He Does Not Suffer Now: Death and Citizenship in the National Tale

Matthew L. Reznicek

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-13363-3_5

He Does Not Suffer Now: Death and Citizenship in the National Tale

Matthew L. Reznicek

Department of English

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Abstract

The politics of death in the National Tale reveal a politics of bare life, rendering clear the boundary between the categories of citizens who are invested with rights and those whose lives can be killed without the violation of a law. The politics of death, sovereignty, and citizenship reveal the degree to which the power of the nation-state depends upon bodies that can be killed in order to demarcate the boundary not merely between citizen and non-citizen, but between the political subject and the private subject. By reading the politics of bare life through deaths in novels by Sydney Owenson, Germaine de Staël, and Maria Edgeworth, the National Tale offers citizenship only to those willing to surrender to the power of the sovereign, and marks as alien those lives deemed “unliveable” because of their refusal to submit to the biopolitics of modernity.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Publisher	Springer Nature
Pages	119-137
Number of pages	19
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13363-3_5
State	Published - 2022

Publication series

Name	Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
ISSN (Print)	2634-6435
ISSN (Electronic)	2634-6443

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Literature and Literary Theory
History and Philosophy of Science

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10.1007/978-3-031-13363-3_5

Cite this

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abstract = "The politics of death in the National Tale reveal a politics of bare life, rendering clear the boundary between the categories of citizens who are invested with rights and those whose lives can be killed without the violation of a law. The politics of death, sovereignty, and citizenship reveal the degree to which the power of the nation-state depends upon bodies that can be killed in order to demarcate the boundary not merely between citizen and non-citizen, but between the political subject and the private subject. By reading the politics of bare life through deaths in novels by Sydney Owenson, Germaine de Sta{\"e}l, and Maria Edgeworth, the National Tale offers citizenship only to those willing to surrender to the power of the sovereign, and marks as alien those lives deemed “unliveable” because of their refusal to submit to the biopolitics of modernity.",

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He Does Not Suffer Now: Death and Citizenship in the National Tale

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