The body politic: Nature, politics, and the body in American political culture, 1776-1875

This dissertation traces the development of two languages of nature, politics, and political rights in America from the American Revolution through late Reconstruction. It highlights the critical position occupied by the human body in the conceptual origins of politics. The work is divided into two parts, each of which critically examines the articulation of a different grammar of political rights in the United States. Part One focuses on the early republican and antebellum periods, and it analyzes the development of an ideal of citizenship that stressed what John Adams called the "general rules" by which government could function--a language that, today, we might call abstract universalism. Part Two traces the development of a second, competing motif of rights and democratic citizenship developed during Reconstruction, partially as a consequence of the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution. This model forms the basis for claims premised in difference that we know, today, as identity politics. The dissertation argues that, in spite of their many important differences, both languages share a common conceptual foundation insofar as both view the human body as a natural origin for politics and political institutions and it concludes by proposing a fundamentally different, non-ontological basis for thinking about politics and nature.