{"title":"白人模因的负担:21世纪白人至上主义网络文化的复制与适应","authors":"Laura Jeffries","doi":"10.5325/RECEPTION.10.1.0050","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem \"The White Man's Burden\" is frequently invoked in the online postings of white supremacists making various arguments about contemporary race relations. Many follow Senator Ben Tillman's early appropriation of the text as an argument for racial separatism and isolationism, while others advocate a new imperialism. This article examines how Kipling's poem takes on the special qualities of a meme, allowing a loosely affiliated community of authors and audiences to signal their identities through transmission of a shared text even as they stray in multiple directions from its original meaning. Newly examined primary sources draw from a range of so-called \"alt-right\" spokesmen and obscure Internet users to demonstrate how the concept of the \"white man's burden\" has adapted to survive in a cultural environment more than a century removed from its origin, and how Kipling himself has been adopted by a twenty-first century subculture.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2018-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"The White Meme's Burden: Replication and Adaptation in Twenty-First Century White Supremacist Internet Cultures\",\"authors\":\"Laura Jeffries\",\"doi\":\"10.5325/RECEPTION.10.1.0050\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"abstract:Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem \\\"The White Man's Burden\\\" is frequently invoked in the online postings of white supremacists making various arguments about contemporary race relations. Many follow Senator Ben Tillman's early appropriation of the text as an argument for racial separatism and isolationism, while others advocate a new imperialism. This article examines how Kipling's poem takes on the special qualities of a meme, allowing a loosely affiliated community of authors and audiences to signal their identities through transmission of a shared text even as they stray in multiple directions from its original meaning. Newly examined primary sources draw from a range of so-called \\\"alt-right\\\" spokesmen and obscure Internet users to demonstrate how the concept of the \\\"white man's burden\\\" has adapted to survive in a cultural environment more than a century removed from its origin, and how Kipling himself has been adopted by a twenty-first century subculture.\",\"PeriodicalId\":40584,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.1000,\"publicationDate\":\"2018-06-30\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"2\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.5325/RECEPTION.10.1.0050\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5325/RECEPTION.10.1.0050","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
The White Meme's Burden: Replication and Adaptation in Twenty-First Century White Supremacist Internet Cultures
abstract:Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem "The White Man's Burden" is frequently invoked in the online postings of white supremacists making various arguments about contemporary race relations. Many follow Senator Ben Tillman's early appropriation of the text as an argument for racial separatism and isolationism, while others advocate a new imperialism. This article examines how Kipling's poem takes on the special qualities of a meme, allowing a loosely affiliated community of authors and audiences to signal their identities through transmission of a shared text even as they stray in multiple directions from its original meaning. Newly examined primary sources draw from a range of so-called "alt-right" spokesmen and obscure Internet users to demonstrate how the concept of the "white man's burden" has adapted to survive in a cultural environment more than a century removed from its origin, and how Kipling himself has been adopted by a twenty-first century subculture.
期刊介绍:
Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal published once a year. It seeks to promote dialog and discussion among scholars engaged in theoretical and practical analyses in several related fields: reader-response criticism and pedagogy, reception study, history of reading and the book, audience and communication studies, institutional studies and histories, as well as interpretive strategies related to feminism, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial studies, focusing mainly but not exclusively on the literature, culture, and media of England and the United States.