Modes and Moves of Protest Crowds and Mobs in Nathan Hill’s The Nix
Modes and Moves of Protest Crowds and Mobs in Nathan Hill’s The Nix
Author(s): Nicola PaladinSubject(s): Political history, Politics and society, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Theory of Literature, American Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: mobs; crowds; American literature; The Nix; Nathan Hill; mass protest; dissent;
Summary/Abstract: The role of mass protest has been recurrently central yet controversial in the American culture. Central because American history presents a constellation of significant collective protest movements, very different among them but generally symptomatic of a contrast between the people and the state: from the 1775 Boston Massacre and the 1787 Shays’s Rebellion, to the 1863 Draft Riots, but also considering the 1917 Houston Riot or anti-Vietnam war pacifist protests. Controversial, since despite—or because of—its historical persistence, American mass protest has generated a media bias which labelled mobs and crowds as a disruptive popular expression, thus constructing an opposition—practical and rhetorical—between popular subversive tensions, and the so-called middle class “conservative” and self-preserving struggle.
Journal: Review of International American Studies
- Issue Year: 12/2019
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 103-118
- Page Count: 16
- Language: English