Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Russ Castronovo

Published by Duke University Press 2001

Necro Citizenship

Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Russ Castronovo
Edited by: Donald E. Pease

In the series New Americanists

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822380146

Overview
Contents

About this book

Argues that the category of death was a central part of the concept of citizenship in the nineteenth-century U.S., and that the particular form of that construction functioned to naturalize white males as ideal citizens.

Author / Editor information

Russ Castronovo is Associate Professor of English and Director of the American Studies Program at the University of Miami. He is the author of Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom.

Reviews

“Liberty and death? Citizenship and necrophilia? The conjunction ‘and’ is shocking and is meant to shock. Russ Castronovo sees American political life as the burial ground of many corpses, literal as well as metaphoric. With ruthless determination he digs these up, examines their tell-tale remains, and, in the process, offers a trenchant critique of some consequences of American democracy.”—Wai Chee Dimock, author of Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Political Necrophilia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2 ‘‘The Slavery of Man to Himself’’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
3 ‘‘That Half-Living Corpse’’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
4 The ‘‘Black Arts’’ of Citizenship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
5 De-Naturalizing Citizenship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	204
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	337

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 368
Illustrations
- Other: 17 illustrations

eBook

Published: September 27, 2001
ISBN: 9780822380146