
Situation Critical
Critique, Theory, and Early American Studies
Duke University Press
Published on 12. April 2024
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-4780-2608-2 (ISBN)
Description
The contributors to Situation Critical argue for the continued importance of critique to early American studies, pushing back against both reductivist neo-empiricism and so-called postcritique. Bringing together essays by a diverse group of historians and literary scholars, editors Max Cavitch and Brian Connolly demonstrate that critique is about acknowledging that we are never simply writing better or worse accounts of the past, but accounts of the present as well. The contributors examine topics ranging from the indeterminacy of knowledge and history to Black speculative writing and nineteenth-century epistemology, the role of the unconscious in settler colonialism, and early American writing about masturbation, repression, religion, and secularism and their respective influence on morality. The contributors also offer vital new interpretations of major lines of thought in the history of critique-especially those relating to Freud and Foucault-that will be valuable both for scholars of early American studies and for scholars of the humanities and interpretive social sciences more broadly.
Contributors. Max Cavitch, Brian Connolly, Matthew Crow, John J. Garcia, Christopher Looby, Michael Meranze, Mark J. Miller, Justine S. Murison, Britt Rusert, Ana Schwartz, Joan W. Scott, Jordan Alexander Stein
Contributors. Max Cavitch, Brian Connolly, Matthew Crow, John J. Garcia, Christopher Looby, Michael Meranze, Mark J. Miller, Justine S. Murison, Britt Rusert, Ana Schwartz, Joan W. Scott, Jordan Alexander Stein
Reviews / Votes
In Situation Critical, Max Cavitch and Brian Connolly issue a rousing call for a return to critique, arguing for the importance of the study of early America to some of the most urgent questions of twenty-first-century life. Locating contemporary ideas about sovereignty, race, sexuality, justice, and power in the unsettled state of colonial and early national American culture, the essays collected here engage early America not as a stable ground or point of origin but rather as a particularly fertile site for a critical history, one that brings empirical and theoretical approaches into dynamic relation." - Meredith L. McGill, Professor of English, Rutgers University "What an edifying delight to think along with the scholars gathered in Situation Critical, whose objects of analysis range from Puritan annoyance to Melvillean justice, queer possibility to secular rectitude, cultures of abolition to settler colonial fantasy. Max Cavitch and Brian Connolly have convened essays that are surpassingly lively, nimble, exacting, and generous in their engagement with the amplest possibilities of critique. Situation Critical is a greatly welcome intervention." - Peter Coviello, author of (Is There God after Prince? Dispatches from an Age of Last Things)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
8 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
596 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-2608-2 (9781478026082)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Max Cavitch is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman.
Brian Connolly is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Florida and the author of Domestic Intimacies: Incest and the Liberal Subject in Nineteenth-Century America.
Brian Connolly is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Florida and the author of Domestic Intimacies: Incest and the Liberal Subject in Nineteenth-Century America.
Content
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Situation Critical / Max Cavitch and Brian Connolly 1
I. Theory for Early America
1. Psychoanalysis and the Indeterminacy of History / Joan W. Scott 33
2. Foucault's Oedipus / Michael Meranze 52
II. Subjects of Early America
3. Annoyances, Tolerable and Intolerable / Ana Schwartz 73
4. Michael Widdlesworth's Queer Orthography / Christopher Looby 103
5. George Whitefield's Sexual Character / Mark J. Miller 139
III. Fantasies of Realism
6. Secularism, Hypocrisy, and the Afterlives of Thomas Paine / Justine S. Murison 177
7. No Matter: Persisting Rationalisms in Antebellum Black Thought / Britt Rusert 202
8. Queering Abolition / Jordan Alexander Stein 223
IV. Power, Knowledge, Justice
9. Equality in the Time of Moby-Dick / Matthew Crow 241
10. Antebellum or Interbellum? / John J. Garcia 263
List of Contributors 287
Index 289
Introduction: Situation Critical / Max Cavitch and Brian Connolly 1
I. Theory for Early America
1. Psychoanalysis and the Indeterminacy of History / Joan W. Scott 33
2. Foucault's Oedipus / Michael Meranze 52
II. Subjects of Early America
3. Annoyances, Tolerable and Intolerable / Ana Schwartz 73
4. Michael Widdlesworth's Queer Orthography / Christopher Looby 103
5. George Whitefield's Sexual Character / Mark J. Miller 139
III. Fantasies of Realism
6. Secularism, Hypocrisy, and the Afterlives of Thomas Paine / Justine S. Murison 177
7. No Matter: Persisting Rationalisms in Antebellum Black Thought / Britt Rusert 202
8. Queering Abolition / Jordan Alexander Stein 223
IV. Power, Knowledge, Justice
9. Equality in the Time of Moby-Dick / Matthew Crow 241
10. Antebellum or Interbellum? / John J. Garcia 263
List of Contributors 287
Index 289