Melancholy subjects: Citizenship, affect, and publicity in contemporary American culture
Abstract
This dissertation argues that cultural discourses of melancholia, that is, of mournfulness and apathy, organize and define citizenship in contemporary American culture. The link between citizenship and melancholia is not immediately evident, but through explorations of literary, historical, cinematic, political, and legal texts of and about citizenship, this project demonstrates that a melancholy state of feeling underwrites our everyday lives and experiences. I have found that melancholia produces a paradoxical range of cultural effects where on the one hand, melancholia tends to uphold restrictions to citizenship based on racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism. On the other hand, melancholia invigorates our imaginations, produces cultural critique, and aids in challenging discriminatory restrictions to citizenship. In making visible how melancholia and citizenship coexist, however contradictorily, this project encourages cultural critique and argues for the importance of attention to discourses of affect within American Studies scholarship. This project responds to a critical and theoretical tendency to isolate the study of citizenship within disciplinary fields of political science or economics. Instead, I situate citizenship as a cultural phenomenon and articulate an interdisciplinary theory and methodology that draws on critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Somerville, Purdue University.
Subject Area
American studies|Womens studies
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