Download or read book Democracy Growing Up written by Laura Janara and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2004 C.B. Macpherson Prize presented by the Canadian Political Science Association Winner of the Best First Book Award presented by the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association Tocqueville's Democracy in America continues to be widely read, but for all this familiarity, the vivid imagery with which he conveys his ideas has been overlooked, left to act with unexamined force upon readers' imaginations. In this first sustained feminist reading of Democracy in America Laura Janara assesses the dramatic feminine, masculine, and infantile metaphorical figures that represent the historical political drama that is Tocqueville's primary topic. These tropes are analyzed as both historical artifacts and symbols for psychoanalytic interpretation, deepening and complicating the standing interpretations of Tocqueville's work. Democracy Growing Up comments critically upon the peculiar gendered and familial foundations of modern Western democracy and upon the notion of democratic maturity that Tocqueville offers us.