Open AccessResisting Necro-biographies
Author(s) -
M Pearlman Shapiro
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
review of human rights
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2520-7032
pISSN - 2520-7024
DOI - 10.35994/rhr.v2i1.76
Subject(s) - contingency , identity (music) , state (computer science) , warrant , consciousness , power (physics) , indemnity , order (exchange) , sociology , foundation (evidence) , element (criminal law) , law and economics , political science , law , social psychology , aesthetics , business , epistemology , psychology , philosophy , physics , algorithm , finance , quantum mechanics , computer science
In order to determine whether an individual or a specific identity-bearing group has potential for terrorism, the state engages in a systematic practice of constructing biographies, which could warrant its use of lethal power. This practice privileges a security consciousness while discounting the vagaries of everyday life contingency, which plays a crucial role in creating who we are and what we do. The element of contingency becomes more visible when we focus on the lives of migrants and their movements. The State’s excessive concern with security inhibits the opportunity spaces for role exits from the indemnity economies it invents. In this brief response to such actions of the state, I take an ethical stance that affords victims the right to refute their constructed identities and to presenting counter-biographies.