Bernd Herzogenrath’s An American Body|Politic is a study of the intersection between the material, biological body and body as political and cultural metaphor in American politics, religion, literature, and popular culture. Deeply influenced by the thought of Gilles Deleuze, Herzogenrath’s approach to American culture encompasses endless possibilities and potentials, eschewing the mechanic and structural. He traipses through American history and culture, pausing to examine such varied facets as the Puritans’ “two bodies,” Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy, Cotton Mather and smallpox, the poetics|politics of Whitman, Henry Adams’s stroll along the shores of complexity, and the Detroit-based techno music of today.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations • Acknowledgments • Introduction • Body|Theory|Politic: Body|Theory • The Puritans’ Two Bodies • A “‘Physics’ Of Power”: Phase Transitions and Turbulence in the Antinomian Controversy • Cotton Mather: The Angel and the Animalcula • “I Am The Poet Of Little Things”: Walt Whitman and Minor Poetics|Politics • A Physical Theory Of Heredity|Heresy: The Education of Henry Adams • “A Sonorous People”: Techno|Music and the Joyful Body|Politic • Conclusion • Notes • Bibliography • Index