Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Founding Fictions
ISBN: 9780817383558
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / The University of Alabama Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Democracy; Political participation; Political stability; Political culture; Political culture; Citizenship; Citizenship;

An extended analysis of how Americans imagined themselves as citizens between 1764 and 1845

Founding Fictions develops the concept of a "political fiction," or a narrative that people tell about their own political theories, and analyzes how republican and democratic fictions positioned American citizens as either romantic heroes, tragic victims, or ironic partisans. By re-telling the stories that Americans have told themselves about citizenship, Mercieca highlights an important contradiction in American political theory and practice: that national stability and active citizen participation are perceived as fundamentally at odds.