Interior States

by Castiglia, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780822342441
• ISBN10: 0822342448
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

"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 Biography

Christopher Castiglia is professor of American Literature and senior scholar at the Center for American Literary Study at the Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

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