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Materializing Democracy

Materializing Democracy

Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics

  • Author: Castronovo, Russ; Nelson, Dana D.; Pease, Donald E.; Dayan, Joan; Flores, Richard R.
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Serie: New Americanists
  • ISBN: 9780822329107
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822383901
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2002
  • Month: June
  • Pages: 440
  • DDC: 321.8
  • Language: English
For the most part, democracy is simply presumed to exist in the United States. It is viewed as a completed project rather than as a goal to be achieved. Fifteen leading scholars challenge that stasis in Materializing Democracy. They aim to reinvigorate the idea of democracy by placing it in the midst of a contentious political and cultural fray, which, the volume’s editors argue, is exactly where it belongs. Drawing on literary criticism, cultural studies, history, legal studies, and political theory, the essays collected here highlight competing definitions and practices of democracy—in politics, society, and, indeed, academia.

Covering topics ranging from rights discourse to Native American performance, from identity politics to gay marriage, and from rituals of public mourning to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the contributors seek to understand the practices, ideas, and material conditions that enable or foreclose democracy’s possibilities. Through readings of subjects as diverse as Will Rogers, Alexis de Tocqueville, slave narratives, interactions along the Texas-Mexico border, and liberal arts education, the contributors also explore ways of making democracy available for analysis. Materializing Democracy suggests that attention to disparate narratives is integral to the development of more complex, vibrant versions of democracy.

Contributors. Lauren Berlant, Wendy Brown, Chris Castiglia, Russ Castronovo, Joan Dayan, Wai Chee Dimock, Lisa Duggan, Richard R. Flores, Kevin Gaines, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Michael Moon, Dana D. Nelson, Christopher Newfield, Donald E. Pease

  • CONTENTS
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Materializing Democracy and Other Political Fantasies
  • Tocqueville’s Democratic Thing; or, Aristocracy in America
  • Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies
  • Mexicans in a Material World: From John Wayne’s The Alamo to Stand-Up Democracy on the Border
  • Souls That Matter: Social Death and the Pedagogy of Democratic Citizenship
  • Uncle Sam Needs a Wife: Citizenship and Denegation
  • The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism
  • The Genealogy of a Democratic Crush
  • Representative/Democracy: The Political Work of Countersymbolic Representation
  • Rethinking Space, Rethinking Rights: Literature, Law, and Science
  • A Long Foreground: Re-Materializing the History of Native American Relations to Mass Culture
  • From Center to Margin: Internationalism and the Origins of Black Feminism
  • Democratic Passions: Reconstructing Individual Agency
  • Anti-Ideology: Education and Politics as Democratic Practices
  • Moralism as Antipolitics
  • Works Cited
  • Contributors
  • Index

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  • Loan duration: 21 days
  • Format: PDF

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