A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
The Founding Fathers in the Temporal Imaginaries of Texas Gun Politics
Authors: Kolehmainen Pekka M.
Editors: Benita Heiskanen, Albion M. Butters, Pekka M. Kolehmainen
Publishing place: Leiden
Publication year: 2022
Book title : Up in Arms: Gun Imaginaries in Texas
Series title: European Perspectives on the United States
Number in series: 1
First page : 52
Last page: 82
Number of pages: 30
ISBN: 978-90-04-51466-9
eISBN: 978-90-04-51467-6
ISSN: 2666-724X
Web address : https://brill.com/view/book/9789004514676/BP000012.xml
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/176135657
This chapter explores the act of political imagining around guns by centering on the temporal imaginaries constructed about the Founding Fathers in gun debates in Texas. It questions how the groups on both sides invoke the Founding Fathers as both objects and subjects of political imaginations. On one hand, political activists have created imaginary historical versions of the Founding Fathers to place them in relation to their own political imaginations in the modern day, to depict their stance as a continuum of a wider arc of history. On the other hand, the debates have touched on the potential limits of the imaginations of the Founding Fathers themselves, sparking discussions and disagreements on what the historical figures could have imagined in their own times. The chapter uses a body of materials drawn from media, activists, and fieldwork interviews to explore these two points and to elucidate through them the larger dynamics of political conflict in the contemporary United States. It asks how the temporal imaginaries of the Founding Fathers constructed around guns are drawn into larger ideological tensions that govern modern politics.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |