{"product_id":"the-traumatic-colonel-the-founding-fathers-slavery-and-the-phantasmatic-aaron-burr","title":"Traumatic Colonel","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn\u003cbr\u003e\nAmerican political fantasy, the Founding Fathers loom large, at once historical\u003cbr\u003e\nand mythical figures. In The Traumatic Colonel, Michael J. Drexler and\u003cbr\u003e\nEd White examine the Founders as imaginative fictions, characters in the\u003cbr\u003e\nspecifically literary sense, whose significance emerged from narrative elements\u003cbr\u003e\nclustered around them. From the revolutionary era through the 1790s, the Founders\u003cbr\u003e\ntook shape as a significant cultural system for thinking about politics, race,\u003cbr\u003e\nand sexuality. Yet after 1800, amid the pressures of the Louisiana Purchase and\u003cbr\u003e\nthe Haitian Revolution, this system could no longer accommodate the deep\u003cbr\u003e\nanxieties about the United States as a slave nation.\u003cbr\u003e\nDrexler\u003cbr\u003e\nand White assert that the most emblematic of the political tensions of the time\u003cbr\u003e\nis the figure of Aaron Burr, whose rise and fall were detailed in the\u003cbr\u003e\nliterature of his time: his electoral tie with Thomas Jefferson in 1800,\u003cbr\u003e\nthe accusations of seduction, the notorious duel with Alexander Hamilton, his\u003cbr\u003e\nmachinations as the schemer of a breakaway empire, and his spectacular treason\u003cbr\u003e\ntrial. The authors venture a psychoanalytically-informed exploration of post-revolutionary\u003cbr\u003e\nAmerica to suggest that the figure of “Burr” was fundamentally a displaced\u003cbr\u003e\nfantasy for addressing the Haitian Revolution. Drexler and White expose how the\u003cbr\u003e\nhistorical and literary fictions of the nation’s founding served to repress the\u003cbr\u003e\nlarger issue of the slave system and uncover the Burr myth as the crux of that\u003cbr\u003e\nrepression. Exploring early American novels, such as the works of Charles\u003cbr\u003e\nBrockden Brown and Tabitha Gilman Tenney, as well as the pamphlets, polemics,\u003cbr\u003e\ntracts, and biographies of the early republican period, the authors speculate\u003cbr\u003e\nthat this flourishing of political writing illuminates the notorious gap in\u003cbr\u003e\nU.S. literary history between 1800 and 1820.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54195285590360,"sku":null,"price":29.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781479842537__676f72e31aa5e.jpg?v=1741159498","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/the-traumatic-colonel-the-founding-fathers-slavery-and-the-phantasmatic-aaron-burr","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}