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The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire
Reveals the troubling intimacy between Black women and the making of US global power
The year 1968 marked both the height of the worldwide Black liberation struggle and a turning point for the global reach of American power, which was built on the counterinsurgency honed on Black and other oppressed populations at home. The next five decades saw the consolidation of the culture of the American empire through what Erica R. Edwards calls the "imperial grammars of blackness."
This is a story of state power at its most devious and most absurd, and, at the same time, a literary history of Black feminist radicalism at its most trenchant. Edwards reveals how the long war on terror, beginning with the late-Cold War campaign against organizations like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Liberation Army, has relied on the labor and the fantasies of Black women to justify the imperial spread of capitalism. Black feminist writers not only understood that this would demand a shift in racial gendered power, but crafted ways of surviving it.
The Other Side of Terror offers an interdisciplinary Black feminist analysis of militarism, security, policing, diversity, representation, intersectionality, and resistance, while discussing a wide array of literary and cultural texts, from the unpublished work of Black radical feminist June Jordan to the memoirs of Condoleezza Rice to the television series Scandal. With clear, moving prose, Edwards chronicles Black feminist organizing and writing on "the other side of terror", which tracked changes in racial power, transformed African American literature and Black studies, and predicted the crises of our current era with unsettling accuracy.
The year 1968 marked both the height of the worldwide Black liberation struggle and a turning point for the global reach of American power, which was built on the counterinsurgency honed on Black and other oppressed populations at home. The next five decades saw the consolidation of the culture of the American empire through what Erica R. Edwards calls the "imperial grammars of blackness."
This is a story of state power at its most devious and most absurd, and, at the same time, a literary history of Black feminist radicalism at its most trenchant. Edwards reveals how the long war on terror, beginning with the late-Cold War campaign against organizations like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Liberation Army, has relied on the labor and the fantasies of Black women to justify the imperial spread of capitalism. Black feminist writers not only understood that this would demand a shift in racial gendered power, but crafted ways of surviving it.
The Other Side of Terror offers an interdisciplinary Black feminist analysis of militarism, security, policing, diversity, representation, intersectionality, and resistance, while discussing a wide array of literary and cultural texts, from the unpublished work of Black radical feminist June Jordan to the memoirs of Condoleezza Rice to the television series Scandal. With clear, moving prose, Edwards chronicles Black feminist organizing and writing on "the other side of terror", which tracked changes in racial power, transformed African American literature and Black studies, and predicted the crises of our current era with unsettling accuracy.
408 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 29, 2022
"She could be a domestic terrorist, or she could be the hostage of foreign terrorists, or she could just be a Black woman at work."
whew! complicated, academic musing at its juiciest.
june jordan and gloria naylor AND condolezza rice and olivia pope (yes, from scandal) are all here in edward's convincing analysis of the "relationship between race, gender, terror, and the making of US empire through the late Cold War technologies of counterinsurgency." this text explores ways black women's bodies and realities are burdened, okay, and occasionally, but not without price, d'oh, cherished, by the same US hegemony they are made and employed to uphold. dissenter, resister, prophet, scapegoat, embracer, and full on evil-doer are all roles black women take up in regards to the US empire. this shit is confusing, compelling, and, well, like many true things, messed up.
a must read if you want your poetry and literature served with a side of salacious TV. a must read if you want one of the most troubling political figures of your youth to haunt you with questions of agency. a must read if you must read.
whew! complicated, academic musing at its juiciest.
june jordan and gloria naylor AND condolezza rice and olivia pope (yes, from scandal) are all here in edward's convincing analysis of the "relationship between race, gender, terror, and the making of US empire through the late Cold War technologies of counterinsurgency." this text explores ways black women's bodies and realities are burdened, okay, and occasionally, but not without price, d'oh, cherished, by the same US hegemony they are made and employed to uphold. dissenter, resister, prophet, scapegoat, embracer, and full on evil-doer are all roles black women take up in regards to the US empire. this shit is confusing, compelling, and, well, like many true things, messed up.
a must read if you want your poetry and literature served with a side of salacious TV. a must read if you want one of the most troubling political figures of your youth to haunt you with questions of agency. a must read if you must read.
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July 24, 20248/5?? (At this point i know I’m not going to read all these damn books in time) The first two chapters of this book were kind of tough to get through but by the third chapter—on Condoleezza Rice and Scandal, and the Black women as both threat to and protector of the American union—things really started MOVING. I think Edwards, maybe in trying to emphasize her own Black feminist grammar, does a little bit too much (half-hearted) neologism but at its core, this is a strong book with a compelling argument about the fine line between Black cultural expression oriented towards freedom and the U.S. imperial project that seeks to, and often manages to, incorporate that into its own grammars of domination (under the guise of security, defense, patriotism, etc.) Even more compelling read in the age of “Mamala” as I’ve mentioned (Harris gets a few checks in the book)
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