American Mourning

Reviews / Votes

'The dead are alive in the American polity'. With this riveting sentence, Simon Stow commences a brilliant and engaging book on the relationships among death, democracy, and public mourning in the United States. Stow not only deploys public mourning to delineate the problematic aspects of American democracy; he also uses it as a prescriptive device to reanimate it. American Mourning is a profound contribution to democratic theory and practice that speaks sagely to these times.' Steven Johnston, Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Thought, Public Policy, and Public Service and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Utah 'Everything dies, that's a fact; responding to death, we respond to life. Simon Stow's brilliant American Mourning - an exciting contribution to democratic theory, cultural studies, literary studies, and even musicology - locates this fact in our lives and our politics. Detailing a range of mourning practices, Stow seriously but playfully invites the reader to consider mourning as a life-nurturing mode of critical engagement and reflection. Mourning, more importantly, provides a source for democratic invention, protection, and resurrection. Stow's courageous, but ultimately astute, wager that lost democratic possibilities can some day come back as new resources for valuing life, returns rich rewards.' Char R. Miller, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University 'The dead are politically active, so Stow argues in this beautifully written book. Stories of loss and death shape living politics, and can even revitalize moribund democratic practices. Offering fresh interpretations of key political moments of mourning, from ancient Greece to the civil rights movement to post-9/11 politics, Stow defines mourning as a democratic practice that can generate collective commitment and inspire public responsibility. Rarely has a book on mourning and tragedy been so viscerally energizing. It should be required reading for anyone invested in democratic political thought today.' Elisabeth Anker, George Washington University and author of Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom