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
Trade Review
“Materializing Democracy is an excellent and exciting collection of essays by a group of distinguished scholars who together address both the promises and limits of current and historical practices and theories of American democracy. This book will appeal to scholars and students across the disciplines who are interested in the intersection of culture, politics, national identity, and citizenship.”—Amy Kaplan, coeditor of Cultures of United States Imperialism
“The editors of Materializing Democracy have a vision—an activist vision—that, combined with rigorous analysis and scholarship, imparts an unusual energy and excitement to this volume.”—Priscilla Wald, author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Materializing Democracy and Other Political Fantasies / Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson
Tocqueville’s Democratic Thing; or, Aristocracy in America / Donald E. Pease
Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies / Joan Dayan
Mexicans in a Material World: From John Wayne’s The Alamo to Stand-up Democracy on the Border / Richard R. Flores
Souls That Matter: Social Death and the Pedagogy of Democratic Citizenship / Russ Castronovo
Uncle Sam Needs a Wife: Citizenship and Denegation / Lauren Berlant
The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism / Lisa Duggan
The Genealogy of a Democratic Crush / Chris Castiglia
Representative/Democracy: The Political Work of Countersymbolic Representation / Dana D. Nelson
Rethinking Space, Rethinking Rights: Literature, Law, and Science / Wai Chee Dimock
A Long Foreground: Re-Materializing the History of Native American Relations to Mass Culture / Michael Moon
From Center to Margin: Internationalism and the Origins of Black Feminism / Kevin Gaines
Democratic Passions: Reconstructing Individual Agency / Christopher Newfield
Anti-Ideology: Education and Politics as Democratic Practices / Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Moralism as Antipolitics / Wendy Brown
Works Cited
Contributors
Index
