The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Series Q) (Hardcover)

by Lauren Berlant (Author), Michèle AinaBarale (Series Editor), Jonathan Goldberg (Series Editor) "When Americans make the pilgrimage to Washington they are trying to grasp the nation in its totality..." (more)
Key Phrases: normal national culture, national personhood, infantile citizen, United States, Queer Nation, African American (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Assailing the privatization of citizenship and the idealization of the citizen as a child, Berlant (English, Univ. of Chicago) criticizes a national political discourse that has shifted from public-sphere issues like economic inequities to the private realm of sexual intimacy. Berlant argues that the Reagan revolution based the redefinition of citizenship and national identity on a politicized private sphere overseen by a federal government increasingly less committed to social justice. She illustrates her argument with examples from television programs such as The Simpsons and the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill congressional hearings. Still, she does not adequately explore whether the privatization of citizenship has occurred because historically white, middle-class American male heterosexism has been so pervasive. A scholarly study; recommended for academic collections in American culture studies.?Charles L. Lumpkins, Bloomsburg Univ. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Berlant offers a trenchant genealogy of the imaginary realm of citizenship, resituating cultural contests over sex, race, and nation as conflicts over the defining fantasies of public life. Few cultural critics move with as much skill and insight between debates over the public sphere and how best to read pornography. This text links the analytic concerns of cultural studies with the fugitive struggles over the imaginable bounds of citizenship. A keen and disarming book." - Judith Butler "Taking her (counter)cue from that celebrated sitcom of American life, The Reagan Years, Lauren Berlant makes an exhilarating argument for a theory of "comedic" citizenship. What happens when the collusive myths of the "common culture" become obsessed and estranged by the fraying and freeing of the American people - plurally identified, demographically diverse, sexually ambivalent, culturally mongrel? Berlant's wit and insight lie in going with the "silliness" of everyday existence, inhabiting its persuasive, popular forms, and then, in ways you least expect, throwing up a devastating picture of the way we live now." - Homi K. Bhabha

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822319314
• ISBN-13: 978-0822319313
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,890,755 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Can Lisa Simpson Save Us From Our Cultural Baby-Craze?, September 18, 2001

By	Brian Almquist "-baa-" (Iowa City, IA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Series Q) (Paperback)

Lauren Berlant's book contains a series of essays concerning issues of sex and citizenship, though it may be a bit too much to hope that each section deals with both topics. The title itself refers to a cultural perception of innocence and how it relates to the seat of state power. Of course, power corrupts and innocence is tainted, disillusioned.

As with most texts of this type, a careful reading of the introduction will acquaint the reader with the author's ideas and intentions. This is important, because it is likely that in readinging the essays that constitute the majority of the remainder of the book, it is entirely possible to lose track of these ideas. The reward-to-effort involved in reading these essays is minimal, and I felt ripped off. It is also important to check the footnotes: Berlant hides some useful information that adds light to her story (such as the fact that Newt Gingrich not-very-noisily encouraged Republicans to become less hostile to gays).

In her essays, Berlant uses a wide variety of source documents -- her "archive" -- to provide the cues for her analysis. She picks and chooses context at will: The fact that The Simpsons' format requires all characters to forgo any growth is ignored (Lisa couldn't end an episode embittered against the structures of state power, even if it would be appropriate), but factors the creators have no control over (the local TV station places a military recruitment ad in a broadcast of a syndicated episode) are noted. The extreme selectivity of her sources, in my eyes, makes many of her conclusions suspect. In a few other cases, such as when she looks at the cover stories of several issues of TIME magazine to find messages about immigration and citizenship, her selections seem most appropriate.

Each reader will probably have their own sense of how well Berlant chose her source material. Since "your mileage may vary," I will list several chapters along with the sources chosen.

1 - "The Theory of Infantile Citizenship" - Audre Lorde's childhood trip to D.C., an episode of The Simpsons ("Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington"), the movie IN COUNTRY. Also, the movies MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and THE LITTLEST REBEL provide further context for the critique of The Simpsons episode. Are sweet, innocent little children the ideal citizens? Even if they ask a presidential candidate what type of underwear he wears?

2 - "Live Sex Acts" - This analysis over various censorship controversies looks at the pivotal figures in the debates from the late 80s and early 90s. Former NEA director John Frohmeyer's memoir LEAVING TOWN ALIVE; some NEA projects, like the zines LIVE SEX ACTS and QUEER CITY; anti-porn criticism from the likes of Andrea Dworkin and the Meese Commision; Tipper Gore's HOW TO RAISE PG KIDS IN AN X-RATED SOCIETY (and I was just beginning to like her again after the election) and a variety of images of Jerry Falwell. Gotta keep those little kids sweet and innocent.

3 - "America, 'Fat,' and the Fetus" - If sweet, innocent little children are ideal citizens, what does that make fetuses? Berlant takes on the nations fetus fetish, and it isn't pretty. The archive includes the movies ONCE AROUND, LOOK WHO'S TALKING (and its first sequel) and INNERSPACE; pro-Life propaganda like THE SILENT SCREAM and THE ECLIPSE OF REASON; Raymond Carver's story "Fat"; two episodes of I LOVE LUCY concerning Lucy's pregnancy; LIFE magazine's famous pre-natal imagery; and, finally, videotapes of Berlant's nephew, covering his sonogram, birth, and first birthday.

It kind of goes on like that, but further highlights include the return of The Simpsons when Queer Bart is taken up as a gay icon, pilgrimages to the capitol by slaves, fictitious and real, and a "gallery" of images related to the topics of the essays, including the, uh, bracing cover to Tom Ace's magazine. [....] I would not recommend Berlant's book to non-academic types. Trying to apply Berlant's reasoning to items other than her "archives" might be asking for trouble, and her prose is often tedious in its construction. Further, some of her archive material and topicality seems unfortunately dated. I've been told this is some of Berlant's most clear and incisive writing, which strikes me as kind of sad.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book about the political imaginary of America, January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Series Q) (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book about the contemporary imaginary of American citizenship. Discussing an extraordinary variety of cases ranging from television series, to film, to popular magazines to juridical testimony, Berlant traces the fantasies and structures of feeling that have given form to the American nation as an intimate space of increasingly infantalized subjects. Berlant eloquently analyzes the sexual, racial and class anxieties underlying the modeling of the public sphere on the privacy of the heterosexual, white family to the exclussion of other forms of intimacy and political presence. Through her discussion of American citizenship, Berlant writes clearly and insightfully about candent debates such as abortion and immigration. This is one of the best books I have read about nationalism and citizenship, and a pleasure to read as well.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant book that does work that needs doing., January 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Series Q) (Paperback)

This book masters the art of doing politics and cultural critique at the same time and it does it with an honesty and pedagogical clarity I have never seen before. Ranging across archives from mass culture to political rhetoric, Berlant does the very hard work of thinking things through in all their complexity (things like the mutual imbrications of nationalism, gender, class, and race)and she does it with writing that has both the stunning beauty of the perfect description and the too-true turn of phrase and the cutting clarity of thoughts that reverberate through the everyday sensibilities of current life in the USA.