PDF Race; Jobs; and the War by Andrew Kersten in History

Description

Numerous activists and scholars have appealed for rights; inclusion; and justice in the name of "citizenship." Against Citizenship provocatively shows that there is nothing redeemable about citizenship; nothing worth salvaging or sustaining in the name of "community;" practice; or belonging. According to Brandzel; citizenship is a violent dehumanizing mechanism that makes the comparative devaluing of human lives seem commonsensical; logical; and even necessary. Against Citizenship argues that whenever we work on behalf of citizenship; whenever we work towards including more types of peoples under its reign; we inevitably reify the violence of citizenship against nonnormative others. Brandzel's focus on three legal case studies--same-sex marriage law; hate crime legislation; and Native Hawaiian sovereignty and racialization--exposes how citizenship confounds and obscures the mutual processes of settler colonialism; racism; sexism; and heterosexism. In this way; Brandzel argues that citizenship requires anti-intersectionality; that is; strategies that deny the mutuality and contingency of race; class; gender; sexuality and nation--and how; oftentimes; progressive left activists and scholars follow suit.