Democracy Growing Up

Authority, Autonomy, and Passion in Tocqueville's Democracy in America

By Laura Janara

Subjects: Women's Studies
Series: SUNY series in Political Theory: Contemporary Issues
Paperback : 9780791454428, 266 pages, September 2002
Hardcover : 9780791454411, 266 pages, September 2002

Alternative formats available from:

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

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
The Abyss
Interpreting Tocquevilles' 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

The 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
The State as Parent

5. IMPOTENCE AND INFANTILISM

Hypermasculine Individualism
Public Opinion: Elle mène le monde
Female Administration: Male Government
The 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

Notes

Bibliography

Index

The first sustained feminist interpretation of Tocqueville’s classic, Democracy in America.

Description

Finalist for the 2004 C. B. Macpherson Prize presented by the Canadian Political Science Association
Winner of the Best First Book Award presented by the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association

Tocqueville's Democracy in America continues to be widely read, but for all this familiarity, the vivid imagery with which he conveys his ideas has been overlooked, left to act with unexamined force upon readers' imaginations. In this first sustained feminist reading of Democracy in America Laura Janara assesses the dramatic feminine, masculine, and infantile metaphorical figures that represent the historical political drama that is Tocqueville's primary topic. These tropes are analyzed as both historical artifacts and symbols for psychoanalytic interpretation, deepening and complicating the standing interpretations of Tocqueville's work. Democracy Growing Up comments critically upon the peculiar gendered and familial foundations of modern Western democracy and upon the notion of democratic maturity that Tocqueville offers us.

Laura Janara is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia.

Reviews

"Janara … provides us with a key to Tocqueville's subconscious thoughts based on his language, which is rich in the imagery of familial and gender relationships. She does this in a nuanced, original and convincing way. " — Perspectives on Politics

"Democracy Growing Up consistently illuminates the hitherto undiscussed gender structure and entailments of Tocqueville's commentaries and has lots of surprising things to say on other specific aspects of his thought. It is a provocative and substantial contribution to the literature on Tocqueville. " — Mark T. Reinhardt, Williams College