The Counterrevolutionary Shadow
Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University Press of Kansas
Publishing:14th Oct '25
£26.99
This title is due to be published on 14th October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£80.00(9780700639731)
A bold explanation of how reactionary political movements appeal to racism to reconcile American democracy with antidemocratic practices.
“All power to the people!” So goes the familiar slogan of 1960s racial justice politics. The message is clear: the fight against racism is a fight for greater democracy—for the rule of “the people.” And yet, across American history, movements of racial backlash have also framed themselves as aiming to deliver greater democracy and redeem the rule of “the people.” Examples abound, ranging from the Southern Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction, to the “populist” backlash to the civil rights movement, and the white revanchism of our own time. How is it that we find claims to greater democracy on both sides of these struggles? What does this reveal about modern democracy, popular sovereignty, and the peculiar politics of race in America?
The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People provides a novel account of the relationship between race and democratic politics in the United States. Across five chapters, Michael Gorup turns to the life and work of key figures in the history of American political thought—including Thomas Jefferson, Hosea Easton, David Walker, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Huey P. Newton—to argue that racial politics in the United States has always been a politics of peoplehood. Racism is what Gorup calls a politics of “popular enclosure”: it limits the scope of democratic power by circumscribing who is said to belong to "the people.” In so doing, it contains democratization from within. Neither strictly antidemocratic, nor a necessary entailment of modern democracy as such, Gorup argues that racism is best understood as a political construct developed to manage, if never fully reconcile, the contradictions that beset settler democracy.
Racism is, in short, American democracy’s “counterrevolutionary shadow”—a technology for rendering despotic practices like enslavement, exploitation, and dispossession tolerable within a society where the people are said to rule.
"In this remarkable book, Michael Gorup reveals himself to be a leading scholar of American race and the politics of popular sovereignty. In exquisite detail, rather than argue that American democracy is always moving in a more egalitarian direction, Group examines the way that a defining strain of American politics has always been to use the idea of peoplehood to reconstruct social hierarchy. Focusing particularly on the way racism is 82 a democratic technology of counterrevolution, 82 7 Gorup takes us on a historically expansive and theoretically sophisticated journey that answers crucial questions about the nature of American political ideology. This book is a major intervention in the field of American political thought." 82 2 Alex Zamalin, author of Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in our Obsession with Civility
"In this meticulously researched and compellingly written book, Michael Gorup provides a new interpretation of the racial politics of peoplehood in the United States. Joining a chorus of authors who have argued that racial domination has profoundly shaped democratic aspirations for popular sovereignty, Gorup ups the ante by charting how white supremacy has also served as a 82 counterrevolutionary shadow, 82 7 a form of racial enclosure that has restricted the scope and force of popular democratic politics. This is a must read for anyone interested in better understanding the intersections of race and democratic theory." 82 2 Adam Dahl, author of Empire of the People: Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought
"Racism is the counterrevolutionary shadow to American democracy, Michael Gorup argues in this exciting and important book. Racism draws upon the tenets of democracy 82 2 from popular sovereignty to rule of law 82 2 in order to undermine democracy 82 7 s true revolutionary force as collective self-rule. Analyzing thinkers from Thomas Jefferson to Ida B. Wells to Huey Newton, Gorup not only reveals America 82 7 s counterrevolutionary shadow, he also shows what it might look like to finally detangle democracy from racial despotism." 82 2 Elisabeth Anker, author of Ugly Freedoms
"In The Counterrevolutionary Shadow, Michael Gorup explores how American conceptions of race, peoplehood, and democracy both include and exceed the logics of domination and despotism. Drawing on a rich archive rooted in the Black radical tradition, Gorup approaches race as a world-building practice whose relationship to democracy has often been constrained yet remains a necessary site of struggle and possibility." 82 2 Cristina Beltrá n, author of Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy
ISBN: 9780700639748
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
320 pages