Synopses & Reviews
Using the cheap desktop publishing techniques of 'zine culture, and supplementing them with an extensive presence on the World Wide Web, the Bad Subjects Production Team has produced one of the only successful political 'zines in the US, as well as one of the first--and longest-running--on-line publications in the world.
Bad Subjects offers a critique of the post-1960s left in the United States, and attempts to reclaim a utopian vision for a political movement which has become fragmented and cynical about the possibility of social transformation. Indeed, Bad Subjects itself is simultaneously a valuable resource and an inspiration, a record of what politically-engaged cultural criticism can achieve, and an example of a progressive political community making use of new technologies.
Offering a way out of vulgar multiculturalism--based on separatism and the idea of "authenticity"--into a critical identity politics founded on coalitions, hybridity, and class consciousness, Bad Subjectsspeaks to readers both in and outside of the academy. Taking their cue from the feminist slogan, "the personal is political," and from Marxist injunctions to study "everyday life," Bad Subjects covers everything from popular culture and high technology to economic restructuring and political organizing, from Raymond Williams to The Dead Kennedys.
In the terrain of cultural criticism, Bad Subjects is an off-road vehicle roaring away from the beaten path.
Review
“A refreshing, thoughtful, and timely work. Románs incisive unbundling of ‘the construct of citizenship and the consequences of variegated membership is foundational work that will be widely cited.”
-Michael A. Olivas,author of “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aqui”: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering
Review
“Tracing the tortured history of citizenship, Román deftly illustrates both the legal and the social mechanisms by which entire groups have been denied the full benefits of United States citizenship despite an otherwise functional equivalence to their fellow Americans. It is an uncomfortable but enlightening story.”
Review
“A rich and impassioned exploration of the persistence of second-class citizenship in the United States. Román vividly portrays the injustices concealed by our discourse of equal citizenship.”
-Gerald Neuman,J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law, Harvard Law School
Review
&8220;A timely interrogation of our citizenship tropes.
Review
“A refreshing, thoughtful, and timely work. Román’s incisive unbundling of ‘the construct of citizenship’ and the consequences of variegated membership is foundational work that will be widely cited.”
Review
“At a time when members of Congress hector President Obama in a televised address on the issue of citizenship and health care, and when know-nothing restrictionists dominate talk radio and cable news, this is a refreshing, thoughtful, and timely work. Román has broadened his traditional work on Puerto Rico and the American colonies to examine carefully the literal and symbolic meanings of U.S. citizenship. His incisive unbundling of 'the construct of citizenship and the consequences of variegated membership is foundational work that will be widely cited, if not always by judges then surely by a wide array of immigration and other Constitutional scholars.”
-Michael A. Olivas,author of “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aqui”: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering
Review
“A rich and impassioned exploration of the persistence of second-class citizenship in the United States. Román vividly portrays the injustices concealed by our discourse of equal citizenship.”
Review
"Roman shows in historical and contemporary terms that members of some groups (women, African Americans, and Latinos, for instance), do not achieve full access to the rights of citizenship . . . The historical and theoretical analysis Roman provides is solid and quite informative. Its condensed nature makes Citizenship and its Exclusions a lively and accessible introduction to these issues." -Julie Novkov,The Law and Politics Book Review
Review
"Revels in a self-consciously renegade spirit." -The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Review
"The wired left." -Toronto Globe and Mail,
Review
"Lively and smart." -San Francisco Chronicle,
Review
"Citizenship and Its Exclusions provides an excellent history of citizenship...Roman is an exceptional writer and researcher."-Arthur Rizer,The Federal Lawyer
Synopsis
Citizenship is generally viewed as the most desired legal status an individual can attain, invoking the belief that citizens hold full inclusion in a society, and can exercise and be protected by the Constitution. Yet this membership has historically been exclusive and illusive for many, and in
Citizenship and Its Exclusions, Ediberto Román offers a sweeping, interdisciplinary analysis of citizenships contradictions.
Román offers an exploration of citizenship that spans from antiquity to the present, and crosses disciplines from history to political philosophy to law, including constitutional and critical race theories. Beginning with Greek and Roman writings on citizenship, he moves on to late-medieval and Renaissance Europe, then early Modern Western law, and culminates his analysis with an explanation of how past precedents have influenced U.S. law and policy regulating the citizenship status of indigenous and territorial island people, as well as how different levels of membership have created a de facto subordinate citizenship status for many members of American society, often lumped together as the “underclass.”
About the Author
Ediberto Román is professor of law at Florida International University. He is the author of The Other American Colonies: An International and Constitutional Law Examination of the United States Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Island Conquests, and edits the NYU Press series Citizenship and Migration in the Americas.