borders and the Empire
1) I’m interested in Mezzadra’s concepts of labor borders. I wonder how migrant labor borders are reimagined when laborers are working in different nations, promoting that nation’s economic growth, but simultaneously sending remittances back to family in their home countries (ex, Filipino women working as nurses and caregivers in other countries sending critical remittances back home). Even further, I’m interested in the way these bodies occupy liminal spaces where they are economically entrenched in two places but have citizenship rights in neither place due to physical location.
2) The concept of empire, particularly the notion of ‘exception’ reminds me of a book I read in another class, “The Politics of Abandonment,” by A. Povinelli. Specifically, the ways in which those who are able to exert authority do so by rendering others into mythic pasts and the focus on, in this case the global North, and its future possibilities as reasons to condone violence, unfair trade/legislation, and oppressive laws that exempt those with authority from being held accountable to. I can see Hardt speaking somewhat similarly to this idea with the concept of Empire being the crux of globalization, while simultaneously attempting to police those attempting to reorganize or shift power structures.
3) If the ’empire’ is destabilized and deterritorialized, I’m interested in the ways in which the Internet fits into this equation. How does the Internet, which does not have the same imperial roots and has no stake in them, trouble issues of authority and global flows of information, culture, etc? Can we look at the Internet as the counter empire that Hardt speaks of?
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Space – nothingness that is only realized once imagined boundaries and perceived territory are marked, within which tangible and non-tangible bodies can occupy; see also Authority