Body Politic Foundings, Citizenship, and Difference in the American Political Imagination

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0415928583

In The Body Politic Catherine Holland advances an original thesis that challenges the dominant schools of thought concerning the liberal tradition in the United States. Organized around two founding moments - the American Revolution and ratification of the Constitution and the period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War - The Body Politic identifies a recurring, symbolic figure at the heart of American dilemmas of citizenship and nation, namely the human body. Holland reinterprets the meaning of the struggle for citizenship, and doesn't simply include the issues of gender and race, but demonstrates how anxieties and concerns about the shifting meaning of the body is crucial to understanding pivotal moments in the found and refounding of American citizenship. Holland re-examines both literature and events, from the writings of Thomas Jefferson to the adultery trial of Henry Ward Beecher to demonstrate how embodiment and disembodiment shaped the imagination of the nation and of citizenship throughout American political history.