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Lincoln: The Ambiguous Icon

(Hardback)


Publishing Details

Full Title:

Lincoln: The Ambiguous Icon

Contributors:

By (Author) Steven Johnston

ISBN:

9781442261303

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Imprint:

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Publication Date:

16th August 2018

Country:

United States

Classifications

Readership:

Professional and Scholarly

Fiction/Non-fiction:

Non Fiction

Other Subjects:

History of the Americas

Dewey:

973.7092

Physical Properties

Physical Format:

Hardback

Number of Pages:

240

Dimensions:

Width 160mm, Height 236mm, Spine 22mm

Weight:

513g

Description

The judgment that Abraham Lincoln is the finest president in the history of the United States borders on self-evident. This status tends to disable the very possibility of a more critical understanding or appreciation, one that does not work, explicitly or implicitly, within the taken-for-granted frame of his greatness. Still, America is not blind to or ignorant of Lincolns shortcomings. Rather it is in part because of these shortcomings that Lincoln is revered. Thus, if the country needs to legitimize a problematic course of action, it is Lincoln to whom it turns. Lincoln, America reminds itself, suspended habeas corpus; jailed political opponents; suppressed speech; held racist views; and pursued racist policies. The Lincoln that America idealizes is a thoroughly ambiguous figure. Simultaneously, the country tends to downplay or conveniently overlook the underside of Lincoln, part of a larger political pattern in which it proclaims its exceptionalism while indulging the very worst as it conducts its political affairs. It is time to take Lincolns ambiguity seriously, which might put America in position to recognize that one reason it routinely falls short of its democratic principles and commitments is that it may not, just like Lincoln, fully believe in them. In Lincoln: The Ambiguous Icon, Steven Johnston explores Lincolns complicated political thought and practice, reinterpreting the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural, and some of the many manifestations of Lincoln in film, monuments, and memorials that concealbut also revealthe terrible ambiguity of this marginally understood American figure.

Reviews

"Steven Johnstons book on Lincoln is like no other. Lincoln biographies, speeches, four films, several memorials, the Gettysburg Address and more illustrate the fundamental ambiguity at the core of Lincolns legacy. Johnstons Lincoln demonstrates the tragic contradictions generated by democracys slippery foothold in our national story." -- Lori Marso, Union College
Abraham Lincoln is an icon of ambiguity because iconicity is itself tragic. The political, religious, and aesthetic history of the icon shows this: at once disparaged and chastised for its moral turpitude it is all the while embraced and exalted for its political powers of glory. Steven Johnstons brilliant and discomforting engagement with the iconicity of Lincoln affronts all of us with this tragic element of our aesthetics and politics; witness Thomas Balls Freedmens Memorial to Lincoln, the Gettysburg address, the Second Inaugural. Johnston collects and connects all these objects of iconicity to create an ethos of ambiguity for democratic life that holds no promise of redemption or overcoming. More than this, Johnston recollects these and other historical traces of American iconophilia forcing his readers to confront the accursed parts of Americas tragic forgetfulness. As much a book about the slippages of our historical memories as it is a book about Abraham Lincoln, Johnston has given us a genealogy of American moralism from which we cannot turn away. -- Davide Panagia, Professor of Political Science, UCLA
"Lincolnis a tour de force. Johnston offers a complex portrait of Lincoln and the nation that resonates eerily into the present. At once a work of political theory and democratic criticism, Johnstons claim that Lincolns constitutive ambiguity as both a defender of the Constitution and its chief violator, a defender of emancipation and a leader who stifled dissent, one who upheld white privilege and justified colonization, is well-written and lively. Weaving together Lincolns writings, scholars from across disciplines, popular films, and monuments, Johnston examines the representations of Lincoln through attention to the democratic potential and tragic aspects of slavery, race, the treatment of American Indians, colonization, dissent, and political sovereignty. This book reframes the American promise of equal liberty in how we remember Lincoln." -- Laurie E. Naranch, Siena College
Johnston accomplishes the notable feat of writing a book that will interest political theorists and be accessible to undergraduates. The unifying theme is, of course, the ambiguity of Lincoln, but the ambiguous features of Lincoln and Lincolns legacy are also the ambiguous features of America and democracy. Most chapters explore the ambiguity of Lincoln, America, and democracy through readings of Lincolns speeches and engagement with the secondary literature on these speeches. One chapter, however, reads the contemporary status of Lincolns legacy through three popular films, and another explores the same themes with a discussion of the Freedmens Memorial. Johnston reads Lincoln as an ambiguous, even tragic, figure because his failures figure the larger failures and aporias of American democracy in particular and democracy writ large. Johnston explores the inadequacy of justification in the face of violence and the particular racialized features of this failure in America. He demonstrates how the violence of slavery, the Civil War, and the coming Reconstruction is justified by Lincoln exclusively in terms of the reformation of white Americans and an American exceptionalism imagined in terms of a white America. Highly recommended * CHOICE *

Author Bio

Steven Johnston holds the Maxwell Endowed Chair at the University of Utah, Department of Political Science.

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