Did You Pack Your Bags Yourself? Governmentality After 9/11
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4824549 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Diane Rubenstein (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 303-331 |
| Publication date | 2003-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | CR The New Centennial Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1532-687X • E-ISSN: 1539-6630 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/ncr.2003.0027 |
| OpenAlex | W1979596653 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 8 |
IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING SEPTEMBER 11, ARAB AMERICAN COMEDIANS found themselves in a more fraught enunciative position than less-targeted [End Page 303] populations of Bush and Ashcroft's America. The modalities of social identity (ethnicity, gender, occupation) previously available to express solidarity, dissent, or grief seemed incommensurate to the unruly materials of biopolitical life. Faced with the unappealing alternatives of resigned silence or contestatory refusal to play stereotypic terrorists in Hollywood action films, Ahmed Ahmed revised his comedy routine. The available airport regulations provided sufficient basis for a monologue intent on addressing racial profiling, ambient post-9/11 anxieties provoked by ethnic others, and the hysterical will to administrative regulation. Ahmed recounts a recent attempt to board an airplane. When asked "Did you pack your bags yourself?" he answers in the affirmative and is immediately carried off by police authorities. I like to think that Foucault would have laughed at this joke and cleverly marked his laughter, as he had in so many other instances dear to his readers. 1 Indeed, I imagine how Foucault would have used this joke to punctuate the pertinence of the airport scenario as an exemplary instance of contemporary "paralegal bio-politics in which administrative measures gradually replace the rule of law" and as a "state of emergency" prevailing over everyday American life during an unending war on terror (Zizek 2002a). 2 Although Foucault's writings on governmentality ostensibly address liberal rationalities of rule (which are extended by Rose and Dean to consider neoliberalism and neoliberalist hegemony), I will focus my review of these books on their contribution to the history of our post-9/11 present
Aesthetics · Dissent · Governmentality · Joke · Laughter · Literature · Media studies · Outrage · Political science · Politics · Silence · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2014 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |