Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Democray’s Graveyard
1. Political Necrophilia
Freedom and the Longing for Dead Citizenship
2. “The Slavery of Man to Himself”
White Male Sexuality, Self-Reliance, and Bondage
3. “That Half-Living Corpse”
Female Mediums, Séances, and the Occult Public Sphere
4. The “Black Arts” of Citizenship
Africanist Origins of White Interiority
5. De-Naturalizing Citizenship
Afterword
Notes
Works Cited
Index

About the Author

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 lethal consequences of American democracy." - Wai-Chee Dimock, author of Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy