Issue: Issue 105

This essay argues that the failures of U.S. immigration enforcement institutions functioned as a strategic policy from 2003 to 2010, when the undocumented population in the United States reached an unprecedented twelve million people. The author examines how the so-called … Continue reading “Hailing the Twelve Million: U.S. Immigration Policy, Deportation, and the Imaginary of Lawful Violence”

January 22, 2011 | Features

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings of 2007, a tendency to view mental illness through the lens of “risk” has been exacerbated on college campuses and beyond. Administrators, counseling centers, law enforcement teams, and policy task forces have … Continue reading “Madness after Virginia Tech: From Psychiatric Risk to Institutional Vulnerability”

January 22, 2011 | Features

Drawing from theories of affect economies as well as discussion of biopolitical distributions of life and death, this essay explores the public mediation of gendered security and national security in terms of a political branding that circulates notions of safety, … Continue reading “Gendered Security / National Security: Political Branding and Population Racism”

January 22, 2011 | Features

The contemporary military doctrine of “network-centric warfare” has favored a decentralized approach to both humanitarian interventions and “warfighting.” In reframing enmity as network antagonism, the United States has focused on a new type of anti-American enemy: the terrorist network. This … Continue reading “Terror Networks and the Aesthetics of Interconnection”

January 22, 2011 | Features

This article considers the problem of ironic subjectivity and materiality in the work of Cherokee artist Jimmie Durham. Durham’s self-consciously rough sculptures were instrumental in promoting irony as a viable strategy for both the creation and interpretation of Native American … Continue reading “Jimmie Durham and the Carpentry of Ambivalence”

January 22, 2011 | Features