I too am concerned with Luibheid’s reliance on “reflective subjectivity” as a form of political legibility within the Irish immigration system. More importantly, I am deeply concerned by the case study of Christabel, the Nigerian Ibo woman whom has managed to exit the accommodation centers “direct provision,” and transition into the regular welfare system allowing her a greater privacy and freedom. I find Luibheid’s description of Christabel reifies her as a desirable neo-liberal subject who in one move goes against the norm of being a lazy welfare mother and in the second is positioned as different, not because of her race or gender (this seems to be implied), but Christabel’s story signifies the injustice of the Irish system because she is positioned as deserving responsible subject worthy of Ireland’s care. The double movement I describe is produced through Lubheid’s discursive reliance on such terms and phrases as not being a “sponge” to the Irish welfare system, her use of the term responsible and “self reliance” to describe her (112-113). Further I am also troubled by her description of Christabal as post-modern subject who does not need training on how become properly modern. Luibheid’s reliance on knowledge produced through techniques of insidious forms of imperialism positions Christabal as not pre-modern—meaning an excess of impoverished Africaness. Luibheid’s reifying of neo-liberal designations of responsible asylum seeker and properly post-modern seems to be counter to her critique of Ireland as a neo-liberal state in the beginning of the book (11). I am confused by her move, are to take Christabel’s difference from the “norm” (being women who abuse the system) as representative of Luibheid’s use of queer theory’s critique of normalization? If so, what do we make of this move, and is this an appropriate use of a queer theoretical lens?

I think that Luibheid missed an opportunity to deepen her analysis through a more nuanced and capacious understanding of Edelman’s conceptualization of reproductive futurity in her “queer of color critique of heteronormativity” (p209).

Edelman’s main point of contention, that society cannot say “no” to the “Child in whose name we’re collectively terrorized” (Edelman in Sex, or the Unbearable), is challenged by Luibheid in intereting ways, but left unarticulated.

I would have been interested in Luibheid’s response to (1) whether Edelman’s notion of “saying ‘no’ to the Child” is fundamentally imperialist and US-centric because the West says “no” to the other Child all the time; (2) the greater implications of saying “no” to the Child as immigration policy, and (3) whether Luibheid sees beyond the problematic, heteronormative constructions she critiques – that is, Edelman would say that there is no beyond such problematic constructions, it is the very brutality of gender, sex and heteronormative regimes that produces the world.

1) Sexuality vs. Gender

She puts sexuality as the central analytical lens for her project, while mentioning about gender as one of supplementary forms (i.e., racialized, gendered, etc.). Yet I am not very sure what benefits she obtains from centering sexuality in her argument. For example, in chapter 4, she critically analyzes different cases in which the state regulates pregnancy of citizen/non-citizen women. Then, regardless different legal status of the pregnant women, sexuality in this context is already shaped within the gendered/heteronormative realm. In contrast, chapter 6, titled “from childbearing to multiple sexuality and migration struggle,” her focus is more diverse contexts of sexuality, intimacy and migration (heterosexual marriage, same-sex marriage, sex workers and domestic workers). While she tries to “invite us to imagine forms of activisms that challenge multiple, ongoing inequalities rather than seeking accommodation within the existing system” of sexuality, her critical analysis of (non-normative) sexuality is however much less developed in comparison to other chapters that she analyzes the pregnancy, asylum seeking women and their legal status. In general, I find that her argument is more powerful about “how heteronormativity shapes the allocation of migrants’ legal statues” (her first question) but less powerful about “how migration struggles remake the nationalist, heteronormative, sexual pyramid” (her second question) (6).

2) Queering the issue of migration?

In relation to the first question, I am also wondering to what extent she queers the issue of migration. Chapter 5 is the most explicitly related to queer theory, namely, Edelman’s concept of reproductive futurism. Yet the connection is not very clear for me. With the concept of reproductive futurism, she critically analyzes racism embedded in the referendum, which precludes the future of illegal migrants’ children. She claims

Such outcomes importantly shows that immigration controls entail not just spatial dimensions (“protecting the borders”) but also temporal dimensions (“protecting the future”) that are articulated through the state’s mobilization of heteronormative logic: in this case, a model of competing reproductive futurism. (173)

In this quote, I see how she makes the connection between her argument and reproductive futurism. Yet her usage of reproductive futurism does not capture its radical deconstructive move, which does not claim for any social justice for marginalized groups of people. Edelman, against such a desire of history, meaning, and future, claims for the death drive, in which a politics of “the negativity opposed to every form of social viability” grounds itself: “the drive, themselves intractable, unassimilable to the logic of interpretation or the demands of meaning-production; the drives that carry the destabilizing force of what insists outside or beyond, because foreclosed by, signification” (9 in No Futures: Queer Theory and the Death Drive). In this context, I think that “racialized regulation over women’s body,” rather than “reproductive futurism,” would be more precise (conceptual) language to explain her critical analysis.

3) Repressive state and the law-centered analysis

Throughout the book, she mentions about the violence of the state: “the violence that is intrinsic to contemporary migration control” (21) and “the connection between violent state heteronormativity and processes for making migrants illegal” (174). Also, she provides detailed explanations about immigration policies and court cases of Ireland in particular and EU in general. I am wondering what she would tell us if she pays less attention to the violence of the state and its juridical form of power. How does the state invite, not prevent, migrants? If not through law, how does the state produce and regulate suitable subjects and unruly subjects of migrants?

1) On p. 113, when Luibheid discusses the case of the Nigerian immigrant, Christabel, she refers to her as “already a postmodern, reflexive, and responsible subject”. I find this formulation problematic because to me it seems to resurrect the notion of ‘voicing the voiceless’. Like, somehow, Luibheid can bestow subjectivity unto Christabel by naming her a ‘postmodern subject’. I picked this passage because I see an overall tendency in the book to (over-)emphasize the subject, or non-subject, status of migrants and asylum seekers. 

2) In the conclusion Luibheid makes clear again her investment in sexuality as an important analytical category for thinking immigration politics. I wonder if her conflation of reproduction (in the figure of the pregnant migrant) and procreative sexuality with non-reproductive, queer, other sexualities is a problem. She does not theorize a qualitative distinction there. This stood out to me, especially since the distinction seems to be there implicitly in her separate discussions and gesturing to the different situation of (1) the pregnant migrant, (2) the married migrant vs. (3) the gay/lesbian/queer migrant. I recognize that Luibheid’s approach is rather more practical than theoretical, but then again, she explicitly claims queer theory. I think in that light it is not unfair to question whether she should not have theorized ‘sexuality’ more fully than she does. 

I find that the contrasting dissident citizenship with resistance/violence is very helpful in terms of conceptual clarification. Prof Spark conceptualizes dissident citizenship different from resistance and violence because resistance and violence lack the democratic significations: resistance would include practices that are not necessarily democratic (i.e., separatism) and violence is not a kind of democratic contestation itself. While the concept of dissident citizenship is clear in this context, I am less clear about what is democratic and not democratic. Should democratic practices presume the polity and engage with it non-violently? Sometimes these requirements are used as criteria to devalue non-hegemonic voices of the people, which are not very included within the polity and not heard without some violent spectacles. I think my question is about how theories of democracy would expand the ideas of democracy.

“We are necessarily entangled”

(p.205)

In leading our discussion today, I note the some key points and questions below. However, this is a rich text and I look forward to incorporating all our questions. Noted are Katie’s questions around the distinction between dissent and civil disobedience, which I am also interested in exploring further. I am also curious about Lisa’s point re genderedness and the contrasts between Cleaver and this text, for example.

Some points to guide us:

1. What are the main points of departure in analyzing the “intersectionally gendered dynamics of dissent” ? (p.37)

• How has democratic theorizing approached dissent, what are the critiques?
• Hazard theory (p.38), emergency brake (p.43), Oxygen (p.55)

“Gender, intertwined with sexuality, race, class, and other politicized differences, shapes dissident and other political conflicts even – and sometimes especially – when gender norms and gender relations seem not to be in contention at all” p.4.

For Sparks, what is missing “are the detailed and intersectional examinations of how gender shapes agonistic struggles of all sorts, especially in the midst of disruptive social and political movements that do not involved just feminists, women, or women’s issues.” (p.55) For me this also relates to the point raised on p.62 that political contestation does not need to be “radical” as such. This is generative for me, as I am interested in a “politics of the quotidian” and bringing gender, or feminist analysis to bear on situations where actors may not claim a feminist leaning or where gender may not seem to be an apparent consideration (p.62)

2. How does dissident citizenship differ from other political practices?

• Why is it important to distinguish dissent from resistance, or violence? How does this distinction operate in the text alongside agonistic democratic theory? What about the relationship of dissent to citizenship?
• Why could Sparks’ conceptualization of citizenship seem provocative to democratic theorists? (Here I’m also thinking about identity constitution and subject formation vis-à-vis dissent.)

3. What is the benefit of the theoretical frame chosen and how does it operate in the text (contrapuntal theorizing)?

4. Conceptualizations of “gender formations”, “processes of gendering” (p.4) and “intersectionally gendered” (p.7):

• I am especially interested in discussing the approach taken to intersectionality here. How is intersectionality deployed? How is it different from previous readings of intersectionality?
• There are some strong feminist critiques of “intersectionality” (e.g. a Foucauldian critique). How does Sparks address these?
• What are some of the contributions of analysing intersectional gender formations in dissident politics?
• Questions here also relate to “political standing” and how gender can aid AND contest political standing.

5. What do we learn about “political standing” through an intersectional gender analysis in Chapter 2? Here I am particularly interested in what Sparks notes as the “discomfiting” nature of “movement success” (p67).

6. How does Chapter 3 deepen our intersectional analysis of democratic dissent? I would like to talk specifically about the work done to “masculinize” non-violent discourse. 

7. Chapters 2 and 3 build on the analytical/theoretical frame set up in Chapter 1, in order to contrast rather dramatically with the case study of the Welfare Rights Movement in the last chapters. This then makes even more excplicit the argument for an intersectionally gendered analysis of political dissent. Why and how?

I agree with Lisa, I found the arguments and the mapping of Professor Sparks’s Dissident Citizenship: Gender and the Politics of Democratic Disturbance clear and well argued from multiple directions. I particularly appreciated the boundary breaking of bringing together feminist and queer political theory in order to theorize more broadly and cohesively political activity.

I am interested in further interrogating the tensions held within dissident citizenship conceptual form between revolutionary violence as resistance and dissident citizenship as a non-violent form of political contestation (17). In other words I found it useful that dissident citizenship is delineated and differentiated from other forms of protest and/or political action, however my question is why is violence, if public and not happening on the level of covert action, not a form of dissident citizenship? This of course also requires a key word mapping of the term violence in order to fully engage my question. Nonetheless I ask this question because I am incredibly interested in the work a theory of dissident citizenship can do, particularly as a form of political being that does rely exclusively on voting or what one would assume more traditional forms of political activity. I ask this question on violence due to the outcry and anger during Occupy over the destruction of private property as a form of “violence” that equates the shattering of a window or the toppling over of chairs in a café space similar to if not the same as the killing of a human. I also wonder if somehow the Montgomery bus boycott could be transported to contemporary political era, if the actions of Rosa Parks et al could be considered a form of “violence” following the same rhetorical move during Occupy? I am pushing on the term violence not to cast out the incredibly interesting work a theory of dissident citizenship can or will do; rather it is merely a place where my brain is working as I engage Professor Sparks’s important intervention into feminist and queer political theory.

In general, I’d like to get clear about some of the operative distinctions in the book. In particular, it was often difficult to understand the difference between dissent and civil disobedience. I wonder if there is an important difference in the way that these terms are understood in different fields (i.e., philosophy, political science, sociology, etc.). For instance, dissent isn’t a concept that comes up too often in the philosophical canon, but civil disobedience is more common — e.g., Socrates is typically understood as a prototype of civil disobedience, but perhaps dissident is more accurate?

Another point that I’d like to understand is the relationship between dissent, assent, and consent. If people/citizens don’t actively dissent, does that mean that they assent or tacitly consent to laws, policies, status quo, etc.? In the chapter on ‘militant mamas,’ many of the examples of welfare reform militancy seemed to imply that mothers have a duty/responsibility to be militant dissidents because of their identities as mothers. Do we agree that citizens have a responsibility to dissent in such cases?

In general, I found the reading this week very cogently structured with well-founded arguments, so I don’t have clarification questions. I’m more interested in discussing the overall concept of “dissident citizenship”.  “Dissidence” is very clearly delineated from other forms of protest (which I find useful), however, I am not quite convinced that it is as useful a form of “disagreement” as the text argued (oxygen theory). I am similarly skeptical about the concept of “citizenship”, although I find it very useful that it is here defined as a process and not an identity.
What I found particularly intriguing, is the recurrence of a casting of anger as an illegible form of protest, as happened with the working class women in the initial Bus Boycott days and the welfare activists’ movement, specifically how anger is racialized and gendered. I am thinking of how this kind of coverage repeats itself, most recently in the case of Ferguson. The charge that protesters are burning down buildings, which is then used to discredit an entire movement, does not seem to get old.
Lastly, as a sidenote, Taryn, Ingrid and I are reading Eldridge Cleaver for another class this week, and I found myself constantly returning to his text and putting him in conversation with “dissident citizenship”. The two approaches are diametrically opposed in many ways. In terms of the ‘genderedness’ of dissent MLK’s initial problems and hesitations to convince his fellow campaigners to adopt non-violence because it was seen as ‘unmanly’ is very interesting in conjuncture with Cleaver.

I have found this text interesting but I am still working out the importance of Honig’s intervention, similar to Lisa, reading Antigone Interrupted is the first time I am encountering the Greek myth and the stakes of her text. I am more familiar with the story and the reception of her father, Oedipus, and the circulation of his story within psychoanalytic theory and analysis. Nonetheless, Honig’s re-reading of Antigone against the grain provides an interesting reading that both takes in the play at the level of the text and importantly relies upon receptions of the play to develop her radical repositioning of Antigone as conspirator. More specifically I am interested what Honig calls “sororal agonism” a term she develops by doing a double reading of a scene between Antigone and Ismene, she argues:

“Antigone’s accusations against Ismene operate as a double entendre that is nothing short of brilliant. Instead of a set of flat accusation leveled unlovingly at to her unjustly despised sister (dominate reading), Antigone’s words in this scene convey a series of complex realizations and strategies. Perhaps for the first time, it is dawning on Antigone that Ismene, now ready to share her punishment, may be the performer of the first burial, still unexplained” (165).

The power of this movement by Honig, signals the capacious possibilities inherit for a politics based on shared feelings. One that creates the ground for a fugitive collectivity in two of Honig’s moves, (1) she disavows the state (Creon) and (2) makes a politics of lamentation an active political maneuver against the reading of Antigone as a vulnerable and individual political actor.