American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability / / Russ Castronovo.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Castronovo, Russ,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (304 p.) :; 9 b/w illus.

An incisive critique that examines the origins of contemporary American ideas about surveillance, terrorism, and white supremacyFor more than three centuries, Americans have pursued strategies of security that routinely make them feel vulnerable, unsafe, and insecure. American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability probes this paradox by examining American attachments to the terror of the sublime, the fear of uncertainty, and the anxieties produced by unending racial threat.Challenging conventional approaches that leave questions of security to policy experts, Russ Castronovo turns to literature, philosophy, and political theory to show how security provides an organizing principle for collective life in ways that both enhance freedom and limit it. His incisive critique ranges from frontier violence and white racial anxiety to insurgent Black print culture and other forms of early American terror, uncovering the hidden logic of insecurity that structures modern approaches to national defense, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy. Drawing on examples from fiction, journalism, tracts, and pamphlets, Castronovo uncovers the deep affective attachments that Americans have held since the founding to the sources of fear and insecurity that make them feel unsafe.Timely and urgent, American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability sheds critical light on how and why the fundamental political desire for security promotes unease alongside assurance and fixates on risk and danger while clamoring for safety.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction: Homo Securus and the Story of Insecurity -- Part I: Contradictions and Contours -- 1 The Contradictions of Security in Thirteen Propositions -- 2 The Contours of Security across Nine Historical Récits -- Part II: Information, Aesthetics, Population -- 3 Security and the Technologies of Liberalism -- 4 Terror and the Informational Sublime -- 5 Jeffersonian Trembling -- 6 Creating White Insecurity -- Epilogue: What Comes after Security? -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- A Note on the Type