Tag: Giovanni Prins

Categories
Abolition

Sufjan Stevens, Angelo De Augustine: Murder and Crime

It is difficult to think of a society without prisons. As Angela Davis (2003) has argued, prisons are wholly ingrained in our culture and social lives, thereby obtaining the status of indispensable to human existence (9). Consequently, abolitionist theories are often immediately rejected and “dismissed as utopians and idealists” (Ibid., 9-10). In this paper, I wish to reflect on the matter of abolitionism in more detail. In doing so, I will first argue, using Sufjan Stevens’ and Angelo De Augustine’s Murder And Crime, that the intensification of law leads to a paradox of lawlessness. Second, I want to elaborate on possible solutions to this paradox by borrowing from abolitionist theory. Lastly, I return to Murder And Crime and the despair that accompanies the project of abolitionism.

“Evidence known so long. Oh God, I’m lost in my wrongs. Everything froze like stone. Saw you heart couldn’t take much more”, Angelo De Augustine commences the song (Stevens and De Augustine, 2021). It is this human fallibility and the despair it causes that Murder And Crime laments on. As De Augustine continues: “My boy, I don’t know why this life is so cruel and unkind but it weighs on my heart” (Ibid.). In addition to this, however, not only is life cruel and unkind, this reality is sustained through its embeddedness in legal systems. As expressed in the next line: “All joys were taken from your eyes as the law would abide in murder and crime” (Ibid.). It is here that a much more profound idea is expressed. Defined by its institutionalised racism, legal violence, and overall injustice, De Augustine and Stevens argue that contemporary society is akin to a state of lawlessness. As the two harmonise: “If anything goes, then everything’s flawed. Oh, my love, what the violence has caused” (Ibid.). Ultimately, this points to a paradox: a legal system that sanctions violence, produces a lawless condition.

To find a way out of this paradox, it is useful to turn to abolitionist theory. Prison abolitionists have similarly argued that the strategy to be harder on crime – exemplified by Reagan and Bush – has only led to a situation in which legal violence can flourish and inequalities are exacerbated. Consequently, it has led to “the proliferation of prisons and the rise of the prison industrial complex” (Davis 2003, 17). Exploring possible alternatives, abolitionists first and foremost argue that it is “not so much the abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons” that is at stake (Moten and Harney 2004, 114). Ultimately, a society characterised by the paradox of lawlessness can only be repudiated through the foundation of a new society, one characterised by equal distributions of wealth and wellbeing (Davis 2003, 105, 107). Such efforts include but are not limited to: equal and universal access to education and health care, the cultivation of a justice system built around reparation and reconciliation, and the decriminalisation of minor crimes (Ibid., 107-108; McLeod 2019, 1642, 1646-1647). In such a society prisons would become superfluous. In a word, less aggressive law enforcement and the establishment of better laws would help us escape the paradox of lawlessness, the abolitionist argument goes.

While abolitionist alternatives are undeniably attractive, I wish to express some doubts. As Davis herself concedes, it is difficult to imagine a prison-less society. How can we establish a new, abolitionist society while the current legal order, with all its injustice, is ingrained in our sociality? This doubt is shared by Stevens and De Augustine. Expressing a despair that can only be articulated in music, Murder And Crime tells us the story of a world that is reaching its inevitable end. “Oh god, I’m lost in the antiphon”, De Augustine laments. Reinforcing this profound sense of desperation, he asks us: “Where does everything go when everything’s gone? For my heart cannot break much more” (Stevens and De Augustine, 2021).

Ultimately, the question that remains is whether the paradox of lawlessness can be escaped. Are abolitionist alternatives viable, or is humanity slowly reaching an end-stage? In this paper I have aimed to reflect on abolitionist alternatives to the status quo. Through an exploration of Sufjan Stevens’ and Angelo De Augustine’s Murder And Crime, I have illustrated the paradoxical nature of contemporary legal systems. Abolitionists such as Angela Davis, expressing similar concerns, have offered alternatives to counter this paradox. Primarily, this entails reforming society in such a way that wealth, wellbeing, and justice are distributed equally. Returning to Murder And Crime, I question the viability of such alternatives. Can this paradox be escaped? Are we not, ultimately, walking towards an inevitable dead end?

Giovanni Prins

References

Davis, Angela, Yvonne. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press.
McLeod, Allegra, M. 2019. “Envisioning Abolition Democracy.” Harvard Law Review 132: 1613-1649.
Moten, Fred, and Stefano Harney. 2004. “The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses.” Social Text 22, no. 2: 101-115.

Categories
Violence and Nonviolence

Motionless in White: Slaughterhouse

From the outset of his famous essay Towards the Critique of Violence, Walter Benjamin ([1921] 2021) asks the question “whether violence in general, as a principle, is moral, even as a means to just ends” (39). In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler (2020) attempts to answer this question. They argue that what state violence really expresses is an unequal distribution of the grievable (Ibid., 77). This distribution is discursively constituted through legal systems and reproduced through state violence. In order to escape this, they argue that a nonviolent approach is necessary. Similarly, in their song Slaughterhouse, Motionless in White delineate unequal degrees of grievability. However, they see violence as a necessary means to overturn this distribution. In this short paper, I aim to reflect on both approaches, as well as their benefits and shortcomings.

In seeking to establish a politics of nonviolence, Butler argues that violence and inequality are mutually constitutive and thus always presuppose one another. Therefore, any movement towards a politics of nonviolence, must be a project towards radical egalitarianism (Butler 2020, 25-26). For this, they invoke the concept of ‘grievability.’ Not all lives, Butler proclaims, are attributed an equal sense of grievability. Those lives that will be grieved when lost are signified as grievable, while those that are not compose the ‘ungrievable’ (Ibid., 77-78). Butler poses that the legal codification of this biopolitical distribution of the (un)grievable is violence. Using the example of police killing innocent black citizens, Butler claims that this violence precedes the act of the murder itself. It is ingrained in the socio-political and legal apparatus of our sociality (Ibid., 84-85). The project towards a situation in which all lives are equally grievable must, therefore, always be a project of suspending legal violence.

The question remains how this suspension can be effectuated. Slaughterhouse by the metalcore band Motionless in White and Bryan Garris (2022) offers one potential answer to this question. Slaughterhouse is a call for an anti-capitalist revolution from the perspective of the subjugated. “Break down the wall again”, screams Garris as Slaughterhouse commences (Ibid.). A similar sentiment to Butler’s distribution of the grievable underlies the song: the lives of the lower classes are degraded and deemed ungrievable, equated to pigs in a slaughterhouse, and “packaged up and sold for scraps”, while the rich “auction off our backs to buy your crown” (Ibid.). The ungrievable populations live their lives in a Hobbesian state of nature, in which the capitalists “sit back as we collapse, left to fight over scraps” (Ibid.). Similar to Butler, Motionless argue that to transform this distribution of the ungrievable, an overturn is necessary. However, the approach here is strictly violent. Exemplified by the song’s warlike drums, belligerent vocals, macabre vocabulary, and ominous background melody, Motionless and Garris pose that the only way to escape the condition of ungrievability is to “Flip the script and oppress the oppressors”, to “Kill ’em all, kill ’em all, no successors” (Ibid.). Phrased differently, a rupturing of the legal order requires, for Motionless and Garris, an ultimate ‘divine’ form of de-posing violence (Benjamin [1921] 2021, 60).

Additionally, Slaughterhouse expresses a sentiment close to that of Frantz Fanon. Violent oppression, Fanon notes, “will only yield when confronted with greater violence” (Fanon 2001, 48). However, besides instrumental in altering material conditions, violence serves a second function. Because of the total self-alienation and psychological inferiority complex violent domination established in the oppressed subject, counter-violence not only changes material conditions, but liberates the subject from this inferiority complex. From the ashes of violent revolt, the individual is formed, the subject created. Violence serves not only as a means to material liberation, but also to psychological emancipation (Blackey 1974, 193). Slaughterhouse expresses this cathartic element of violence by its very existence. Motionless and Garris’ violent assertion of individuality is in itself a means to escape this inferiority complex. It is thus not only a plea for transforming material conditions, but an expression of subjectivity just as much.

For Butler, however, a violent revolution is ineffective. Instead, Benjamin’s notion of divine violence should be interpreted as an essentially nonviolent suspension of legal violence (Butler 2020, 89-90). Invoking Étienne Balibar’s analysis of Hobbes, Butler poses that any form of anti-violence must be nonviolent. Otherwise, the suspension of state violence will only be an oscillation – a double violence (Ibid. 95-96). Additionally, my contention is that a redistribution of the grievable, as Slaughterhouse forcefully proposes, does not lead to radical egalitarianism. Rather, it simply transfigures the hierarchy and categorisation of the grievable and ungrievable. Consequently, what we end up with is a different distribution of the grievable, which ultimately yields the same result.

In this short paper I have offered a brief reflection of two positions regarding the overturn of legal violence. Using Judith Butler’s concept of grievability, I have illustrated how state violence and social inequality are mutually constitutive. Any project to end state violence must therefore presuppose radical egalitarianism. With the example of Slaughterhouse by Motionless in White and Bryan Garris, I have showcased one possible – violent – means through with the legal order can be overturned. However, such a violent project entirely waives any hope of radical egalitarianism. It only leads to a double violence, and a different distribution of grievability, not its eradication. As such, it must be concluded that a violent overturn of the legal system cannot be the path to end state violence.

Giovanni Prins

References

Benjamin, Walter. [1921] 2021. Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition. Edited by Peter Fenves and Julia Ng. Stanford University Press.
Blackey, Robert. 1974. “Fanon and Cabral: a Contrast in Theories of Revolution for Africa.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 12, no. 2: 191-209.
Butler, Judith. 2020. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. London: Verso.
Fanon, Frantz. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. London: Penguin Books.

Categories
Racial Violence and Representation

Ella Fitzgerald: Mack the Knife

Arguably the best example of the power of music is the role jazz has played in the civil rights movement in the United States. As María Diego Vicente (2022) argues, jazz has had a trifold purpose in the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s: catharsis, self-identification, and emancipation (12-17). However, the importance of ‘black music’ has not been left undisputed. Frantz Fanon – a famous critic of jazz – argues that jazz music reduces black identity to an essential sameness. Fanon poses that it disregards particular lived experiences. My aim is to amend this problem through the lens of Fred Moten’s theory on black performance. In what follows, I will explore how improvisational jazz – exemplified by Ella Fitzgerald’s performance of Mack the Knife – plays a crucial role in identity formation and emancipation, thereby being an aid rather than a hindrance to social movements.    

To grasp Frantz Fanon’s critique on jazz, one must first understand his hostility to Leopold Senghor’s negritude movement. In an attempt to battle colonialism and its inherent racism, the negritude movement attempts to establish a collective black identity. As Senghor (1974) puts it, ‘the word negritude expresses the same for the whole range of values of civilisation of all black peoples in the world’ (270). As such, it is a metaphor that refers to a common ‘rhythm’ of blackness, which is expressed in art, literature, and (jazz) music (Ibid., 270-271).

Fanon, however, starkly opposes such a theory. By reducing black identity to a collective rhythmic sensibility, grounded in a mythical shared past, one wholly neglects the particularity of specific cultures, or even individuals. As Fanon declares, black people “of Chicago only resemble the Nigerians or the Tanganyikans in so far as they were all defined in relation to the whites” (Fanon 2001, 173-174). By subscribing to the notion of a shared sense of negritude, one negates the lived experience of the black person. This is precisely what he accuses jazz of as well. Fanon seeks to challenge the romantic idea of a fundamental black identity that is so prominent in jazz music. Ultimately, he poses that the performance of jazz only serves to reproduce the inferiority of the black/colonial subject. By lamenting on “the curse of his race, and the racial hatred of the white men”, the jazz musician only reproduces the colonial power dynamic (Ibid., 195-196).

While Fanon’s critique seems to be unambiguous, Jeremy Lane (2012) has argued that Fanon’s feud is not with jazz, but rather with its connection to the negritude movement. What is needed, then, is an uncoupling of jazz and the conception of a shared blackness. I propose that such an uncoupling is provided by Fred Moten’s theory of black performance, and in particular the importance he ascribes to improvisational jazz. Echoing Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, Moten poses that identity is performatively constructed and reconstructed. Moreover, he attributes such productive power in particular to ‘phonic matter’ – i.e., voice, music, sound (Moten 2003, 6-7). Such phonic substance contains the productive and disruptive power to radically (re)articulate black identity. This is especially the case in improvisational jazz, for it is ‘a highly localized movement of syncopation, a Village disruption of the spacetime continuum’, which ‘marks the assertion, rather than negation, of radical blackness on the one hand, and totality on the other’ (Ibid., 153). Of such a case, I take Ella Fitzgerald’s (1960) rendition of Mack the Knife to be a prime example.

In February 1960, Ella Fitzgerald went on to put on a live performance that would remain forever enshrined in the history of music, and jazz in particular. Declaring that she would be the first woman to sing it, she commences her version of Mack the Knife. Comfortably, Fitzgerald works her way through the first two verses. Around the third verse, the music speeds up, and she starts to mix in some ad-libs. But it is only when the fourth verse arrives that Fitzgerald – effortlessly, it may be added – sings to us: “Oh what’s the next chorus, to this song, now. This is the one, now I don’t know” (Fitzgerald 1960). From this point onward, the song is entirely improvised. It is in this moment, as Moten would have it, that Fitzgerald radically asserts her own identity through the performance. Her acknowledgement that “We’re making a wreck, what a wreck of Mack the Knife” only serves to accentuate this by emphasising the authenticity of her performance. This is further illustrated once we reach the antepenultimate verse, in which Fitzgerald opens one of her famous scat choruses. Bringing the point home, she declares: “You won’t recognize it, it’s a surprise hit. This tune, called Mack the Knife. And so, we leave you, in Berlin town. Yes, we’ve swung old Mack, we’ve swung old Mack in town.” (Fitzgerald 1960).

Ultimately, Fitzgerald’s performance serves as the perfect counter-example to Fanon’s claim that jazz is reductionistic and defeatist. Improvisational jazz performances such as these showcase the individuality, as well as the liberatory capacity jazz can have. In particular, the fact that Fitzgerald covers an old song, but transforms it beyond recognition, illustrates the emancipatory capability of improvisational performance. In no way does Fitzgerald resemble the desperate and beat-down jazz musician Fanon so despises. Quite the opposite. Fitzgerald’s performance radiates joy and freedom throughout.

In this short essay, I have explored the role of jazz in emancipatory movements. Frantz Fanon has criticised jazz for being an expression of negritude, thereby negating the manifold of particularities that black experiences carry with them, as well as reinforcing colonial power dynamics. I have attempted to show, drawing from Fred Moten, how improvisational jazz escapes this problem. Phonic matter, such as music, contains the capacity to radically disrupt and create identities anew. I have proposed Ella Fitzgerald’s famous rendition of Mack the Knife to be exemplary of such a case.

Giovanni Prins

References

Diego Vicente, María. 2022. “Black Music In African-American Fiction: Catharsis, Identity And Emancipation.” Master thesis., Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Fanon, Frantz. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. London: Penguin Books.
Lane, Jeremy F. 2012. “Leaving the South: Frantz Fanon, Modern Jazz and the Rejection of Négritude.” In American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South, edited by Martin Munro and Celia Britton, 129-146. Liverpool University Press.
Moten, Fred. 2003. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Senghor, Léopold S. 1974. “Negritude.” Indian Literature 17, no. 1/2: 269-273.

Categories
Gendered Violence

Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Clutters

Is there a war on women’s bodies? It is this question that drives Verónica Gago’s (2020) analysis on sexist violence. Gago poses that we should see the endless escalation of violence against women not as a private conflict that happens only in the household, but rather as a total war on the female body that pervades every layer of society. Doing so allows us to see gendered violence as a systemic and structural problem, intentionally (re)produced by the patriarchal hegemony, while also showcasing the localised form violence takes on each particular body (Gago 2020, 59-61). As such, this leads Gago to the conclusion that the battle of violence against women starts and ends by breaking free from the heteronormative hegemony of today’s society. How, then, is this process initiated? Where does it start? In what follows, I will explore the answers to these questions as found in the works of Gago and singer-songwriter Fiona Apple.

Adopting Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement that one is not born but rather becomes a woman, Verónica Gago argues that “becoming-woman alerts us to a theft” (2020, 79). Becoming-woman essentially entails to conform to the heteronormative meaning of the word. As such, society takes possession of the female body “in order to produce a two-part, binary organism, thus making us into a body that is not our own” (Ibid.). However, she claims, becoming contains revolutionary potential. Instead, the Nietzschean notion of ‘becoming who you are’ is the first step to freeing oneself from the dominant – and indeed, violent – hegemony (Gago 2020, 80). It is this sentiment in particular that is taken up in Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020).

Reminiscing about several different situations, Apple tells the story of breaking free from one’s metaphorical prison. One of these is an unhealthy, abusive, and asymmetrical relationship that Apple is afraid to end – “I know what you can do, and I don’t want a war with you” (Ibid.). Throughout the song, Apple realises that this relationship holds her back emotionally and personally and proclaims – ushered in by the clashing of a cymbal, while the melody intensifies – to “fetch the bolt cutters, whatever happens, whatever happens” (Ibid.).

While the music dwindles again, Apple tells us about her experience with sexism in the music industry: “While I’d not yet found my bearings, those it-girls hit the ground. Comparing the way I was, to the way she was. Saying I’m not stylish enough and I cry too much.” (Apple, 2020). While writing from and about an entirely different context, Apple echoes an important point made by Gago: the system will make use of whichever (violent) means necessary to discipline women in conforming to the heteronormative mould, to “becoming-woman” (Gago 2020, 79). This point is emphasised when Apple tells us that she “grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill”, but that these were “shoes that were not made for running up that hill.” (Apple, 2020). Yet, she declares: “I need to run up that hill.” (Ibid.). Powerfully expressed through a sudden polyphonic explosion, Apple affirms her mission of self-realisation. She tells us: “I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.” (Ibid.). Consequently, with a final clang of the cymbals, she professes to ‘become who she is’ and “Fetch the bolt cutters, whatever happens, whatever happens” (Ibid.).

An important remark must be made here. The Nietzschean ‘becoming who you are’ is accomplished individually. It is a process in which the ‘I’ simultaneously realises and creates itself by taking ultimate responsibility for who one is (Look 2001, 9). This self, having been shrouded and corrupted by outside influence, is uncovered. For Apple, however, this self-realisation must always work in tandem with the ‘other’. Throughout Fetch the Bolt Cutters she emphasises the role of ‘them’ in her finding of the ‘I’. Particularly the line “I thought being blacklisted would be grist for the mill. Until I realized I’m still here” showcases the paradoxical nature of being outside of discourse. Becoming who you are cannot be about isolating oneself. For Apple, self-realisation must always happen in relation to, as well as in conjunction with the other.

There is a war on women’s bodies. How do we fight it? Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters and Verónica Gago’s Feminist International offer similar answers to this question. In particular, both argue that self-realisation is the first step in the battle against systemic sexism. Rather than becoming-women conform the heteronormative system, women must become who they are. They must fetch the bolt cutters and cut themselves loose. Of course, this is not an easy process. The war on women and their bodies is not easily ended, and the way to peace is far from close. Yet, these analyses offer two relatively hopeful accounts of the cessation of this war, in which disruption and subversion through self-realisation are key for the transformation of the system.

Giovanni Prins

References

Apple, Fiona. 2020. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” Track 3 on Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Epic Records.

Gago, Verónica. 2020. Feminist International: How to Change Everything. Translated by Liz Mason-Deese. London: Verso.

Look, Brandon. 2001. “Becoming Who One Is” in Spinoza and Nietzsche.” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 50: 327-338.

Categories
Border Violence

Radiohead: Burn the Witch

In Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration, Donatella Di Cesare (2020) offers an insightful exploration on the history of, and the gaps within political philosophy on the matter of migration. Crucially, she poses that migration elucidates the inherent irreconcilability that exists between human rights and state sovereignty (Di Cesare 2020, 10). In particular, she argues that Western countries – i.e., liberal democracies – see immigration as a threat to the stability of the (welfare) state. As such, the immigrant becomes a scapegoat, a criminal, a danger to be cautious of (Ibid., 61-63, 69). Similarly, Harsha Wallia argues that “familiar narratives of danger and disaster” stigmatise immigrants, thereby justifying the use of excessive violence to keep them from entering the confines of the state (2021, 137). Elsewhere, I have argued this scapegoating to be part of a biopolitical governmentality, employed by the state to safeguard its own homogeneity and cohesion (Prins 2022, 21-22). It is precisely this governmentality that is the target of Radiohead’s Burn the Witch (2016).

Burn the Witch (Radiohead, 2016) tells the story of what can be presumed to be a political leader instilling a climate of fear, thereby prompting its people to rally and punish the dissident who, supposedly, is the cause of the induced moral panic. The speaker urges its people to stay ignorant and “abandon all reason” (Ibid.). Instead, people must “stay in the shadows” – a clear nod to Plato’s allegorical cave – and “sing the song on the jukebox that goes: Burn the witch” (Ibid.). The witch in the song refers to the figure of the immigrant, who becomes the victim of omnipresent stigmatisation, racism, and islamophobia. The point made by the band is similar to that of Di Cesare and Wallia: the criminalisation of immigrants – either officially or by constructnig a climate of fear – justifies the use of excessive violence against asylum seekers beyond the confines of the borders. It allows us to subject the immigrant to inhumane living conditions – as exemplified by Wallia’s (2021, 144-145) inquiry into the Moria refugee camp. More importantly, however, it allows us to reinforce the idea that the immigrant is at fault for its own suffering.

It is important to note here that the construction of the ‘criminal-immigrant’ and the consequent witch hunt is a purposefully orchestrated strategy. Indeed, as Luca Mavelli and myself have argued, it must be seen as biopolitical governmentality that aims to signal supposed threats to the cohesion of the state in order to eliminate them (Mavelli 2017, 818-819; Prins 2022, 21-22). For instance, the UK – which is Radiohead’s target as well – distinguishes between ‘good’ and ‘worthy’ immigrants that can be beneficial for the British population on the one hand, and ‘unworthy’ or ‘valueless’ immigrants on the other. Thus, the UK seeks to construct an image of the immigrant as an outlaw, a dissident, and, most importantly, an inferior that is dangerous to the population in order to justify certain migration policies deemed beneficial (Prins, 2022, 21-22).

A similar notion can be found in both Di Cesare’s and Wallia’s works, as well as in Radiohead’s Burn the Witch. All three showcase the intentionality of Europe to create an all-encompassing paranoia in order to justify the violent punishment of the criminal-immigrant – a point forcefully brought home in Burn the Witch when Thom Yorke proclaims ‘this is a round-up, this is a low-flying panic attack’ (Radiohead 2016). However, even more so than the literary works mentioned here, Burn the Witch accentuates the reality of this moral panic by affectively recreating a sense of mass hysteria. Throughout the song, Yorke’s vocals heighten considerably in both pitch and volume, the strings grow progressively distorted and off-key, and the bass tones become increasingly impressive, instilling a feeling of discomfort and unrest (Ibid.). Additionally, Burn the Witch is dominated by horror imagery – perfectly illustrated by the videoclip that accompanies the song: a stop-motion parody of the 70’s horror film The Wicker Man. Through this imagery, Radiohead seeks to liken the reality of the criminal-immigrant to that of a horror scenario. The band wants us not only to know about, but to feel both the ubiquitous hysteria of an indoctrinated population, as well as the fear of the immigrant who is under its yoke.

As becomes clear through a closer exploration of the works by Di Cesare, Wallia, and Radiohead, we must move away from narratives that criminalise immigrants. While a lot of work remains to be done in order to resolve the contradiction that Di Cesare points out between human rights and state sovereignty, any attempt at this must begin with putting an end to the portrayal and treatment of immigrants as outcasts, as outlaws, as witches to be burned at the stake.

Giovanni Prins

References

Di Cesare, Donatella. 2020. “Migrants and the State.” In Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration, translated by David Broder, 5-77. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Mavelli, Luca. 2017. “Governing Populations through the Humanitarian Government of Refugees: Biopolitical Care and Racism in the European Refugee Crisis.” Review of International Studies, 43, no. 5: 809-832.

Prins, Giovanni. 2022. “Generating Two Modes of Life: a Biopolitical Reading of Asylum Seekers and Refugees.” Erasmus Student Journal of Philosophy 2, no. 1: 17-27.

Walia, Harsha. 2021. “Fortress Europe.” In Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, 135-160. Chicago: Haymarket Books.