Interior States: Institutional Consciousness and the Inner Life of Democracy in the Antebellum United States

Author:   Christopher Castiglia
Publisher:   Duke University Press
ISBN:  

9780822342441


Pages:   400
Publication Date:   11 November 2008
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Our Price $237.47 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Interior States: Institutional Consciousness and the Inner Life of Democracy in the Antebellum United States


Add your own review!

Overview

Full Product Details

Author:   Christopher Castiglia
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.689kg
ISBN:  

9780822342441


ISBN 10:   0822342448
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   11 November 2008
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Interiority and the Problem of Misplaced Democracy 1 1. ""Matters of Internal Concern"": Federal Affect and the Melancholy Citizen 17 2. Bad Associations: Sociality, Interiority, Institutionalism 60 3. Abolition's Racial Interiors and White Civic Depth 101 4. Ardent Spirits: Intemperate Sociality and the Inner Life of Capital 136 5. Anxiety, Desire, and the Nervous State 168 6. Between Consciousness and Revolution: Romanticism and Racial Interiority 216 7. ""I Want My Happiness!"": Alienated Affections, Queer Sociality, and the Marvelous Interiors of the American Romance 256 Epilogue. Humanism without Humans: The Possibilities of Post-Interior Democracy 294 Notes 305 References 351 Index 363"

Reviews

"""Interior States rethinks the relation of identity and democracy in a dazzling exercise of literary criticism, social history, and political theory. Christopher Castiglia shows how the federal practice of democracy, in combination with developing institutions, did not squash so much as misplace democracy, relocating its performance from the sociality of exchange between citizens into the personal, bodily interior. Our nervous management of our own discordant identities sidetracks us from a richer, more inventively dissensual democratic practice. Castiglia explores a rich, interdisciplinary nineteenth-century archive that imagines alternative democracies and challenges readers to unfetter their imaginations in the service of more pleasurable, 'post-interior' democratic association.""--Dana D. Nelson, co-editor of Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics ""This book combines scope and depth in a way that will remind readers of some of the classics--F. O. Matthiessen, Leo Marx, Ann Douglas, Jane Tompkins. In a book propelled by wonderful writing, Christopher Castiglia illuminates the extent to which the self-declared greatest democracy of world history has struggled to be democratic institutionally. His call for a 'post-interior humanism' gains real urgency from an account of a centuries-old impasse in American life that readers will remember long after they have finished the book.""--Christopher Newfield, author of The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America"


Interior States rethinks the relation of identity and democracy in a dazzling exercise of literary criticism, social history, and political theory. Christopher Castiglia shows how the federal practice of democracy, in combination with developing institutions, did not squash so much as misplace democracy, relocating its performance from the sociality of exchange between citizens into the personal, bodily interior. Our nervous management of our own discordant identities sidetracks us from a richer, more inventively dissensual democratic practice. Castiglia explores a rich, interdisciplinary nineteenth-century archive that imagines alternative democracies and challenges readers to unfetter their imaginations in the service of more pleasurable, 'post-interior' democratic association. --Dana D. Nelson, co-editor of Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics This book combines scope and depth in a way that will remind readers of some of the classics--F. O. Matthiessen, Leo Marx, Ann Douglas, Jane Tompkins. In a book propelled by wonderful writing, Christopher Castiglia illuminates the extent to which the self-declared greatest democracy of world history has struggled to be democratic institutionally. His call for a 'post-interior humanism' gains real urgency from an account of a centuries-old impasse in American life that readers will remember long after they have finished the book. --Christopher Newfield, author of The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America


""Interior States rethinks the relation of identity and democracy in a dazzling exercise of literary criticism, social history, and political theory. Christopher Castiglia shows how the federal practice of democracy, in combination with developing institutions, did not squash so much as misplace democracy, relocating its performance from the sociality of exchange between citizens into the personal, bodily interior. Our nervous management of our own discordant identities sidetracks us from a richer, more inventively dissensual democratic practice. Castiglia explores a rich, interdisciplinary nineteenth-century archive that imagines alternative democracies and challenges readers to unfetter their imaginations in the service of more pleasurable, 'post-interior' democratic association.""--Dana D. Nelson, co-editor of Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics ""This book combines scope and depth in a way that will remind readers of some of the classics--F. O. Matthiessen, Leo Marx, Ann Douglas, Jane Tompkins. In a book propelled by wonderful writing, Christopher Castiglia illuminates the extent to which the self-declared greatest democracy of world history has struggled to be democratic institutionally. His call for a 'post-interior humanism' gains real urgency from an account of a centuries-old impasse in American life that readers will remember long after they have finished the book.""--Christopher Newfield, author of The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America


Author Information

Christopher Castiglia is Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Bound and Determined: Captivity, Culture-Crossing, and White Womanhood from Mary Rowlandson to Patty Hearst and a co-editor of Walt Whitman’s temperance novel Franklin Evans; or, the Inebriate, also published by Duke University Press.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

Aorrng

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List