Illegality and Papers

   I am interested in in the complex ways Illegality derives power from producing exclusionary legislation. This legislated exclusion either literally bars a group from participation or protections, and/or criminalizes their ‘status’ or identity be it race, place, economic or otherwise. White supremacy reified through racist legislation displaces or kidnaps peoples, exploits, rapes, genocides for hundreds of years; then legislating for the same or similar violence through the guise of ‘humanity’ in the ‘modern’ world. 

    Siting Dana in Kindred as an interesting guide within the text in navigating this long-standing legacy of racial exploitation by exclusion laws, as Dana returns to the Antebellum era as a slave and does not possess ‘free papers.’ While these papers may have been irrelevant for safety or protection to any Black body free or enslaved in that time, I want to locate the ‘papers’ Dana needed for freedom to the sort of ‘papers’ White supremacy has legislated the ‘Other’ be disallowed from or be desperate for throughout our nations history. 

This idea of physical blocking and legislating exclusion to groups can be seen quiet materially and metaphorically in papers, identification cards, etc. Thinking in physical space or tangibly it might seem absurd that a paper could save or protect your life however it is that apparatus I want to locate for further critique. As Kingston states in China Men, “The Hall of Records burned completely. Citizenship Papers burned, Certificates of Return, Birth Certificates, Residency Certificates, passenger lists, Marriage certificates—every paper a China Man wanted for citizenship and legality burned in that fire,” (Kingston 150.) 

     This chapter The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains ends with mention of a fire burning every ‘Paper’ a China Man would need for legality and citizenship. This excerpt speaks clearly to institutional exclusion, and to the importance of identification papers. This creation of the ‘illegal’ subject by the creation of an in-group, or by the incorporation of some is problematic. Just as I am working to understand biopower as the granting of opportunities for life to some by the disallowing of those opportunities for life to others; I am working to understand the creation of ‘illegality’ and the ‘alien’ identity through analyzing protections and privileges ascribed to the dominate group, or the incorporation of some by the unincorporation of others.