The black movement’s lasting effect was creating new racial subjects, not legal wins

Evidence

These did not lie in its legislative accomplishments, but rather in its ability to create new racial “subjects.” The black movement redefined the meaning of racial identity, and consequently of race itself, in American society. Social movements create collective identity by offering their adherents a different view of themselves and their world; different, that is, from the worldview and self-concepts offered by the established social order. Movements take elements and themes of existing culture and traditions and infuse them with new meaning. This process of rearticulation produces new subjectivity by making use of information and knowledge already present in the subject’s mind. Drawing once again on the insights of Antonio Gramsci, we define rearticulation as a practice of discursive reorganization or reinterpretation of ideological themes and interests already present in subjects’ consciousness, such that these elements obtain new meanings or coherence. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 162

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines ‘rearticulation’ as a Gramscian discursive practice of reinterpreting existing ideological themes.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a movement’s real achievement is producing new subjectivity rather than legislative change is a paradigm-level reframing of what social movements accomplish.

Related

• The black movement’s legacy lay in creating new racial subjects, not legislative wins (similarity 0.96)
• Rearticulation reworks existing racial ideologies to give them new meanings (similarity 0.83)
• Ideological rearticulation was more effective than repression at containing the radical black movement. (similarity 0.82)
• Ideological rearticulation outperformed repression in defusing the civil rights movement. (similarity 0.80)
• Movement struggles over race’s social meaning, not just its material effects, drive its transformation. (similarity 0.80)
• Collective racial subjectivity unified diverse movement demands at peak influence (similarity 0.79)
• Anti-racist gains that cannot be reversed must instead be rearticulated by opponents. (similarity 0.78)