On Lingering and Being Last is a brilliant meditation on a crucial
nexus of terms that both define and trouble modernity as figured in
literature, philosophy, and politics from the eighteenth century
forward—namely, race, sovereignty, and the paradoxical links and
fissures between the autonomous individual and collective forms of
social belonging. At every turn, Elmer offers compelling, original, and
searchingly attentive readings of New World texts, yielding a richness
of insight that makes for an immensely pleasurable foray into
theoretically sophisticated and difficult terrain.
---—Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University
This is an ambitious and often challenging book, which, for suppleness and originality of its argument and the subtlety of its readings of the texts, will repay careful reading.---—David Murray, Journal of American Studies
In this revealing thematic study of race and sovereignty in the New
World, Elmer employs crucial theorists of power—Schmidtt, Agamben,
Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari—to construct a new paradigm for reading
the racial tropes pervading early American literature. The captive
king and noble savage, the last of one's lineage, the
deterritorialized ship of state and emblematic tree: through Elmer's
deft analyses we see how these exemplars and exceptions underscore our
literature's obsession with Indians, slaves, and isolatoes, and embody
powerful logics of authority and ambiguity.
---—Ivy Schweitzer, Dartmouth College
In this brilliant study Jonathan Elmer explores recent accounts of the notion of sovereignty to demonstrate how those histories and critiques of sovereignty rightly identify the personification of national states as a conceptual error. Yet, by contrast with historians and political theorists who want to point to the error to eliminate it, Elmer demonstrates how the similarity between state and individual is more actively asserted in literature than in non-imaginative political discourses and how important literature is for dramatizing the implications of the confusion of states and persons. He has a gift for showing how both the democratic state and the liberal democratic subject are caught between the same contradictory forces--a conscience that they would use to bind themselves and a consciousness that continually generates exceptions. This is a remarkably supple and insightful book that should be of interest to political scientists, historians, and literary scholars alike-not least because it suggests how much political work literature may do in capturing key conceptual debates.---—Frances Ferguson, Johns Hopkins University
Working from a genuinely transatlantic perspective, On Lingering and Being Last tracks the urgent yet elusive concept of sovereignty across a broad range of texts and moments. The result is a series of scrupulously researched  and elegantly articulated expositions of gothic humanitarianism, melancholic nationalism and the ideological vicissitudes of the ethnic sublime. Theoretically nuanced and intellectually generous, Elmer's readings operate with uncanny ease on the uncertain border between the literary and the political. We will be engaging with its provocative and illuminating formulations for years to come." CHECK BEFORE CHANGING
OR
"Working from a genuinely transatlantic perspective, On Lingering and Being
Last tracks the urgent yet elusive concept of sovereignty across a broad
range of texts and moments. The result is a series of scrupulously
researched and elegantly articulated expositions of gothic
humanitarianism, melancholic nationalism and the ideological vicissitudes
of the ethnic sublime."
---—Paul Downes, University of Toronto
From the trenchant account of personification and sovereignty with which it begins to the majestic exposition of the "extraordinarily durable topos of the solitary tree" at its close, Jonathan Elmer's On Lingering and Being Last is a startling and compelling work. Drawing theoretical energy from Deleuze, Agamben Badiou, and others, Elmer marks a fresh route through several focalizing writers-Behn, Equiano, Melville, Jefferson, C.B. Brown-demonstrating that certain recurring figures-"royal slaves, captive kings, last chiefs"-encode and express the quandary of New World sovereignty, both its ideological snarls and its practical urgencies. Elmer's commingling of theoretical complexity, exegetical perspicacity, and historical insight is unique: this is a singular, important meditation on Early American territoriality."
OR
"From the trenchant account of personification and sovereignty with which
it begins to the majestic exposition of the "extraordinarily durable topos
of the solitary tree" at its close, Jonathan Elmer's On Lingering and
Being Last is a startling and compelling work. Drawing theoretical energy
from Deleuze, Agamben Badiou, and others, Elmer marks a fresh route
through several focalizing writers-Behn, Equiano, Melville, Jefferson, C.B. Brown . . .Elmer's commingling of theoretical complexity, exegetical> perspicacity, and historical insight is unique: this is a singular,
important meditation on Early American territorality."
OR
"From the trenchant account of personification and sovereignty with which it begins to the majestic exposition of the "extraordinarily durable topos of the solitary tree" at its close, Jonathan Elmer's On Lingering and Being Last is a startling and compelling work. Drawing theoretical energy from Deleuze, Agamben Badiou, and others, Elmer marks a fresh route through several focalizing writers-Behn, Equiano, Melville, Jefferson, C.B. Brown-demonstrating that certain recurring figures-"royal slaves, captive kings, last chiefs"-encode and express the quandary of New World sovereignty, both its ideological snarls and its practical urgencies. This is a singular, important meditation on Early American territoriality.
---—Mitch Breitwieser, University of California, Berkeley
Royal slaves, captive kings, and last chiefs—this stunning account
of racialized sovereignty in the New World gives us an American literature
unlike anything we have seen: steeped in melancholy, haunted by the 'Logan effect,' at once ancient and modern.
---—Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University
Smart, topical, well-researched, and highly original.---—Leonard Tennenhouse, Brown University
This is an ambitious and often challenging book, which, for suppleness and originality of its argument and the subtlety of its readings of the texts, will repay careful reading. - —David Murray, Journal of American Studies
In this brilliant study Jonathan Elmer explores recent accounts of the notion of sovereignty to demonstrate how those histories and critiques of sovereignty rightly identify the personification of national states as a conceptual error. Yet, by contrast with historians and political theorists who want to point to the error to eliminate it, Elmer demonstrates how the similarity between state and individual is more actively asserted in literature than in non-imaginative political discourses and how important literature is for dramatizing the implications of the confusion of states and persons. He has a gift for showing how both the democratic state and the liberal democratic subject are caught between the same contradictory forces--a conscience that they would use to bind themselves and a consciousness that continually generates exceptions. This is a remarkably supple and insightful book that should be of interest to political scientists, historians, and literary scholars alike-not least because it suggests how much political work literature may do in capturing key conceptual debates. - —Frances Ferguson, Johns Hopkins University
From the trenchant account of personification and sovereignty with which it begins to the majestic exposition of the "extraordinarily durable topos of the solitary tree" at its close, Jonathan Elmer's On Lingering and Being Last is a startling and compelling work. Drawing theoretical energy from Deleuze, Agamben Badiou, and others, Elmer marks a fresh route through several focalizing writers-Behn, Equiano, Melville, Jefferson, C.B. Brown-demonstrating that certain recurring figures-"royal slaves, captive kings, last chiefs"-encode and express the quandary of New World sovereignty, both its ideological snarls and its practical urgencies. Elmer's commingling of theoretical complexity, exegetical perspicacity, and historical insight is unique: this is a singular, important meditation on Early American territoriality."
OR
"From the trenchant account of personification and sovereignty with which
it begins to the majestic exposition of the "extraordinarily durable topos
of the solitary tree" at its close, Jonathan Elmer's On Lingering and
Being Last is a startling and compelling work. Drawing theoretical energy
from Deleuze, Agamben Badiou, and others, Elmer marks a fresh route
through several focalizing writers-Behn, Equiano, Melville, Jefferson, C.B. Brown . . .Elmer's commingling of theoretical complexity, exegetical> perspicacity, and historical insight is unique: this is a singular,
important meditation on Early American territorality."
OR
"From the trenchant account of personification and sovereignty with which it begins to the majestic exposition of the "extraordinarily durable topos of the solitary tree" at its close, Jonathan Elmer's On Lingering and Being Last is a startling and compelling work. Drawing theoretical energy from Deleuze, Agamben Badiou, and others, Elmer marks a fresh route through several focalizing writers-Behn, Equiano, Melville, Jefferson, C.B. Brown-demonstrating that certain recurring figures-"royal slaves, captive kings, last chiefs"-encode and express the quandary of New World sovereignty, both its ideological snarls and its practical urgencies. This is a singular, important meditation on Early American territoriality.
- —Mitch Breitwieser, University of California, Berkeley
In this revealing thematic study of race and sovereignty in the New
World, Elmer employs crucial theorists of power—Schmidtt, Agamben,
Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari—to construct a new paradigm for reading
the racial tropes pervading early American literature. The captive
king and noble savage, the last of one's lineage, the
deterritorialized ship of state and emblematic tree: through Elmer's
deft analyses we see how these exemplars and exceptions underscore our
literature's obsession with Indians, slaves, and isolatoes, and embody
powerful logics of authority and ambiguity.
- —Ivy Schweitzer, Dartmouth College
Royal slaves, captive kings, and last chiefs—this stunning account
of racialized sovereignty in the New World gives us an American literature
unlike anything we have seen: steeped in melancholy, haunted by the 'Logan effect,' at once ancient and modern.
- —Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University
On Lingering and Being Last is a brilliant meditation on a crucial
nexus of terms that both define and trouble modernity as figured in
literature, philosophy, and politics from the eighteenth century
forward—namely, race, sovereignty, and the paradoxical links and
fissures between the autonomous individual and collective forms of
social belonging. At every turn, Elmer offers compelling, original, and
searchingly attentive readings of New World texts, yielding a richness
of insight that makes for an immensely pleasurable foray into
theoretically sophisticated and difficult terrain.
- —Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University
Smart, topical, well-researched, and highly original. - —Leonard Tennenhouse, Brown University
Working from a genuinely transatlantic perspective, On Lingering and Being Last tracks the urgent yet elusive concept of sovereignty across a broad range of texts and moments. The result is a series of scrupulously researched  and elegantly articulated expositions of gothic humanitarianism, melancholic nationalism and the ideological vicissitudes of the ethnic sublime. Theoretically nuanced and intellectually generous, Elmer's readings operate with uncanny ease on the uncertain border between the literary and the political. We will be engaging with its provocative and illuminating formulations for years to come." CHECK BEFORE CHANGING
OR
"Working from a genuinely transatlantic perspective, On Lingering and Being
Last tracks the urgent yet elusive concept of sovereignty across a broad
range of texts and moments. The result is a series of scrupulously
researched and elegantly articulated expositions of gothic
humanitarianism, melancholic nationalism and the ideological vicissitudes
of the ethnic sublime."
- —Paul Downes, University of Toronto