The Body Politic and the Politics of Two Bodies: Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in Death

Prospects ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Laderman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
The Body ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
American Nation

Abraham Lincoln has been mythologized and deified in the American imagination, occupying a preeminent place in the collective memory of the nation. He occupies this place because he is believed to embody the ideals and values of the country and because he seemed to preside with grace, equanimity, and wisdom over one of the most destructive conflicts in America's history. In life, but even more consequently in death, his presence – as “rail splitter,” “Great Emancipator,” and “Father Abraham” – conjures up an array of events, symbols, and myths that give definition and meaning to the American nation. When he died, an unprecedented funeral celebration occurred in the Northern region of the United States that solidified his privileged place in the country's pantheon of great heroes. The series of events that took place after his assassination, as well as his emplotment in public memory since then, suggest that his death, as tragic and painful as it was, added to the cohesion, unity, and the very life of the nation when it was most seriously threatened by chaos and degeneration.

Mobilizing the Invisible: Power and Marginality in the Black LGBTQ Community

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi K. Perry ◽  
Aaron D. Camp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Structural Inequities ◽  
The Impact

Symbolic and structural inequities that seek to maintain White supremacy have sought to render Black LGBTQ Americans invisible in the body politic of powerful institutions that govern society. In the face of centuries-long oppression at the hands of the state, Black LGBTQ Americans have effectively mobilized to establish visibility on the national policymaking agenda. Members of this community have demonstrated a fierce resilience while confronting a violent anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ mainstream agenda narrative in media and politics. This sociopolitical marginalization—from members of their shared demographic, or not, is often framed in partisan or ideological terms in public discourse and in the halls of American political institutions. Secondary marginalization theory and opinion polling frame how personal identity and social experience shape the Black LGBTQ political movement’s expression of what participation in politics in the United States ought to earn them in return. Double-consciousness theory contextualizes the development of Black LGBTQ sociopolitical marginalization in the United States and the community’s responsive mobilization over time—revealing the impact of coalition building and self-identification toward establishing political visibility necessary to improve the lived conditions of the multiply oppressed.

Teaching Literary Realism in Transnational America

2019 ◽  
pp. 605-620
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Cadle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Ethical Implications

This chapter contends that foregrounding transnational approaches in classrooms provides opportunities to advocate the value of studying literary realism to students, administrators, and the broader community. Literature’s capacity to enable recognition, whether it leads to greater self-awareness or the acknowledgment of others, makes it a powerful tool for social justice, inspiring social movements and filling the emotional needs of the disempowered. Centering the teaching of realism on such authors as Charles Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, and Sui Sin Far, who rendered the multicultural composition of the United States more legible, helps the academy’s increasingly diverse student body see themselves and one another in the long tradition of American literature. Assigning lesser-taught texts by William Dean Howells, Henry James, and other canonical authors demonstrates realism’s continued relevance, because these texts address the challenges of incorporating diversity into the body politic and the ethical implications of the United States’ global power.

Litigation as an Alternative to Legislation in Achieving Public Health Reform

2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Francis E. McGovern
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Health Reform ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Public Health Reform

There is virtually universal acceptance for the proposition that political questions in the United States have a propensity to morph into judicial questions. The use of litigation as a method of governing the body politic has repeatedly manifested itself since the formation of our nation. Congress vs. the legislature; federal vs. state authority; voting rights; civil rights; universal rights — the list is pervasive.

The Imperial Republic: A Comparison of the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lanny Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Body ◽  
European American ◽  
Military Government ◽  
The U.S

The doctrine of incorporation, as elaborated in legal debates and legitimated by the U.S. Supreme Court, excluded the inhabitants of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam from the body politic of the United States on the basis of their cultural differences from dominant European American culture. However, in spite of their shared legal status as unincorporated territories, the U.S. Congress established different governments that, although adaptations of continental territorial governments, were staffed largely with appointed imperial administrators. In contrast, Hawai'i, which had experienced a long period of European American settlement, received a government that followed the basic continental model of territorial government. Thus, the distinction between the incorporated and unincorporated territories corresponded to the limits of European American settlement. However, even among the unincorporated territories, cultural evaluations were important in determining the kinds of rule. The organic act for Puerto Rico provided for substantially more economic and judicial integration with the United States than did the organic act for the Phillippines. This followed from the assessment that Puerto Rico might be culturally assimilated while the Phillippines definitely could not. Moreover, religion was the criterion for determining different provincial governments within the Phillippines. In Guam, the interests of the naval station prevailed over all other considerations. There, U.S. government officials considered the local people to be hospitable and eager to accept U.S. sovereignty, while they largely ignored the local people's language, culture, and history. In Guam, a military government prevailed.

A Recognized and Respected Part of the Body Politic

2018 ◽  
pp. 86-108
Author(s):  
Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Grover Cleveland

This chapter documents the aftermath of Butler’s defeat for reelection in 1883. Butler’s supporters and a growing group of black independents backed Grover Cleveland for president of the United States. They hoped that Cleveland’s election would inaugurate a national black commitment to political independence and push the national Democratic Party towards a pro-civil rights agenda. Black Bostonians worked with like-minded activists in other states to leverage black political power towards recognition from the Cleveland administration. Despite some success, the limited gains in black rights during the Cleveland administration illuminated the limits of siding with the Democratic Party.

The Body Politic and JFK’s Bad Back

2021 ◽  
pp. 560-576
Author(s):  
Julia Peetz
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
National Body ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
Power And Influence

In politics, embodiment, figured as a literal connection between a national leader’s body and the nation as a whole, implies that the fates of leader and nation are linked; a decline in the leader’s body signals a corresponding decline in the national body politic. This concrete, physical idea of embodiment emerged from a context of absolutist monarchical power and has been most influentially described in Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies as both theological and premodern. Nevertheless the temptation persists to describe the power and influence populists hold over their followers in the contemporary moment in just this way. Focusing on the specific context of US presidential politics, this chapter questions whether ideas of literal embodiment can usefully explain how populist politics operates through performance. With regard to the ways in which we interpret the significance of politicians’ bodies in twenty-first-century US politics, the chapter explores the process through which premodern political embodiment was supplanted by more abstractly conceived political representation. It is argued that, rather than postulating a radical break between mainstream politics and the mode of representation that is enacted by populists, explorations of embodiment need to take into account historical continuities as politicians’ embodied performances engage with the collective memory of political audiences and thereby complicate processes of political representation. As such, embodiment must be understood as one of the central repertoires of affective, metalingual engagement through which performances in contemporary politics act upon political audiences.

Diverse Pathways to Immigrant Political Incorporation

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 1123-1130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Mahler ◽  
Myer Siemiatycki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
States Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Political Incorporation ◽  
The Impact

In both Canada and the United States, immigration is producing major demographic and sociocultural changes. Yet relatively little research has been devoted to the impact of immigration on each country’s political life. Even less attention has been paid to comparing the patterns of immigrant political participation in both countries. This has left underinvestigated a host of important questions about the body politic of Canada and the United States: Measured at national, urban, and community scales, do immigrants in the two countries become integrated into formal politics such as voting and running for elected office? Are they engaged in more informal political activities such as community and ethnic organizing? If so, then how do various immigrant communities mobilize politically, form agendas and alliances, express their voices, and expand their opportunities? As more countries and cities around the world become immigration destinations, there is much to be learned about creating inclusive political systems from the comparative experience of Canada and the United States illustrated in this volume.

Justice, Acknowledgment, and Collective Memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Place Names ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regime Transitions

In regime transitions, a number of mechanisms are utilized to memorialize the past and to reject the ideas associated with human rights abused of the prior regime. This is often done through truth commissions, apologies, memorials, museums, changes in place names, national holidays, and other symbolic measures. In the United States, some efforts along these lines have been undertaken, but on the whole they have been very limited and inadequate. In addition, many symbols and memorials associated with the past, such as Confederate monuments and the Confederate Battle Flag, continue to be displayed. Hence while some progress has been made on these issues, much more needs to be done.

Deafness and Ethnic Identity: The Idea of a Deaf State and its Resonances with American Exceptionalism and Frontier Ideology

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Marion Rana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Deaf Identity ◽  
American Nation

Abstract This article focuses on the nineteenth century as a pivotal time for the development of a Deaf identity in the United States and examines the way John Jacob Flournoy’s idea of a “Deaf-Mute Commonwealth” touches upon core themes of American culture studies and history. In employing pivotal democratic ideas such as egalitarianism, liberty, and self-representation as well as elements of manifest destiny such as exceptionalism and the frontier ideology in order to raise support for a Deaf State, the creation and perpetuation of a Deaf identity bears strong similarities to the processes of American nation-building. This article will show how the endeavor to found a Deaf state was indicative of the separationist and secessionist movements in the United States at that time, and remains relevant to Deaf group identity today.

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