TY - JOUR
T1 - Disrupting undocumentation
T2 - Municipal ID cards against passport fetishism
AU - Bot, Michiel
PY - 2022/6/22
Y1 - 2022/6/22
N2 - In this article, I interpret municipal ID card programs as disruptions of nation-state practices of documentation and what I call undocumentation: requiring specific documentation in a wide variety of situations, while refusing to issue such documentation to people without legal residency. To understand municipal ID card programs as disruptions of these exclusionary practices, I analyze the relation between nation-states, people, and documents through close readings of two works of literature that dramatize the “fictive” nature of this relation: the dialogue on passports in Bertolt Brecht’s 1940 Refugee Conversations, and Sizwe Bansi is Dead, a 1972 play devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona that explores undocumentation during the infamous pass laws in apartheid South Africa. I argue that these works ironize the fetishization of documentation and undocumentation, which disguises the actual relations between people as relations between passports. I then argue that municipal ID card programs do not institute alternative forms of membership on a local level, or create sanctuaries that offer refuge from the secular world of power, but disrupt the monopolization and fetishization of the means of identification and documentation by nation-states, and reclaim these means for everyday use.
AB - In this article, I interpret municipal ID card programs as disruptions of nation-state practices of documentation and what I call undocumentation: requiring specific documentation in a wide variety of situations, while refusing to issue such documentation to people without legal residency. To understand municipal ID card programs as disruptions of these exclusionary practices, I analyze the relation between nation-states, people, and documents through close readings of two works of literature that dramatize the “fictive” nature of this relation: the dialogue on passports in Bertolt Brecht’s 1940 Refugee Conversations, and Sizwe Bansi is Dead, a 1972 play devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona that explores undocumentation during the infamous pass laws in apartheid South Africa. I argue that these works ironize the fetishization of documentation and undocumentation, which disguises the actual relations between people as relations between passports. I then argue that municipal ID card programs do not institute alternative forms of membership on a local level, or create sanctuaries that offer refuge from the secular world of power, but disrupt the monopolization and fetishization of the means of identification and documentation by nation-states, and reclaim these means for everyday use.
KW - municipal ID cards
KW - passports
KW - undocumented immigrants
KW - Bertolt Brecht
KW - Athol Fugard
KW - Sizwe Bansi is Dead
KW - Refugee Conversations
KW - Identification
KW - undocumentation
KW - refugee politics
KW - Pass laws South Africa
U2 - 10.1080/1535685X.2022.2084285
DO - 10.1080/1535685X.2022.2084285
M3 - Article
SN - 1541-2601
SP - 1
EP - 21
JO - Law & Literature
JF - Law & Literature
ER -