“message fiction.” These reactionaries mobilized the affects of melancholy, anger, and hatred against the increasing diversification of speculative fiction. Through analyzing the affective economy of “PuppyGate,” this article demonstrates the key role of nostalgia in the affective economies of reactionary movements, paying particular attention to the tension between restorative nostalgia, with its aim to return to an imagined past, and revanchist nostalgia, which strives to destroy the present and punish those who made that destruction necessary.KEYWORDS: AffectHugo Awardsrevanchist nostalgiareactionariesspeculative fiction AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Calum Matheson, Caitlin Bruce, Lester Olson, Dan Wang, Ron Von Burg, and Brent Malin for their feedback on various drafts of this article. I would also like to thank David E.K. Smith, Kevin Pabst, Reed Van Schenck, Larissa A. Irizarry, as well as the editor, editorial assistant, and reviewers for their thoughtful, generative suggestions throughout the writing and editing process. Special thanks are owed to Thomas J. Griffin, who fanned my interest in SF and introduced me to PuppyGate, and to Brenna Dosser for her unwavering support throughout the many cycles of edits.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The genre of speculative fiction encompasses both science fiction and fantasy, but the authors involved in PuppyGate tend to focus more on science fiction. One potential explanation might be that many of the works the PuppyGate authors reference were from the 1950s and 1960s, before fantasy was revived as a genre but a classical period for conservative science fiction.2 Abigail Nussbaum, “The 2015 Hugo Awards: Why I Am Voting No Award in the Best Fan Writer Category,” Asking the Wrong Questions, April 10, 2015, http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-2015-hugo-awards-why-i-am-voting-no.html.3 “Hugo Award Nominations Spark Criticism over Diversity in Sci-Fi,” The Telegraph, April 7, 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11517920/Hugo-Award-nominations-spark-criticism-over-diversity-in-sci-fi.html.4 Jonathan Flatley, Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 12. Flatley describes emotions through the inside-out model, while scholars such as Debra Hawhee and Ann Cvetovich describe how emotions move across bodies and publics in their works.5 Flatley, Affective Mapping, 12.6 Caitlin Bruce, “The Balaclava as Affect Generator: Free Pussy Riot Protests and Transnational Iconicity,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 48 https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2014.989246.7 Jenny Edbauer Rice, “The New ‘New’: Making a Case for Critical Affect Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"79 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135411963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Protecting women’s sports? Anti-trans youth sports bills and white supremacy","authors":"Mia Fischer","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2267646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2267646","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTAn unprecedented number of anti-transgender youth sports bills have been introduced in various state legislatures across the United States since 2020. These bills seek to bar trans youth from playing and competing in sports that align with their gender identity. Scrutinizing the rise in these bills and the fearmongering that accompanies them, this article untangles how the deployment of a white feminist rhetoric of “protecting women’s sports” by a coalition of anti-LGBTQ Christian conservative forces and trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) women’s sports advocates shields these bills and their proponents from accusations of transphobia and bigotry while obscuring their white supremacist underpinnings.KEYWORDS: Transgendersportsathleteslegislationwhite supremacy AcknowledgmentsMuch gratitude to K. Mohrman, Jennifer McClearen, and the anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful suggestions and critiques were crucial for sharpening my arguments. I dedicate this article to my mother whose Alzheimer journey is reminding all of us to find and treasure moments of joy and laughter even in despair.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Mia Fischer and Jennifer McClearen, “Transgender Athletes and the Queer Art of Athletic Failure,” Communication & Sport 8, no. 2 (2020): 147–67; Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, “The Powers of Testosterone: Obscuring Race and Regional Bias in the Regulation of Women Athletes,” Feminist Formations 30, no. 2 (2018): 1–39; Lindsey P. Pieper, Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women’s Sports (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2016); Sarah Teetzel, “On Transgendered Athletes, Fairness and Doping: An International Challenge,” Sport in Society 9 (2006): 227–51; Steven Petrow, “Do transgender Athletes have an Unfair Advantage at the Olympics?” Washington Post, August 8, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/do-transgender-athletes-have-an-unfair-advantage-at-the-olympics/2016/08/05/08169676-5b50-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html?utm_term..fed174b8ee3b2 In particular, testosterone is frequently invoked as the key marker for conferring athletic advantage. There currently is, however, no consensus in the scientific literature that elevated levels of testosterone do, indeed, provide transgender or intersex athletes with a significant competitive advantage over cisgender athletes. For a basic overview of studies on the impact of testosterone on athletic performance see Will Hobson, “The Fight for the Future of Transgender Athletes,” The Washington Post, April 15, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/04/15/transgender-athletes-womens-sports-title-ix/3 Julie Kliegman, “Idaho Banned Trans Athletes From Women’s Sports. She’s Fighting Back,” Sports Illustrated, June 30, 2020, https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2020/06/30/idaho-transgender-ban-fighting-back4 Melissa Block, “Idaho’s Transgender Sports Ban Faces A Major Legal Hurdle,” NPR, May ","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"2 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135411969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"F*ck your condolences: the rhetoric of an impossible demand","authors":"D. Carroll","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2241534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2241534","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT On July 16, 2019, after Daniel Pantaleo’s non-indictment, Emerald Snipes-Garner, Eric Garner’s daughter, took to the steps of the New York Court House and demanded the impossible, that her deceased family members be alive. In this essay, I approach Snipes-Garner’s advocacy with a version of racial rhetorical criticism focused on how Black people rebuke racism. Attuning to Snipes-Garner’s impossible demand illuminates the usefulness of disruptive racial rhetorical criticism and illustrates how valuing Black life can interrupt “white time,” and create a “Blackened time.” This essay concludes by explicating how scholars can participate in demanding the impossible.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"343 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45096171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rhetorical fractals: an Afrocentric analysis of #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd","authors":"E. Bloomfield, Curtis Ladrillo Chamblee","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2228872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2228872","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Derek Chauvin’s trial for murdering George Floyd was a flashpoint of public deliberation around justice, accountability, and police reform. Burkean approaches to guilt, and their corresponding Western understandings of language, can be extended through Afrocentric rhetorics. We propose the “rhetorical fractal” to encompass Black ways of knowing and communicating. Unlike a cycle that returns to its starting point, a fractal is endlessly complex and cannot be refined to a single instance. Informed by Afrocentric concepts of nommo, hush harbors, and Black publics, we apply the rhetorical fractal to hashtags that circulated on Twitter during Chauvin’s trial and verdict.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"307 - 324"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49123866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Remaking the world memetically”: interrogating white nationalist subject formation through the circulation of the “Wagecuck” meme","authors":"Reed Van Schenck","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2228867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2228867","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay examines the wagecuck, a 4chan meme portraying wage workers and NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) counterparts, as an artifact of white nationalist desire. Through a rhetorical materialist analysis focused on exchange, I argue that wagecuck memes encourage viewers to pursue white recognition to offset anxieties of race, class, and sexuality. The meme circulates cuckold and wage-slave tropes to construct the white working-class man as a human agent in pursuit of antiblack jouissance. This research identifies the fantasy of racial agency as the meme’s operative logic, encouraging scholars to move beyond its humanist underpinnings.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"375 - 395"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44447286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Staging progressive dissensus and the politics of Black silence: Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders, and the August 2015 rally in Seattle","authors":"D. Dilliplane","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2229412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2229412","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In August 2015, Black Lives Matter activists Mara Willaford and Marissa Johnson interrupted a Seattle rally with a four-and-a-half-minute silent commemoration of Black teenager Michael Brown, preventing presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders from speaking. Using a Rancièrean political framework and a methodology of performance-inflected rhetorical criticism, I explore how this silent protest exemplifies what I call “voiced silence” and transfigures a tradition of tactical Black silence as both repression and resistance. I argue the activists staged a scene of dissensus, fracturing the false consensus of the progressive left’s post-racial façade and thereby revealing the presence of two worlds in one.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"325 - 342"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44778909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Trump administration’s framing of the MS-13 gang: narrowing the borders of belonging with homeland maternity","authors":"Jimmy Lizama","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2236187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2236187","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article reveals how the Trump administration constructed an anti-immigrant narrative tailored for Central Americans that modified established anti-Mexican nativism. By reinscribing a hegemonic “mythos” about gangs, harnessing homeland maternity, and representing undocumented Central Americans as a primary factor for MS-13’s presence and waves of violence, the administration portrayed Central American immigration as an existential threat to America. Analyzing this rhetoric elucidates an intervention in contemporary nativism by showing how its rhetoricity relies on the bordering power of security discourse, racialized fears relating to non-white population expansion, and a racial interpellation facilitated by homeland maternity.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"358 - 374"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41779240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Truth as White property: solidifying White epistemology and owning racial knowledge","authors":"Vincent N. Pham","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2199831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2199831","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election underscored the role of “Truth” and how it functions in an epistemological relationship with conservative identity. Drawing upon Cheryl Harris’s notion of “whiteness as property,” this article forwards a theoretical framework of “Truth as White property” whereby Truth functions as an extension of whiteness and as a possession of whiteness. Using Fox News’ treatment of the 1619 Project as a case study, the author argues that White ownership of Truth relies on the rhetorical strategies of discrediting, dismissing, and redirecting.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"288 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44502019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Place is everything: remembering responsibilities between and beyond land acknowledgments","authors":"Ashley Cordes","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2202724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2202724","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Land acknowledgment statements in higher education have become pervasive performative gestures that serve to relieve settler guilt and manage public memory. This article details the distribution of stolen Indigenous lands to universities, and identifies problematics of university land acknowledgments. I offer the concept of “impoverished memory” to discuss the insufficient, duplicative means by which universities acknowledge land, and “felt memory” to Indigenize critical memory politics of land, peoples, and nonhumans. To fight against the machines of colonialism within universities and beyond, I offer specific scyborgian anti- and decolonial actions that are specific to place and for Indigenous futures.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"191 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42722307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: possibilities of collaboration between public memory scholars and higher education public relations professionals","authors":"LaTonya J. Taylor","doi":"10.1080/14791420.2023.2201335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2201335","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This is the second part of a two-part forum called Interventions in Public Memory: Interrogating the Critical/Cultural Landscape of Higher Education, edited by Meredith M. Bagley. In this introduction, I explore the ways public memory scholars and higher education public relations professionals can collaborate to enhance critical/cultural approaches to institutional public memory on campuses. As we face this important moment for public memory on US campuses, common concerns for politics, place, dialectic tension, and repair that animate both public memory and public relations call for collaboration between these groups.","PeriodicalId":46339,"journal":{"name":"Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"157 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46738870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}