In his dissent to the US Supreme Court’s 1968 Terry v. Ohio decision, Justice William O. Douglas warned, “we hold today that the police have greater authority to make a ‘seizure’ and conduct a ‘search’ than a judge. [...] To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.” This admonition is certainly backed up by the literature—from theorists like Hannah Arendt to organizers like Mariame Kaba, the common consensus is that policing and substantive democracy are fundamentally incompatible. By its nature, as Derrida and many others have argued, the law is constituted only through its enforcement. Whereas in Justice Douglas’ perhaps naive understanding this should play out in the courts, in practice it has always meant policing (in its many iterations: domestic police, military forces, colonial troops, slave patrols, etc.). Police act as arbiters of national fears and limitations. The adumbration of policing burdens the public even when police are physically absent.
As a mechanism of its enforcement, the law parses nation, community, and citizenship. “Law is primarily a national institution,” Paul Gilroy writes, “and adherence to its rule symbolizes the imagined community of the nation.” Adherence itself, however, is not enough. Insidiously, and perhaps more often, subjection—rather than adherence—to the rule of law determines the de facto outlines of the national community. The law-abiding individual and the law-abiding citizen are not always coterminous entities. As Kathleen Arnold argues, “the formation of national identity does not merely entail the construction of an ideal citizen, but normative criteria based on economic, gender, and racial status, allowing some to be ‘at home’ and politically uprooting others.” She goes on: “A full citizen can receive the protection of the law. [...] For all others, justice is a crapshoot and violence is very often acceptable or even encouraged.” Arnold’s observations here come out of her 2004 study on homelessness, which is no coincidence.
The experience of being without a home, especially within an authoritarian power matrix, makes manifest what Athol Fugard, in his notebooks, called “the violence of immediacy,” wherein an individual is “not separated by any intervening medium” from violences environmental and otherwise. Taking this “violence of immediacy,” and the (implied) promise of its forestallment by a material home, as a starting point, this panel considers the house or home (or its absence) as an exemplary site through which to analyze the prerogative and fundamentally authoritarian power structure innate in the enforcement of law by police. Submissions should focus in particular on literary representations of policing/law enforcement and homes/homelessness. Considerations of nation, community, and citizenship and especially of the dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, and other socio-political categories are especially welcome.
As a mechanism of its enforcement, the law parses nation, community, and citizenship. “Law is primarily a national institution,” Paul Gilroy writes, “and adherence to its rule symbolizes the imagined community of the nation.” Adherence itself, however, is not enough. Insidiously, and perhaps more often, subjection—rather than adherence—to the rule of law determines the de facto outlines of the national community. The law-abiding individual and the law-abiding citizen are not always coterminous entities. As Kathleen Arnold argues, “the formation of national identity does not merely entail the construction of an ideal citizen, but normative criteria based on economic, gender, and racial status, allowing some to be ‘at home’ and politically uprooting others.” She goes on: “A full citizen can receive the protection of the law. [...] For all others, justice is a crapshoot and violence is very often acceptable or even encouraged.” Arnold’s observations here come out of her 2004 study on homelessness, which is no coincidence.
The experience of being without a home, especially within an authoritarian power matrix, makes manifest what Athol Fugard, in his notebooks, called “the violence of immediacy,” wherein an individual is “not separated by any intervening medium” from violences environmental and otherwise. Taking this “violence of immediacy,” and the (implied) promise of its forestallment by a material home, as a starting point, this panel considers the house or home (or its absence) as an exemplary site through which to analyze the prerogative and fundamentally authoritarian power structure innate in the enforcement of law by police. Submissions should focus in particular on literary representations of policing/law enforcement and homes/homelessness. Considerations of nation, community, and citizenship and especially of the dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, and other socio-political categories are especially welcome.