{"product_id":"9781496812261","title":"Direct Democracy: Collective Power, the Swarm, and the Literatures of the Americas","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeginning with the Haitian Revolution, Scott Henkel lays out a literary history of direct democracy in the Americas. Much research considers direct democracy as a form of organization fit for worker cooperatives or political movements. Henkel reinterprets it as a type of collective power, based on the massive slave revolt in Haiti. In the representations of slaves, women, and workers, Henkel traces a history of power through the literatures of the Americas during the long nineteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThinking about democracy as a type of power presents a challenge to common, often bureaucratic and limited interpretations of the term and opens an alternative archive, which Henkel argues includes C. L. R. James�s \u003ci\u003eThe Black Jacobins\u003c\/i\u003e, Walt Whitman�s \u003ci\u003eDemocratic Vistas\u003c\/i\u003e, Lucy Parsons�s speeches advocating for the eight-hour workday, B. Traven�s novels of the Mexican Revolution, and Marie Vieux Chauvet�s novella about Haitian dictatorship.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHenkel asserts that each writer recognized this power and represented its physical manifestation as a swarm. This metaphor bears a complicated history, often describing a group, a movement, or a community. Indeed it conveys multiplicity and complexity, a collective power. This metaphor�s many uses illustrate Henkel�s main concerns, the problems of democracy, slavery, and labor, the dynamics of racial repression and resistance, and the issues of power which run throughout the Americas.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University Press of Mississippi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47136627753200,"sku":"9781496812261","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781496812261_p0.jpg?v=1763703340","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781496812261","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}