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In the contemporary world of neoliberalism, efficiency is treated as the vehicle of political and economic health. State bureaucracy, but not corporate bureaucracy, is seen as inefficient, and privatization is seen as a magic cure for social ills. In Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair, Bonnie Honig asks whether democracy is possible in the absence of public services, spaces, and utilities. In other words, if neoliberalism leaves to democracy merely electoral majoritarianism and procedures of deliberation while divesting democratic states of their ownership of public things, what will the impact be? Following Tocqueville, who extolled the virtues of “pursuing in common the objects of common desires,” Honig focuses not on the demos but on the objects of democratic life. Democracy, as she points out, postulates public things—infrastructure, monuments, libraries—that citizens use, care for, repair, and are gathered up by. To be “gathered up” refers to the work of D. W. Winnicott, the object relations psychoanalyst who popularized the idea of “transitional objects”—the toys, teddy bears, or favorite blankets by way of which infants come to understand themselves as unified selves with an inside and an outside in relation to others. The wager of Public Things is that the work transitional objects do for infants is analogously performed for democratic citizens by public things, which press us into object relations with others and with ourselves. Public Things attends also to the historically racial character of public things: public lands taken from indigenous peoples, access to public goods restricted to white majorities. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, who saw how things fabricated by humans lend stability to the human world, Honig shows how Arendt and Winnicott—both theorists of livenesss—underline the material and psychological conditions necessary for object permanence and the reparative work needed for a more egalitarian democracy.

Political science --- Democracy --- Philosophy. --- Winnicott, D. W. --- Arendt, Hannah, --- Arendt. --- Jonathan Lear. --- Sovereignty. --- Tocqueville. --- Winnicott. --- affect. --- civil obedience. --- democratic theory. --- indigenous politics. --- infrastructure. --- neoliberalism. --- object relations. --- opting out. --- race. --- von Trier.

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Mistress of everything examines how indigenous people across Britain's settler colonies engaged with Queen Victoria in their lives and predicaments, incorporated her into their political repertoires, and implicated her as they sought redress for the effects of imperial expansion during her long reign. It draws together empirically rich studies from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Africa, to provide scope for comparative and transnational analysis. The book includes chapters on a Maori visit to Queen Victoria in 1863, meetings between African leaders and the Queen's son Prince Alfred in 1860, gift-giving in the Queen's name on colonial frontiers in Canada and Australia, and Maori women's references to Queen Victoria in support of their own chiefly status and rights.

Visits of state. --- Social conditions. --- Public opinion. --- British colonies. --- Visits of state --- Heads of state --- Presidential visits --- Royal visits --- State visits --- Visitors, Foreign --- Opinion, Public --- Perception, Public --- Popular opinion --- Public perception --- Public perceptions --- Judgment --- Social psychology --- Attitude (Psychology) --- Focus groups --- Reputation --- Descriptive sociology --- Social conditions --- Social history --- History --- Sociology --- Travel --- Victoria, --- 1800-1901 --- Great Britain. --- Great Britain --- Colonies --- Social & Cultural History. --- Colonialism & Imperialism. --- HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain. --- Colonialism & imperialism --- European history --- Social & cultural history. --- Alexandrina Victoria, --- Bhikṭoriẏā, --- Anglia --- Angliyah --- Briṭanyah --- England and Wales --- Förenade kungariket --- Grã-Bretanha --- Grande-Bretagne --- Grossbritannien --- Igirisu --- Iso-Britannia --- Marea Britanie --- Nagy-Britannia --- Prydain Fawr --- Royaume-Uni --- Saharātchaʻānāčhak --- Storbritannien --- United Kingdom --- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland --- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland --- Velikobritanii͡ --- Wielka Brytania --- Yhdistynyt kuningaskunta --- Northern Ireland --- Scotland --- Wales --- British settler colonies. --- Indigenous politics. --- Queen Victoria. --- colonization. --- networks of empire.