Themes
Borders as State effects
How is the state materialized through the construction and policing of borders, not just geopolitical borders, but borders of other kinds as well—between categories, concepts, kinds, etc.?
Rather than seeing the state as an actually existing entity, we follow the anthropologist / historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot in tracing out the real effects via which we imagine and encounter the state, through which we make it and feel it as real. The resulting effects are both abstract, at the level of categories, and concrete, at the level of individual lives and experiences.
The Art Institute of Chicago, on view 31 Jul 2021–3 Jan 2022
Marya Tawam: In this exhibition by by Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, text is projected on the walls: “whenever we try to narrate ourselves, we appear as dislocations in their discourse....we emerge as effects, errata, counter-narratives.” This exhibition had a very strong effect on me—an immediate, physical, emotional, and lasting effect. The projection contains words from Edward Said’s “After the Last Sky,” narrated in the distorted voices of the artists. The second half of the video juxtaposes footage that went viral in 2014 of a Palestinian boy being shot and killed alongside images of fields in Palestine and a video from the Great March of Return.
The constant switch between the violence of occupation—evident in the footage of the “Israeli” soldiers—with the videos of Palestinian resistance made for a jarring experience. The first time I went to the exhibit, I had no idea what to expect, and the sounds from the footage of the Palestinian boy added a layer of discomfort and confusion when used as background to images of a bright sun or flowers blowing in the wind. It was only at the end did I realize what the video was, and by then my body was physically reacting to the different sensory triggers. The second time I went to the exhibit I anticipated a much smoother experience, as I knew what to expect. Instead, I knew something awful was coming, and the sounds and images were constant reminders of that.
Anyone Speak K’iche’ or Mam? Immigration Courts Overwhelmed by Indigenous Languages
The New York Times, 19 Mar 2019
Jon Hoerner: This article tracks the failings of the U.S. Immigration and Court systems to protect the rights of individuals who speak indigenous Central and South American languages. The authors piece together the obstacles that many migrants face when arriving at the Southern U.S. border—namely, the lack of consistent and prompt access to interpreters, which also limits access to legal services and medical care. How does the erasure of indigenous languages at the Southern border reproduce inequalities between nations, races, and languages?
Mayan League Launches New Program for Indigenous Language Interpreters to Address Crisis at the U.S./Mexico Border
Cultural Survival, 24 June 2021
Jon Hoerner: This article outlines recent organizing efforts to expand the number of Mayan indigenous language interpreters along the Southern U.S. border. The article touches on the ways that the state reconstructs migrants that cross the southern border into a monolithic, Central/South American “Other” that is Brown and Spanish-speaking. Because many Central American migrants speak pre-Columbian indigenous languages (although originating in countries with Spanish as the official language), due process and fair treatment at the Southern border is rare. I ask: how do U.S. policies, enacted by its agents along the border, effectively create a monolithic concept of the “Southern Border Migrant,” and what implications does this have—both for social data and for the migrants themselves?
The Coloniality of Race, Language, and Nation-State Governmentality
“In conjunction with the production of race, nation-state/colonial governmentaliTy imposed ideologies of separate and bound languages on colonized populations. As with race, the creation of language hierarchies positioned European languages as superior to non-European languages. A raciolinguistic perspective seeks to understand the interplay of language and race within the historical production of nation-state/colonial governmentaliTy, and the ways that colonial distinctions within and between nation-state borders continue to shape contemporary linguistic and racial formations.”
Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores, “Unsettling Race and Language: Toward a Raciolinguistic Perspective,” 2017. Language in Society 46 (5), pp. 621–47.
What is the State?
“Is the state a ‘concrete-concrete,’ something ‘out there?’ Or is it a concept necessary to understand something out there? Or, again, is it an ideology that helps to mask something else out there, a symbolic shield for power, as it were?”
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization: Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind,” 2001. Current Anthropology 42 (1), pp. 125–38.