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The Queen of America Goes to Washington City:

Essays on Sex and Citizenship
Front Cover
10 Reviews
Duke University Press, 1997 - Political Science - 308 pages
In The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, Lauren Berlant focuses on the need to revitalize public life and political agency in the United States. Delivering a devastating critique of contemporary discourses of American citizenship, she addresses the triumph of the idea of private life over that of public life borne in the right-wing agenda of the Reagan revolution. By beaming light onto the idealized images and narratives about sex and citizenship that now dominate the U.S. public sphere, Berlant argues that the political public sphere has become an intimate public sphere. She asks why the contemporary ideal of citizenship is measured by personal and private acts and values rather than civic acts, and the ideal citizen has become one who, paradoxically, cannot yet act as a citizen—epitomized by the American child and the American fetus.
As Berlant traces the guiding images of U.S. citizenship through the process of privatization, she discusses the ideas of intimacy that have come to define national culture. From the fantasy of the American dream to the lessons of Forrest Gump, Lisa Simpson to Queer Nation, the reactionary culture of imperilled privilege to the testimony of Anita Hill, Berlant charts the landscape of American politics and culture. She examines the consequences of a shrinking and privatized concept of citizenship on increasing class, racial, sexual, and gender animosity and explores the contradictions of a conservative politics that maintains the sacredness of privacy, the virtue of the free market, and the immorality of state overregulation—except when it comes to issues of intimacy.
Drawing on literature, the law, and popular media, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City is a stunning and major statement about the nation and its citizens in an age of mass mediation. As it opens a critical space for new theory of agency, its narratives and gallery of images will challenge readers to rethink what it means to be American and to seek salvation in its promise.
  

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Review: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship

User Review  - Korri - Goodreads

read from 2 July - 6 August 2012; will resume when my brain is up to speed Read full review

Review: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship

User Review  - Michael - Goodreads

In The Queen of America Goes to Washington City (2007), Lauren Berlant explores the "privatization of US citizenship", taking it for granted that "there is no public sphere in the contemporary United ... Read full review

All 10 reviews »

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Selected pages

Contents

The Intimate Public Sphere i
11
The Theory of Infantile Citizenship
25
Explicit Material
55
America Fat the Fetus
83
Queer Nationality written with Elizabeth Freeman
145
The Face of America and the State of Emergency
175
Outtakes from the Citizenship Museum
247
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

abortion abstract adult African American Anita Hill aura baby banal become body chapter citizens collective contemporary context corporeal crisis desire discourse dominant economic embodied erotic essay everyday experience exploitation face of America fantasy feel feminist fetal fetus fetuses film Forrest Gump Frohnmayer future gender Goes to Washington heterosexual homosexual iconic identification identity politics imagined immigrant Innerspace intimacy intimate Jacobs kind lesbian Lisa lola Look Who's Talking Love Lucy mass culture mass nationality maternal mother narrative national culture national fantasy national identity norms official ordinary patriotic Pelican Brief personhood political public sphere pornography pregnant privilege pro-life produce protected public sphere Queer Nation racial radical represent representation reproduction rhetoric scene sexual slave social sonogram space spectacle stereotype story subjectivity symbolic technologies television thinking tion tional transformation United utopian violence woman women

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References from web pages

The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and ...
Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. viii + 308 pp.
www.accessmylibrary.com/ coms2/ summary_0286-488927_ITM

JSTOR: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex ...
Amy Robinson, Georgetown University auren Berlant's The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship asks its readers to be "more ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0097-9740(200021)25%3A3%3C931%3ATQOAGT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and ...
The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship.
www.questia.com/ library/ book/ the-queen-of-america-goes-to-washington-city-essays-on-sex-and-citizenship-by-lauren-be...

The queen of America goes to Washington city : essays on sex and ...
All about The queen of America goes to Washington city : essays on sex and citizenship by Lauren Gail Berlant. librarything is a cataloging and social ...
www.librarything.com/ work/ 308212

Jose Munoz - Citizens and Superheroes - American Quarterly 52:2
The title of Lauren Berlant's most recent book, The Queen of America Goes To Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, captures the imagination. ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ american_quarterly/ v052/ 52.2munoz.html

Institute for the Study of Culture and Society
-Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (1997). Professor Berlant's talk articulates new work that ...
www.bgsu.edu/ offices/ ics/ pls/ 1999.htm

Nation and Narration
Origins, Definitions, Theories. Ed. Gopal Balakrishnan Mapping the Nation. Essays by Lord Acton; Ernest Gellner; Otto Bauer. Ernest Renan "What is a Nation? ...
www2.bc.edu/ ~seshadrk/ Courses/ nation_and_narration.html

Cultural Criticism Winter 2000
Central to much of her recent work, in particular The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Duke, 1997), ...
humwww.ucsc.edu/ CultStudies/ ZWebArchives/ EVENTS/ W00/ CultCrit.html

COMM 8980queertheory
Restivo / Queer Theory / F06 / p 1. COMM 8980 /6910. Queer Theory. Syllabus. Fall 06. Angelo Restivo, 1051 One Park Place, 651-0592 ...
communication.gsu.edu/ movingimagestudies/ COMM8980QueerTheory.pdf

Lisa Uddin - Canine Citizenship and the Intimate Public Sphere
Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes To Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997) 5. ...
www.rochester.edu/ in_visible_culture/ Issue_6/ uddin/ uddin.html

About the author (1997)

Lauren Berlant is Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is coeditor of Critical Inquiry and Public Culture and author of The Anatomy of National Fantasy.

Bibliographic information

QR code for The Queen of America Goes to Washington City
TitleThe Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship
Series Q
AuthorLauren Gail Berlant
Edition2, illustrated, reprint
PublisherDuke University Press, 1997
ISBN0822319241, 9780822319245
Length308 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Political Science / Civil Rights
Social Science / Sociology / General
  
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