Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T00:20:52.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Alien” Sexuality: Race, Maternity, and Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Natalie Cisneros
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I provide an analysis of the emergence of “problematic of alien sexuality.” I first locate discourses about “alien sexuality,” and the so‐called anchor baby in particular, within other national discourses surrounding maternity, the fetus, and citizenship. I analyze the ways that national political discourses surrounding “anchor babies” and “alien maternity” construct the “problematic of alien sexuality,” thus constituting the “alien” subject as always‐already perverse. I suggest that this production of a sexually deviant and threatening “alien” subject functions in the normative dichotomy that places the sexually pure citizen on the one hand, and the perverse anticitizen on the other, in what I call “backwards uncitizening.” My analysis of this process shows that the perverse “alien” subject, as constituted in significant part by nonjuridical normalizing mechanisms of biopower, resists the juridical discourse that is supposed to determine it.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 28 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Crossing Borders Special Issue , Spring 2013 , pp. 290 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank José Medina and Jane Wanninger for their valuable comments, and Kelly Oliver, whose graduate seminar inspired this project.

References

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/la frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.Google Scholar
Associated Press. 2010. Lawmakers in 14 states craft bill to deny citizenship to “anchor babies.” http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/19/lawmakers-states-craft-deny-citizenship-anchor-babies/, October 19 (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1989. The second sex. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. 1998. America, “fat,” the fetus. In Gendered agents: Women and institutional knowledge, ed. Mariniello, Silvestra. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Brito, Tonya L. 2000. The welfarization of family law. 48 Kansas Law Review 229: 232–36. http://tinyurl.com/cr2ybt3 (accessed October 25, 2012).Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. 1994. Surrogates and outcast mothers: Racism and reproductive politics in the nineties. In The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. James, Joy. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
DeLay, Tom. 2007. Speech presented at American University, Washington, D.C., July. http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Tom_DeLay_tells_College_Republicans_that_0718.html (accessed December 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1935/1998. Black reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. “Society must be defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. Trans. David Macey. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Graham, Lindsey. 2010. On the record with Greta Van Susteren, July 28 http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/transcript/murdered-arizona-border-resident039s-widow-039we-can039t-let-happen-another-rancher039 (accessed December 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1993. Sexes and genealogies. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Lucas. 2010. Lawmaker likens illegal immigrants to “multiplying rats.” NWTN Today. http://www.nwtntoday.com/news.php?viewStory=48560 (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Joint Fiscal Review. 2010. Tennessee General Assembly: Streaming Video‐Fiscal Review, November 9. http://wapp.legislature.state.tn.us/apps/videowrapper/default.aspx?CommID=53“Lawmakers in 14 States Craft Bill to Deny Citizenship to ‘Anchor Babies’.” (accessed August 17, 2011).Google Scholar
Levin‐Epstein, Jodie. 2003. Lifting the lid off the family cap: States revisit the problematic policy for welfare mothers. Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy. http://www.clasp.org/publications/family_cap_brf.pdf (accessed October 25, 2012).Google Scholar
Lieb, David A. 2006. Mo. panel's report links immigration to abortion. Washington Post, November 14.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 2003. Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
McWhorter, Ladelle. 2009. Racism and sexual oppression in Anglo‐America: A genealogy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Zell. 2007. Speech presented at a fundraiser for Save a Life Center of Macon, Georgia, http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/zell_miller_is_flapping_his_gums_again/ (accessed December 4, 2012).Google Scholar
Monier, Jill. 2011. Local Hispanics protest Tennessee lawmaker Curry Todd. My Fox Memphis. http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpp/news/local/111110-local-hispanics-protest-tennessee-lawmaker-curry-todd (accessed May 31, 2011).Google Scholar
O'Neal, Nathan. 2010. “Anchor baby” phrase has controversial history. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/anchor-baby-phrase-controversial-history/story?id=11066543, July 3 (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Preston, Julia. 2011. Plans to end birthright citizenship are outlined. New York Times, January 5.Google Scholar
Response to GOP state senator Charlie Janssen and his continued insult to Hispanics. 2011. ¡Somos Republicans!. January 5. http://somosrepublicans.com/2011/01/response-to-gop-state-senator-charlie-janssen-and-his-continued-insult-hispanics/ (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Schelzig, Erik. 2010. Tenn. gov criticizes lawmaker for immigrant remark. Msnbc.com. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40155230/ns/us_news/t/tenn-gov-criticizes-lawmaker-immigrant-remark/ (accessed October 18, 2012).Google Scholar
Smith, Anna Marie. 2007. Welfare reform and sexual regulation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tennessee lawmaker calls some illegal immigrants ‘rats’.” 2010. CNN. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-12/us/tennessee.lawmaker.remark_1_illegal-immigrants-tennessee-lawmaker-rats?_s=PM:US (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar