Radical democratic disobedience

"illegals" as a litigious political subject

Andreas Oberprantacher

pp. 305-325

in: Andreas Oberprantacher, Andrei Siclodi (eds), Subjectivation in political theory and contemporary practices, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

This chapter traces various acts of radical democratic disobedience on the part of people who are commonly disqualified as "illegals". To begin with, Oberprantacher addresses a few basic doubts in terms of the initial premise: to what extent can one speak of "illegals", bearing in mind the risk of discursively consolidating discriminatory approaches? Moreover, he critically investigates some of the arguments that are currently generating extremely ambivalent images of the situation of people who are governed as "illegals", be it as "helpless victims' or as "cunning criminals". In the final part, he more broadly responds to the question of what it amounts to when "illegals' are subjectivating themselves and making themselves count as a litigious political subject of a democracy to come.