Manufacturing Rightlessness: The Camp as a Legal Fiction
<p>This conversation with Naomi Paik exposes the arguments she develops in her forthcoming book currently entitled <em>Rightlessness</em> (2015). In it, she uses three historical examples of camps administrated by the United States in their efforts of manufacturing rightlessness for bodies it wants to exclude from traditional judicial channels. We begin the conversation by talking of the logic behind the late 1980s discussion about symbolical and financial reparations to Japanese American citizens who had been incarcerated in the infamous camps from 1942 to 1945. Naomi then describes the legal and physical existence of a camp in Guantanamo holding HIV positive refugees having fled the Haiti 1991 <em>coup d’état </em>and being refused asylum in the United States. Finally, the third historical example is the current function of Camp Delta in Guantanamo, where the legal fictitious status of “enemy combatant”—we discuss the very signification of this label—provided a simulacrum of legitimacy to indefinitely incarcerate dozens of kidnapped people suspected of belonging to terrorist group without due process.</p>
Host: Léopold Lambert
Guests: Naomi Paik
Part of: The Funambulist Podcast