Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on the need to revitalise public life and political agency in the United States. Delivering a devastating critique of contemporary discourses of American citizenship, this title addresses the triumph of the idea of private life over that of public life borne in the right-wing agenda of the Reagan revolution.
Trade Review“Berlant offers a trenchant genealogy of the imaginary realm of citizenship, resituating cultural contests over sex, race, and nation as conflicts over the defining fantasies of public life. Few cultural critics move with as much skill and insight between debates over the public sphere and how best to read pornography. This text links the analytic concerns of cultural studies with the fugitive struggles over the imaginable bounds of citizenship. A keen and disarming book.”—Judith Butler
“Taking her (counter)cue from that celebrated sitcom of American life, ‘The Reagan Years,’ Lauren Berlant makes an exhilarating argument for a theory of ‘comedic’ citizenship. What happens when the collusive myths of the ‘common culture’ become obsessed and estranged by the fraying and freeing of the American people—plurally identified, demographically diverse, sexually ambivalent, culturally mongrel? Berlant’s wit and insight lie in going with the ‘silliness’ of everyday existence, inhabiting its persuasive, popular forms, and then, in ways you least expect, throwing up a devastating picture of the way we live now.”—Homi K. Bhabha
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Intimate Public Sphere 1
1 The Theory of Infantile Citizenship 25
2 Live Sex Acts (Parental Advisory: Explicit Material) 55
3 America, "Fat," the Fetus 83
4 Queer Nationality (written with Elizabeth Freeman) 145
5 The Face of America and the State of Emergency 175
6 The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Notes on Diva Citizenship 221
7 Outtakes from the Citizenship Museum 247
Notes 261
Bibliography 289
Index 303
