American Enchantment: Rituals of the People in the Post-Revolutionary World

The demise of the monarchy and the bodily absence of a King caused a representational crisis in the early republic, forcing the American people to reconstruct the social symbolic order in a new and unfamiliar way. Social historians have routinely understood the Revolution and the early republic as projects dedicated to and productive of reason, with "the people" as an orderly and sensible collective at odds with the volatile and unthinking crowd. American Enchantment rejects this traditiona...