Bernard Kerik's undocumented (and now banished) nanny, while in some ways only the tip of the iceberg of the ex-commisioner's corrupt relationship to imperial structures of exclusion and enclosure, can provide a good starting off point for us to examine the contradictions of the nation security state and the loci at which the discourses of homeland are unraveled. This woman, whose name and nationality have not yet been revealed as of this writing, and who seems to have been spirited out of the country only a few days ago, may very well be an "excuse" for Kerik to resign without more troubling illegalities or indiscretions becoming public, as some have alleged, i think this revelation in itself, that even those charged with maintaining the racialized fences which demarcate citizenship and belonging in the post-modern nation-state participate fully in the economy which thrives on the illegalities and inequalities which these fences nurture. This is not "ironic" - and turning to sarcasm here obscures thr profoundly logical nature of this contradiction, for Kerik's economic relationship with an undocumented domestic worker, and his withdrawal from the nomination for the secretariat of homeland security say something worth serious attention about the inexorable but unspeakable relationship between the security state's complete reliance upon those it criminalizes.
perhaps more on this later.
Is the current U.S. more, less, or equally dependent on the labor of those it formally excludes than pre-9/11? Is the contradiction only the more obvious and painful and tragic because of the more-explicit criminalization of undocumented immigrants in the past 3 years? Can we accurately speak of "the state's" dependence on this labor and these bodies, or is there a more subtle and complicated relationship between state, economy, and society?
ReplyDeleteAlso, you should really read Mai Ngai's "Impossible Subjects" if you haven't yet. Wonderfully lucid analysis of the history of sovereignty as the guiding logic of exclusionary labor policy and the resulting creation of the (racialized) illegal immigrant as legal subject.
-katie