Democracy growing up : authority, autonomy, and passion in Tocqueville's Democracy in America / by Laura Janara.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-238) and index.

Print version record.

In this feminist reading of Tocqueville's famous Democracy in America, Janara (political science, U. of British Columbia) explores the familial and gendered imagery used in the text to discuss American democracy. She argues that a feminized image of stable aristocratic order is placed in opposition to an image of democracy as maleness, flux, indeterminancy. Furthermore, American democracy is symbolized in the Tocqueville's text as a "growing child-subject" achieving maturity away from a maternalized aristocracy as opposed to the French revolution which is portrayed as having had to commit matricide in order to be born. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Machine generated contents note: 1. "The Key to Almost the Whole Work" -- French and U.S. Discourse -- Interpreting Tocqueville's Imagery: A Psychoanalytic Framework -- What Tocqueville Fears: Democracy's Three Potentialities -- Abyss -- Interpreting Tocqueville's Imagery: Tocqueville in History -- Dinnerstein's Theory and Tocqueville's Democracy -- Diagnosing the Democratic Psyche -- 2. Genealogy, Birth, and Growth -- Democracy in France: Urchin Orphan -- Democracy in America: Wilderness Expecting -- Saginaw: A Scarcely Formed Embryo -- Mother England -- Resisting the Mother: Democracy as Adolescent -- 3. Adolescence and Maturity -- Adolescence -- Manliness or Individualism? -- Democracy in School -- Passion for Equality's Charms -- Religion, Mores, Morality: Female Bulwark for Maturity -- Democratic Maturity? -- 4. Homo Puer Robustus: Property, Commerce, Industry -- Impulse for Enterprise -- Anxiety and Unsated Desire -- Exploiting the Land, Fearing the Flesh, Ennobling Money -- Money, Marriage, and Manly Citizenship -- Middle Class Desire and the Stilling of Politics -- Workers, Owners, and the Veil of Contract -- State as Parent -- 5. Impotence and Infantilism -- Hypermasculine Individualism -- Public Opinion: Elle mene le monde -- Female Administration: Male Government -- Guardian State -- Infantilism and Impotence -- 6. Democracy's Family Values -- Democracy as Self-Mastery: Fathers, Sons, and Brothers -- Girls: Democracy's Shadow Figures -- Fear and Desire: Containing the American Woman -- Marriage and Sex: Resurrecting Order -- Democracy's Gender and Family Foundations -- Conclusion: Family, Gender, and Democratic Maturity.

English.

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