°border technologies
Three sets of important readings on borders, on sexuality and border policing, on the measure of multiculturalism and, finally, on the nexus between the outlawing of slavery and the trajectory of immigration laws and ‘Manifest Destiny’.
Damian Spruce and Ilaria Vanni on the recent export of one aspect of the Australian model of border policing to the UK, in “Laboratorio Australia: Setting the benchmark for world’s worst practice”, where they detail the ways in which the calculus of the ‘points system’ converges with the multicultural policy of ‘productive diversity’.
Also, American Quarterly has a special edition on legal borderlands (57:3, 2005), edited by Mary Dudziak and Leti Volp. So far, the essays that have caught my attention are one by Moon-Ho Jung on the ambiguities of the passage of the 1862 law in the US outlawing ‘coolie’ labour. The conclusion of which, is as follows:
The 1862 law, unambiguously framed as an antislavery measure by Eliot and others, established a precedent that few politicians would or could resist. What was, in effect, the last slave trade law would lead to a litany of immigration laws ostensibly targeting “coolies” (and prostitutes) in the name of “immigrants” and freedom, including the Page Law of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. And the perceived existence of coolieism and other forms of bondage—and the moral imperative to prohibit slavery—infected and rationalized U.S. expansionism abroad, from China and Cuba in the 1850s to the Philippines in the 1890s. Locating, defining, and outlawing “coolies” ultimately evolved into an endless and indispensable exercise that facilitated and justified a series of historical transitions—from slave trade laws to racially coded immigration laws, from a slaveholding nation to a “nation of immigrants,” and from a continental empire of “manifest destiny” to a liberating empire across the seas. The violent and mythical legacies of those transitions would go a long way toward defining race, nation, and empire in the twentieth century and beyond.
It seems worth a closer read, as do, according to a quick glance, Siobhan Somerville’s, “Notes toward a Queer History of Naturalization”, and Nayan Shah’s, “Between ‘Oriental Depravity’ and ‘Natural Degenerates’: Spatial Borderlands and the Making of Ordinary Americans”, on the border as a technology for the constitution of masculinity and normative sexualities.
From the time of pathbreaking work of Gloria Anzaldúa, it does nevertheless seem that much of the work on sexuality and the border, at least in the academy, is still in its preliminary stages of marking out the questions and tracing through the history.
And an interesting blog, Naked Gaze.
Love the new template. And you still have that cheeky look!
jebni [April 3, 2006 @ 1:22 am]
Thanks. But cheeky? Never.
s0metim3s [April 3, 2006 @ 2:40 pm]
I love the pic. But one thing about the new template is that I find it hard to differentiate between links and non-links.
(More generally I’m not a great fan of white text on darker backgrounds, but so be it.)
Jon [April 3, 2006 @ 2:46 pm]
Jon, you’re the fourth complaint so far about the link colour. I think part of it is different monitors. Damn you all! No, I’ve been trying to figure a way around the problem, hopefully without conceding the overall subtlety, which I’m rather attached to for the mo.
s0metim3s [April 3, 2006 @ 2:56 pm]
Underlining might do it. Or that fancy dotted underline, à la Crooked Timber.
Not that I mind that much, since I basically read you via an RSS reader.
Jon [April 3, 2006 @ 3:01 pm]
I thought about those fancy dashed lines last night, after Matt complained. But I’d prefer not to have those affect the links in the sidebar, so it means I have to find a moment to write a bit of code is all, so they differentiate.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.
s0metim3s [April 3, 2006 @ 3:11 pm]
heya. don’t know if you fixed the problem, but I can make it so the links look one way in the body of the blog and another way in the sidebar. if you need help with it, it’ll take me 15 minutes to fix if you tell me color and style. write me at the email address offblog. — k
Bitch | Lab [April 27, 2006 @ 1:42 pm]
Ah, Kel, I changed the white to a light pink, and am just being stubborn. Thanks though for the offer.
s0metim3s [April 29, 2006 @ 11:45 pm]