Necro Citizenship

“Drawing on a vast range of material, Castronovo’s book shows how notions of citizenship are bound up with tropes of death in the post-revolutionary public sphere, and that exposing the tropes of death one can see discussions over slavery and suffrage in a new and valuable light. Its range of reference is indeed compelling. . . . [P]rovocative insights and [a] compelling argument.” - Virginia Quarterly Review

"Necro Citizenship is a rich book. . . . One walks away from an encounter with the book grasping a firmer sense of the nineteenth century’s alterity—always a useful prospect, I think—but with some sense as well of the continuities that bring us from there to here. . . . [C]ompelling. . . ." - Jay Grossman, South Atlantic Review

"Castronovo has written a fascinating, deeply researched, challenging, and highly original account of the link between citizenship and death in nineteenth-century America. . . . Necro Citizenship should be required reading for anyone interested in the reform impulse." - John Stauffer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Castronovo’s important project draws on an array of diverse theoretical influences and tells a compelling story about public culture in the nineteenth-century United States. Necro Citizenship reminds us of the importance of remembering American histories of dispossession, privatization, passivity, and amnesia. Detailing political murder and social death does powerful work toward imagining a vital, contestatory public sphere."

- Molly McGarry , Journal of American History

“Liberty and death? Citizenship and necrophilia? The conjunction ‘and’ is shocking and is meant to shock. Russ Castronovo sees American political life as the burial ground of many corpses, literal as well as metaphoric. With ruthless determination he digs these up, examines their tell-tale remains, and, in the process, offers a trenchant critique of some consequences of American democracy.” - Wai Chee Dimock, author of Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy