Can the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representation

dc.bibliographicCitation.article4en_US
dc.bibliographicCitation.volume69en_US
dc.contributor.authorCanelo, Maria José
dc.contributor.editorPaul, Heike
dc.contributor.editorKohl, Martina
dc.contributor.editorGrabbe, Hans-Jürgen
dc.date.accessioned2021-09-28T11:35:57Z
dc.date.available2021-09-28T11:35:57Z
dc.date.issued2020en_US
dc.description.abstractUndocumented 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.en_US
dc.description.urlhttp://www.asjournal.org/69-2020/can-the-undocumented-speak-undocumented-immigrants-and-self-representation/en_US
dc.identifier.doi10.18422/69-04
dc.identifier.urihttp://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?fidaac-11858/1469
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.relation.issn21997268en_US
dc.relation.journalAmerican Studies Journalen_US
dc.relation.volumeAmerican Studies Journal; 69en_US
dc.rightsL::CC BY-SA 3.0en_US
dc.subject.ddcddc:070en_US
dc.subject.fieldamericanstudiesen_US
dc.subject.fieldmediastudiesen_US
dc.subject.fieldpostcolonialen_US
dc.titleCan the Undocumented Speak? Undocumented Immigrants and Self-Representationen_US
dc.typearticleen_US
dc.type.versionpublishedVersionen_US
dspace.entity.typePublication
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