Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation
Autor(a) principal: | |
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Data de Publicação: | 2020 |
Tipo de documento: | Artigo |
Idioma: | eng |
Título da fonte: | Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
Texto Completo: | http://hdl.handle.net/10316/96860 https://doi.org/10.18422/69-04 |
Resumo: | Undocumented immigrants usually trust their voices to immigration activists rather than engaging with strategies of visuality to reclaim their rights. The universe of illegal border crossing is about radical experiences of invisibility, misidentification, erasure, dispossession, and disappearance. First person testimonies by undocumented immigrants have, however, seen the light of day throughout the last decade in unsuspected media venues, from the New York Times to the Guardian, small sites of independent journalism, and also some book publications. Revealing their presence, their names, and their faces seems a brave decision, when the risk of deportation is part of their everyday reality. In my reading of their testimonies and the photographs illustrating them, I follow two theoretical lines that engage with the subjectivities of marginalized groups: sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ elaboration of a post abyssal thinking and cultural critic Nicholas Mirzoeff’s ideas of spaces of appearance and practices of counter visuality. Combining them will allow me to analyze how instances of self-representation by undocumented immigrants in the United States contribute to crafting a new subject position by a group who, by definition, cannot speak because it is deemed non-existent in legal terms. The issue brings back to the discussion Gayatri Spivak’s classical questions on subalternity and power. |
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Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-RepresentationBelongingCitizenshipCounter visualityImmigrationSelf-representationUndocumented immigrantsUndocumented immigrants usually trust their voices to immigration activists rather than engaging with strategies of visuality to reclaim their rights. The universe of illegal border crossing is about radical experiences of invisibility, misidentification, erasure, dispossession, and disappearance. First person testimonies by undocumented immigrants have, however, seen the light of day throughout the last decade in unsuspected media venues, from the New York Times to the Guardian, small sites of independent journalism, and also some book publications. Revealing their presence, their names, and their faces seems a brave decision, when the risk of deportation is part of their everyday reality. In my reading of their testimonies and the photographs illustrating them, I follow two theoretical lines that engage with the subjectivities of marginalized groups: sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ elaboration of a post abyssal thinking and cultural critic Nicholas Mirzoeff’s ideas of spaces of appearance and practices of counter visuality. Combining them will allow me to analyze how instances of self-representation by undocumented immigrants in the United States contribute to crafting a new subject position by a group who, by definition, cannot speak because it is deemed non-existent in legal terms. The issue brings back to the discussion Gayatri Spivak’s classical questions on subalternity and power.Göttingen University Press2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://hdl.handle.net/10316/96860http://hdl.handle.net/10316/96860https://doi.org/10.18422/69-04eng2199-72681433-5239http://www.asjournal.org/69-2020/can-the-undocumented-speak-undocumented-immigrants-and-self-representation/Canelo, Maria Joséinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessreponame:Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)instname:Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informaçãoinstacron:RCAAP2022-05-25T06:33:59Zoai:estudogeral.uc.pt:10316/96860Portal AgregadorONGhttps://www.rcaap.pt/oai/openaireopendoar:71602024-03-19T21:15:02.688563Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) - Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informaçãofalse |
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
title |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
spellingShingle |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation Canelo, Maria José Belonging Citizenship Counter visuality Immigration Self-representation Undocumented immigrants |
title_short |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
title_full |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
title_fullStr |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
title_full_unstemmed |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
title_sort |
Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation |
author |
Canelo, Maria José |
author_facet |
Canelo, Maria José |
author_role |
author |
dc.contributor.author.fl_str_mv |
Canelo, Maria José |
dc.subject.por.fl_str_mv |
Belonging Citizenship Counter visuality Immigration Self-representation Undocumented immigrants |
topic |
Belonging Citizenship Counter visuality Immigration Self-representation Undocumented immigrants |
description |
Undocumented immigrants usually trust their voices to immigration activists rather than engaging with strategies of visuality to reclaim their rights. The universe of illegal border crossing is about radical experiences of invisibility, misidentification, erasure, dispossession, and disappearance. First person testimonies by undocumented immigrants have, however, seen the light of day throughout the last decade in unsuspected media venues, from the New York Times to the Guardian, small sites of independent journalism, and also some book publications. Revealing their presence, their names, and their faces seems a brave decision, when the risk of deportation is part of their everyday reality. In my reading of their testimonies and the photographs illustrating them, I follow two theoretical lines that engage with the subjectivities of marginalized groups: sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ elaboration of a post abyssal thinking and cultural critic Nicholas Mirzoeff’s ideas of spaces of appearance and practices of counter visuality. Combining them will allow me to analyze how instances of self-representation by undocumented immigrants in the United States contribute to crafting a new subject position by a group who, by definition, cannot speak because it is deemed non-existent in legal terms. The issue brings back to the discussion Gayatri Spivak’s classical questions on subalternity and power. |
publishDate |
2020 |
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv |
2020 |
dc.type.status.fl_str_mv |
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
dc.type.driver.fl_str_mv |
info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
format |
article |
status_str |
publishedVersion |
dc.identifier.uri.fl_str_mv |
http://hdl.handle.net/10316/96860 http://hdl.handle.net/10316/96860 https://doi.org/10.18422/69-04 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10316/96860 https://doi.org/10.18422/69-04 |
dc.language.iso.fl_str_mv |
eng |
language |
eng |
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv |
2199-7268 1433-5239 http://www.asjournal.org/69-2020/can-the-undocumented-speak-undocumented-immigrants-and-self-representation/ |
dc.rights.driver.fl_str_mv |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
eu_rights_str_mv |
openAccess |
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv |
Göttingen University Press |
publisher.none.fl_str_mv |
Göttingen University Press |
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv |
reponame:Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) instname:Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informação instacron:RCAAP |
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Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informação |
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RCAAP |
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RCAAP |
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Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
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Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) |
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Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos) - Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento (UMIC) - FCT - Sociedade da Informação |
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1799134048220610560 |