Queer(y)ing Hannah Arendt,or what’s Hannah Arendt got to do with intersectionality?

Abstract

This article takes an unlikely approach to thinking about intersectionality theory. Exploring key concepts from the writings of Hannah Arendt, such as plurality, conscious pariah, and statelessness, alongside her embodied interrogation of anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question, it suggests a way to transgress the ordinary boundaries of the concepts of queer, international, and feminist and, conversely, to unbound the ordinary ways Arendt’s theories have been interpreted as less relevant, if not antithetical to, feminist, intersectional, and queer theories and politics.     

Consuming Spaces: Clive Barker,William Gibson and the Cultural Poetics of Postmodern Fantasy

A significant trend emerges in contemporary fantasy-what might be called 'heterocosmic fantasy', as opposed to an older but still vital tradition of 'epic' high fantasy. The narrative forms of heterocosmic fantasy accord with the defining characteristics of contemporary media (particularly the Internet and contemporary television programming, and the practice of 'surfing' both of these), but this form of fantasy also rehearses certain ideological modes of behaviour. In particular, it rehearses in textual form the illusory alterity, the management of potential social unrest, and the frenetic consumption of 'late capitalist' society.     

Citizenship on paper or at heart? a closer look into the dual citizenship debate in Europe

This article seeks to promote an integrated approach to the study of citizenship policies, which pays due attention to their potential impact on migrants whose self-recognition are formally delimited by legal definitions. Through a novel approach that makes use of naturalisation processes as an empirical entry point into the narratives of citizenship embraced by Turkish migrants, this article investigates the role of dual citizenship policies in three European countries: Spain, the Netherlands and the UK. The evidence from the sample group displays a process of ‘self-bargaining’ prior to the naturalisation decision, which calls into question the link established between legal and emotional bonds of citizenship. The Dutch example demonstrates how Turkish migrants cope with the ban on dual citizenship by downplaying the identity-conferring role of citizenship status. This leads to a decoupling of legal and emotional aspects of citizenship and thereby to the adoption of a thin sense of citizenship. While Spain represents an in-between case that has a tolerant implementation despite a de jure ban, the British example shows how the process of ‘self-bargaining’ can result in the widening of emotional landscape, when dual citizenship is allowed. A thick sense of citizenship is therefore not only preserved but it can also be extended to the citizenship of the country of residence.     

The citizen of empire

In this paper, the authors imagine a Citizen of Empire. This is a conceptualization of global citizenship as it might appear in Hardt and Negri's global social order of Empire. The article draws on Hardt and Negri's Empire as the model of global society to imagine what citizenship might look like on a global scale. Hardt and Negri's conceptualization of Empire offers a palette of new and emerging social relationships from which a vibrant conceptualization of citizen and citizenship can be imagined and new democratic politics practiced. First, the authors examine the concept of Empire to unearth foundational concepts upon which a notion of Citizen of Empire can be built. Second, the authors imagine a citizen who ‘calls Empire into being' rather than participating in the ready-made political, cultural, and economic institutions of the nation-state. Without institutional support, citizenship in Empire must be highly generative and creative, and it will operate on a virtual and poetic terrain by enacting mechanisms of deterritorialization, networking, and communication.     

Designing safe citizens

Modern liberal citizenship is a failing design, and this is nowhere more apparent than in the contemporary US. Currently there is a frenzy around US citizenship – who has it but shouldn't have it, who should have it but doesn't have it, who had it but renounced it. The sheer volume of ideas, images, and events and their mass circulation makes it almost impossible not to notice how unsettled and unsettling contemporary US citizenship has become. If, as designer Bruce Mau suggests, the success of a design is its invisibility, then it seems that the design of contemporary US citizenship is anything but a success. Taking seriously the claim that modern liberal citizenship is a failing design, this article focuses on how citizenship is designed and redesigned through history. Its central research question is: what are the design principles of modern liberal citizenship, and how are they experienced in the contemporary US? Noting that modern liberal citizenship emerged from state security debates and that security concerns preoccupy those in the contemporary US, this article investigates not only how citizenship is designed but how safe citizenship is designed. As such, it is less concerned with the legal definition of citizenship than with the practical packaging of citizenship as part of a design for safe living.     

Youthscapes: the politics of belonging for ‘Makwerekwere’ youth in South African schools

This article is framed within the global context of immigration and the resultant debates around citizenship, belonging, inclusion and exclusion. The task of schools as social institutions is to ‘integrate’ and ‘educate’ immigrant youth and as such they can be seen as the primary sites where the politics of belonging and struggles over belonging and citizenship are waged. Drawing on the conceptual framework of ‘youthscapes’ and the theoretical framework of critical race theory, this article engages with the contradictions inherent in schools and the manner in which the South African education system is implicated in constructing different ‘kinds’ of citizens and reproducing hierarchies of belonging, even in its efforts at inclusivity.     

Neo(liberal) citizens of Europe: politics,scales, and visibilities of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey

The aim of this article is to critically interrogate articulations of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey. Specifically, I analyse articulations of environmental citizenship through citizen and activist narratives taken from interviews and focus group discussions. I argue that first, scalar focus on local spaces and individuated responsibility for action that emerge from the narratives are crucial to understand future environmental politics and possibilities in this context. Invoking recent discussions related to the politics and performativities of scale, in particular, allows consideration of the politics of visibility and other consequences of these scalar foci. Second, themes from narrative analysis show key convergences with Europeanization- and neoliberalization-related discourses and shifts. The resonance and overlap between these discourses and practices is significant, particularly as it shows citizen receptivity towards broader ideas related to increased citizen responsibility. As such, the research contributes to efforts to move away from theorization of processes such as neoliberalism as top-down, instead enabling examination of ways that these ideals are taken up, expressed, and refashioned by everyday citizens. The third argument that emerges from the analysis, following from the first two, is the need to theorize power more fully in discussions of environmental citizenship. Bridging with neoliberalism discussions is one possible way to move such a project forward.     

Making political citizens? Migrants’ narratives of naturalization in the United Kingdom*

Citizenship tests are arguably intended as moments of hailing, or interpellation, through which norms are internalized and citizen-subjects produced. We analyse the multiple political subjects revealed through migrants’ narratives of the citizenship test process, drawing on 158 interviews with migrants in Leicester and London who are at different stages in the UK citizenship test process. In dialogue with three counter-figures in the critical naturalization literature – the ‘neoliberal citizen’; the ‘anxious citizen’; and the ‘heroic citizen’ – we propose the figure of the ‘citizen-negotiator’, a socially situated actor who attempts to assert control over their life as they navigate the test process and state power. Through the focus on negotiation, we see migrants navigating a process of differentiation founded on pre-existing inequalities rather than a journey toward transformation.     

Waiting for Palestine: refracted citizenship and latent sovereignty in Gaza

This article explores the dynamics of citizenship under conditions of statelessness and in territories with uncertain sovereignty. The Gaza Strip under Egyptian Administration (1948–1967) – a nearly indefinable entity that was under Egyptian authority but no one's sovereignty – offers an especially good site for this exploration. In this period, both the government and the population were invested in some notion of Palestinian citizenship, but there was no Palestinian state to codify that concept. The Palestinian loss of formal citizenship with the end of the British Mandate in 1948, and the continued absence of this legal category, has shaped Palestinian life and political identification in profound ways. Even under these conditions, though, both conceptions about, and the social practice of, citizenship have also been crucially important for Palestinian community. Conditions in Gaza under Egyptian Administration illuminate a ‘refracted citizenship’ that articulated a relationship to both a future state and an existing government. Considering both the earlier dynamics of citizenship and sovereignty under the contested circumstances of the Mandate and the details of Egyptian governing practices in Gaza, the article argues that refracted citizenship provided a mechanism for people to make claims of the existing government and offered a means for that government to better manage the place and people of Gaza. Refracted citizenship also enabled people to build new community relations within Gaza – to develop a sense of specifically Gazan community – without feeling that they were jeopardizing their claims to Palestinian citizenship.     

Introduction: claiming social citizenship

Social citizenship in the classical sense of T.H. Marshall has been declared to be eroded and to have lost its significance. The introduction to this special issue challenges this assumption and argues that recent anthropological work on social citizenship in post-colonial, post Cold War and post-socialist states have shown that social citizenship is relevant and is being claimed by citizens of these states. Historical notions of citizenship as well as claiming rights to state support in return for having worked for the state are at work here. Furthermore the contributions to this issue illustrate how notions and practices of social citizenship compete and sometimes replace other practices of claiming citizenship on the basis of ethnicity, nationality or cultural ties.     

Within and beyond citizenship: alternative educational initiatives in the Arab society in Israel

In recent years, Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel are in search of ‘a new vocabulary of citizenship’, among other ways, by resorting to ‘alternative educational initiatives’. We investigate and compare three alternative schools, each challenging the contested conception of Israeli citizenship. Our findings reveal different educational strategies to become ‘claimants of rights’, yet all initiatives demonstrate the constraints Arab citizens face while trying to become ‘activist citizens’ (E.F. Isin, 2009. Citizenship in flux: the figure of the activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29 (1), 367–388.).     

Multileveled citizenship and citizenship education: experiences of students in China's Beijing

With reference to three secondary schools in Beijing, this study investigates students' perceptions of multiple identities at four levels – self, local, national, and global – and the ways in which students form multiple identities. The study uses a mixed methodology of questionnaires and interview surveys to collect data, and identifies four patterns of Beijing students' multiple identities: a high value on self-identity, a strong affective orientation toward local and national identity, minimal distinction between local and national identities, and an imagined global identity. This study provides empirical data that both supplements and challenges the existing literature on citizenship and citizenship education in the context of globalization.