{"id":18,"date":"2022-06-19T10:17:19","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T08:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/?page_id=18"},"modified":"2025-09-14T18:17:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T16:17:19","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monograph<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U.S. Literature<\/a><\/em> (Fordham University Press, 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core, Democratic Anarchy<\/em> grapples with an uncomfortable truth inimical to democracy: both aesthetics and politics depend on inclusion and exclusion. To some extent this is obvious. Novels, poems, and political communities require form to organize and regulate their various parts, and any form implies selection. But \u201cDemocratic Anarchy\u201d asks, how can \u201cthe people\u201d be represented in a way that acknowledges what remains unrepresentable? What would it mean to face up to the constitutive exclusions that haunt U.S. democracy? In \u201cDemocratic Anarchy,\u201d I read works of 19th<\/sup>-, 20th<\/sup>-, and 21st<\/sup>-century American literature and art, especially those by women, people of color, and immigrants, alongside political rhetoric and legal documents to consider the longue dur\u00e9e <\/em>of democracy in the U.S. These engagements reveal the synecdochic logic of democracy, where a part of the population is elevated to the exceptional status of \u201cwhole\u201d in the service of formal representation. This movement of formalization denies the very exclusion on which that whole is based. The authors I study develop rhetorical strategies\u2014including figural interruptions, excess, and disorder\u2014to resist this double gesture of exclusion and false inclusion. Working at the intersection of Lacanian psychoanalysis, radical democratic theory, and American literary studies, I theorize American democracy\u2019s \u201cdeath drive.\u201d This drive figures a \u201cdemocratic anarchy\u201d that insists on the radical equality betrayed by the police-like arrangements of formal, synecdochic democracy and disrupts the logic of exclusion and hierarchy organizing the police order: what ought not appear suddenly does so to antagonize the very rules governing appearing. I thus offer a new account of literature\u2019s political force, locating it not in reassuring visions of egalitarian democracy but in operations that resist forms of hierarchical regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publications<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monograph:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U.S. Literature<\/a><\/em>, Fordham University Press (2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book Chapters:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWayward Possibilities: Errant Black Women and the Intimacies of Freedom,\u201d Postpolitics and the Aesthetic Imagination<\/a><\/em>, edited by Juan Meneses (University of Minnesota Press, 2025).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peer-Reviewed Articles:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBetween Two Emancipations: Louise Erdrich and the Politics of Disavowal<\/a>,\u201d MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the U.S.<\/em> 50.1 (Spring 2025): 141-64.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00ab\u00a0Cherish Your Fantasy: Thomas Pynchon’s Paranoid Meanings and Entropic Dissolutions<\/a>,\u00a0\u00bb SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature<\/em> 44 (2024): 61-80.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTautological Revisions: Colson Whitehead\u2019s The Nickel Boys<\/em> and the Construction of Black Life<\/a>,\u201d SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature<\/em> 42 (2023): 83-101.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMelville\u2019s Obsessional Form: Disjunction and Refusal in \u2018Benito Cereno,\u2019<\/a>\u201d European Journal of American Studies<\/em> 18.3 (7 Sept. 2023). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHorrible Beauty: Robin Coste Lewis\u2019s Black Aesthetic Practice<\/a>,\u201d Postmodern Culture<\/em> 32.2 (Jan. 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDemocratic Aesthetics: Scenes of Political Violence and Anxiety in Nari Ward and Ocean Vuong,\u201d American Literature<\/em> 93.4 (Dec. 2021): 685-712.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cResistance and Revolution: Fanon, Himes, and \u2018a literature of combat,\u2019\u201d African American Review<\/em> 54.3 (Fall 2021): 199-217.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnarchival Dislocations: Modes of Reading (in) Black Studies,\u201d Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism<\/em> 48.1 (2020): 4-28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPlasticity at the Violet Hour: Tiresias, The Waste Land<\/em>, and Poetic Form,\u201d JML: Journal of Modern Literature<\/em> 41.3 (Spring 2018): 166-182.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translations:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(with Nell Wasserstrom and Carolyn Shread) Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, Y a-t-il un art communiste?<\/em> (unpublished in French), Une conference de Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, Grand Palais, Exposition: Rouge: Art et utopie au pays des Soviets<\/em>, <\/em>Paris, FR, 10 April 2019 (English: \u201cDoes Communist Art Exist?\u201d Critical Inquiry<\/em> 48.3 [Spring 2022]: 459-474).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book Reviews:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review of Thomas Austenfeld and Grzegorz Ko\u015b\u0107 (eds.), Robert Lowell in Context<\/em>, Twentieth-Century Literature<\/em>, 70.4 (Dec. 2024): 425-33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review of Sergio Benvenuto\u2019s Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan<\/em>, American Imago<\/em>, 77.4 (Winter 2020): 772-785.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review of Audrey Wasser\u2019s The Work of Difference: Modernism, Romanticism, and the Production of Literary Form<\/em>, SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism<\/em>, 48.1 (2019): 113-117.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Power of the People,\u201d Review of Scott Henkel\u2019s Direct Democracy: Collective Power, the Swarm, and the Literatures of the Americas<\/em>, sx salon: a small axe literary platform <\/em>29 (October 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review of Philip Lorenz\u2019s Tears of Sovereignty: Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama<\/em>, MLN<\/em> (Modern Language Notes<\/em>) 129.5 (December 2014): 1238-1240.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMusical Literature: Bridging the Gap between High and Low Art,\u201d Review of T. Austin Graham\u2019s The Great American Songbooks: Musical Texts, Modernism, & the Value of Popular Culture<\/em>, Twentieth-Century Literature <\/em>59.3 (Fall 2013): 504-512.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Publications:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAesthetic Absorption: On the Effects of Lingering with Rothko,\u201d ASAP\/Review<\/em> (24 February 2025). https:\/\/asapjournal.com\/feature\/aesthetic-absorption-on-the-effects-of-lingering-with-rothko\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeductions of Metaphor: On Ocean Vuong\u2019s Time Is a Mother<\/em><\/a>,\u201d Southern Humanities Review<\/em> (28 July 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Triple Antagonist of the Police, Policing, and Policy<\/a>,\u201d CounterPunch<\/em> (31 July 2020). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisordering Modernism: On T.S. Eliot\u2019s The Waste Land<\/em><\/a>,\u201d A Closer Look at JML<\/em> 41.3, Indiana University Press Blog <\/em>(August 2018).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monograph Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U.S. Literature (Fordham University Press, 2024) At its core, Democratic Anarchy grapples with an uncomfortable truth inimical to democracy: both…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001132,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-18","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/matthewscully\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}