LEADER 04717nam 2200733 450 001 9910468018503321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-8232-4115-7 010 $a9786613297204 010 $a1-283-29720-5 010 $a0-8232-4165-3 010 $a0-8232-3101-1 024 7 $a10.1515/9780823241651 035 $a(CKB)4390000000004136 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0000035346 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4803832 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4310830 035 $a(OCoLC)757486932 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse14993 035 $a(DE-B1597)554920 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780823241651 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4679588 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL4803832 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr11343638 035 $a(OCoLC)1099065392 035 $a(EXLCZ)994390000000004136 100 $a20170227h20102010 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $2rdacontent 182 $2rdamedia 183 $2rdacarrier 200 10$aDemocracy's spectacle $esovereignty and public life in antebellum American writing /$fJennifer Greiman 205 $aFirst edition. 210 1$aNew York, [New York] :$cFordham University Press,$d2010. 210 4$dİ2010 215 $a1 online resource (xi, 276 p.) 311 $a0-8232-3099-6 311 $a0-8232-3100-3 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tIntroduction -- $t1. ?The thing is new?: Sovereignty and Slavery in Democracy in America -- $t2. Color, Race, and the Spectacle of Opinion in Beaumont?s Marie -- $t3. ?The Hangman?s Accomplice?: Spectacle and Complicity in Lydia Maria Child?s New York -- $t4. The Spectacle of Reform: Theater and Prison in Hawthorne?s Blithedale Romance -- $t5. Theatricality, Strangeness, and Democracy in Melville?s Confidence-Man -- $tNotes -- $tSelect Bibliography -- $tIndex 330 $a"What is the hangman but a servant of law? And what is that law but an expression of public opinion? And if public opinion be brutal and thou a component part thereof, art thou not the hangman's accomplice?" Writing in 1842, Lydia Maria Child articulates a crisis in the relationship of democracy to sovereign power that continues to occupy political theory today. Is sovereignty, with its reliance on singular and exceptional power, fundamentally inimical to democracy? Or might a more fully realized democracy distribute, share, and popularize sovereignty, thus blunting its exceptional character and its basic violence? In Democracy's Spectacle, Jennifer Greiman looks to an earlier moment in the history of American democracy's vexed interpretation of sovereignty to argue that such questions about the popularization of sovereign power shaped debates about political belonging and public life in the antebellum United States. In an emergent democracy that was also an expansionist slave society, Greiman argues, the problems that sovereignty posed were less concerned with a singular and exceptional power lodged in the state than with a power over life and death that involved all Americans intimately.Drawing on Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of the sovereignty of the people in Democracy in America, along with work by Gustave de Beaumont, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, Greiman tracks the crises of sovereign power as it migrates out of the state to become a constitutive feature of the public sphere. Greiman brings together literature and political theory, as well as materials on antebellum performance culture, antislavery activism, and penitentiary reform, to argue that the antebellum public sphere, transformed by its empowerment, emerges as a spectacle with investments in both punishment and entertainment. 606 $aAmerican literature$y19th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aPolitics and literature$zUnited States$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aDemocracy in literature 606 $aSovereignty in literature 606 $aLiterature and society$zUnited States$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aDemocracy$xPsychological aspects 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aPolitics and literature$xHistory 615 0$aDemocracy in literature. 615 0$aSovereignty in literature. 615 0$aLiterature and society$xHistory 615 0$aDemocracy$xPsychological aspects. 676 $a810.9/358735 700 $aGreiman$b Jennifer$01034587 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910468018503321 996 $aDemocracy's spectacle$92453802 997 $aUNINA