| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 282 words from this article are provided below; about 609 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Russ Castronovo. Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States. (New Americanists.) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2001. Pp. xv, 351. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95.

Russ Castronovo ends his preface with a quick joke about his parents' desire that he write a "true crime" or "legal thriller" bestseller that would "bring untold riches and make their old age more comfortable" (p. xiv). While the spoils of academic publishing are sure to fall short of this lofty aspiration, Castronovo's parents do locate the genres that his study of nineteenth-century U.S. citizenship both mines and archives. This book dwells on mid-century popular and reformist discourses ranging from sentimental abolitionism to spirit rapping, from male purity (and purification) to labor reform, from New England transcendentalism to the diasporic and spiritualist imaginings of African slaves. Across these varied topics, Castronovo maintains a keen focus on one central paradox of U.S. democracy: the concept of citizenship constructs an "abstract, privileged, and empowered personhood" that "depends on a people whose untranscendent lives also make claims to freedom and dignity" (p. 10). His insight (which he shares with other scholars working in the field of U.S. cultural studies, most notably Lauren Berlant, Karen Sanchez-Eppler, and Sharon Holland) is that it is the association of political liberty with social death that makes this paradox work. Echoing and reechoing Patrick Henry's revolutionary cry of "Give me liberty or give me death," the nineteenth-century ideology of "necro citizenship" positions the messiness of the mortal body at the limits of official political discourse, thereby creating a public sphere metaphorically littered with dead bodies and inhabited by lifeless citizens.

. . .

There are about 609 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.