Philosophy II

When we returned to California in 1984, my father took a job on a ranch just north of San Luis Obispo. Four of us lived in an old trailer parked beneath some oak trees. It was a decrepit place (I’ll get to that later). Sometime toward the end of 1984, the Rancher—his name was David, a Texan—informed my father that he would be unable to pay him for some time, as the Ranch was in financial trouble. Toward the end of 1985, David the Texan had yet to pay my father for an entire year’s worth of labor. He told my father to keep a diary of his “hours” so that, once the Ranch turned a profit, he could claim his pay. By the end of the year, my father demanded his pay, since, for one, we were starving to death. David the Texan told my father that he would have to wait a while for his money (“till hell freezes over”), and that if he (my father) complained, he would have him arrested and deported. Marx turned in his grave.

Those diaries forged themselves into my memory—I can see the yellowish paper, my father’s clean, refined, almost aristocratic handwriting, the way he wrote the number 9 and the word Sunday. I remember David’s mustache and his detestable 5 foot frame, his broken Spanish and his yellow teeth. Oh, memories!

This brings me back to Agamben’s homo sacer. The “sacred man,” he says, is one who cannot be sacrificed but whose murder is not a homicide. In other words, while homo sacer cannot be thrown into the volcano as a gift to the gods, killing him for any other reason is not a crime. The “illegality” of immigrants (and the consequences of this) comes to mind: we cannot round-up (logistically, at least) every illegal immigrant and place him/her in chains (which would be akin to sacrificing them for the sake of Sovereignty) but we can pick them out individually and rip them to shreds (symbolically, at least) without fear of reprisal. Sure, I might be taking too many liberties with this concept. But the thought of David the Texan, who could not sacrifice my father in any way, instead stripping him of his labor and dignity without fear of retribution by State or man, makes my possible misapplication feel right.