Open AccessCartographies of Friendship, Desire, and Home; Notes on surviving neoliberal security regimes
Author(s) -
Debanuj DasGupta
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
disability studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2159-8371
pISSN - 1041-5718
DOI - 10.18061/dsq.v34i4.3994
Subject(s) - shadow (psychology) , sociology , immigration , power (physics) , gender studies , friendship , human sexuality , construct (python library) , governmentality , narrative , ableism , ethnography , disability studies , queer , neoliberalism (international relations) , political science , political economy , politics , law , social science , psychoanalysis , psychology , anthropology , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
In this auto-ethnographic essay I shed light upon processes of racialiazation and sexualization which work to construct the figure of the disabled, diseased, alien. The paper argues disability based immigration policies, along with neoliberal notions of productivity and enterprise operate as technologies of power, excluding queer HiV positive migrant subjects from the gates of the US nation-state. I shed light upon HIV based immigration policies, disability and sexuality rights activism, pre and post 9/11 US national security practices by retracing lived experiences of mine from Kolkata, India and post 9/11 New York City. The narrative journeys to spaces such as HIV clinics, S&M chambers, and hospital rooms in hopes of understanding collective claims to life being made by those occupying the interstitial shadow spaces between nation-states, perverse/ normal, ability/disability, and ultimately life/death.