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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Philosophy I

Philosophers talk of immigration within the sphere of a moral/political philosophy which considers the rights of people and the obligations of others to guarantee those rights. There’s a great deal of discussion, in this sense, about criteria for citizenship and the State’s obligation to its citizens. Ultimately, the discussion settles on conclusions which favor the immigrant experience as something completely a-political, as a natural experience in which all humans are capable of participating. The Italian literary giant/critic/philosopher Umberto Eco goes so far as to say that the most accurate term for this experience is “migration” instead of “immigration,” whose heavily politicized connotations belong to a political discourse of exclusion and persecution. I don’t think that changing the name will change our perception of the experience which the term seems to designate. In fact, in the US it is only “immigrants” who are a problem, not refugees, not exiles, not migrants.

The English philosopher Michael Dummett ups the ante by calling immigration a “human right” (On Immigration and Refugees). The only time when a country can limit immigration across its border without violating this human right is when its “indigenous populations are in serious danger of being rapidly overshadowed” (52). We’ll just assume that we are all in the US, and most of the Americas, due to some magical amnesty that absolves us from guilt. Dummet’s is a strong requirement with little to no application.

Even more interesting for us are the remarks of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. (It is interesting to note that all of the three figures mentioned here are European. That says something.) It is Agamben’s famous works, State of Exception and Homo Sacer, which really frame what could be considered a philosophy of immigration—both because of certain phenomenological insights which really touch upon the reality of the immigrant experience and because of their moral significance. In Homo Sacer, Agamben refers to individuals who exist in the law as exiles. This, the homo sacer, or the “sacred man,” is one who both must obey the law and who is excluded from the law’s protection. Immigrants are homo sacer if just because, at the most basic level, they pay taxes but lack the rights afforded to every other tax payer. Agamben argues that these laws of exclusion give the homo sacer his identity as an outsider. This analysis is amplified in State of Exception where such a state “marks a threshold at which logic and praxis blur…and a pure violence without logos claims to realize an enunciation without any real referent” (40). The immigrant identity, as the immigrant experience, is codified in in large part because of these exceptions--exceptions which reflect both a love for our fellows and an intolerant, nationalistic, fear of their otherness .

3 comments:

  1. Dude, you're fucking killing your blog with the fucking white on black text! It's impossible to read. For the love of god, use a theme with dark on light text.

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  2. The point about "when indigenous populations are in danger of being overshadowed..." - as if your critique weren't sufficient, the question would remain who gets to decide when the danger of being overshadowed has been reached, and what overshadowed means, exactly. The xenophobic racists in Hazleton, PA not far from where I live are pretty sure they are in danger of being "overshadowed", where "overshadowed" means "living in the same town with people who do not look like me".

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