Editor’s Introduction
Journal for the Study of Radicalism July 22, 2015 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.14321/jstudradi.14.1.000v via Semantic Scholar
Summary
This issue examines the intersections of religion with social and political radicalism across two periods separated by about a century. Elizabeth Lowry's article argues for a stronger connection between nineteenth-century spiritualism and dramatic social changes, particularly abolition and feminism, using discourse analysis and the concept of counterpublics. Chris Elcock's article analyzes the rhetoric of proponents of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and 1970s, exploring how they framed psychedelic use in relation to patriotism and political radicalism.
Study at a glance
| Design | historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The issue argues for recognizing the religious aspects of social and political radicalism in both the nineteenth-century spiritualist movement and the 1960s-70s counterculture. |
Abstract
In this issue, our authors explore the intersections of religion and social and political radicalism, sometimes in surprising ways. Spiritualism—the phenomenon that swept America in the nineteenth century— had links to political and social movements of the time, notably incipient feminism. Likewise, the pivotal counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s requires that we recognize its religious as well as its social and political aspects, many of which are linked to the use of psychedelics. Our authors explore in new ways the extent and nature of the radicalism of these two periods, separated by about a century. Our first article is Elizabeth Lowry’s “Spiritual (R)evolution and the Turning of Tables: Abolition, Feminism, and the Rhetoric of Social Reform in the Antebellum Public Sphere,” in which she argues that there is a much greater connection between the spiritualist movement of the nineteenth century and dramatic social changes than previously recognized. She emphasizes discourse analysis, as do several authors in our previous and current issues, in this case invoking the notion of “counterpublics,” public spheres of oppositional discourse critical of the mainstream, and analyzing how spiritualism represented both a shelter and a catalyst for such counterpublic discourse. Our second article, Chris Elcock’s “The Fifth Freedom: The Politics of Psychedelic Patriotism,” also focuses on rhetorical analysis, but in his case the subject is how proponents of psychedelic drugs in 1960s