Charles T. Lee

Undocumented Workers' Subversive Citizenship Acts

What does it mean to be “citizens”? Formally speaking, citizenship designates the legal status of state membership, with a stated nationality and corresponding rights and duties. Beyond this basic legality of citizenship, the term also implies a sense of social action and belonging, with citizens being accorded a claim to participate in and contribute to the economic, cultural, and political affairs of a community. Because of the nationalistlegalistic premise, however, citizenship has always carried an exclusive connotation, a binary logic of “either/or”: a denizen residing in our country is either in or out, citizen or illegal, member or stranger. This dichotomous boundary determines who gets to belong and participate in the liberal republic and who does not.

Commentary on Fred Lee’s “Contours of Asian American Political Theory: Introductions and Polemics”

Fred Lee’s essay proceeds with an important premise, seeking to carve out an emergent contour of Asian American political theory (AAPT) that has been absent in the political science subfield of political theory (as well as the subfield of Asian American Politics). This effort is original and significant. On one hand, it speaks directly to what Lee underlines as “an epistemic racism of indifference” in the subfield of political theory for its lack of recognition and incorporation of Asian American theory/theorists. On the other hand, it also speaks to the positivist-driven and behaviorist-oriented training and scholarship within the subfield of Asian American politics that has yet to engender a cluster of visible and recognizable Asian American political theorists and thinkers comparable to the intellectual realms of black, Latino/a, and indigenous political thought. In complex and subtle ways, the unnoticeable and yet glaring absence of Asian American political thought and theorists in political science uncannily mirrors the invisibilization of Asian American experiences, voices and perspectives in the society at large given their differential racialization as simultaneously the model minority (who assimilate to the norms and don’t have special problems) and perpetual foreigners (who are too different and distant to be part of the conversation). More important, the invisibility of AAPT preempts an earnest inquiry into how incorporating Asian American political theoretical perspectives may enrich and expand the intellectual horizons of both the subfields of political theory and Asian American politics, as well as contribute to the ongoing interdisciplinary transformation of political science at large. In this context, Lee’s effort in establishing a contour or field of study for AAPT constitutes an important first step to bring the invisible into light. Lee has addressed many of my comments regarding issues of clarity, specificity, and normative possibility in his formulation of AAPT through two rounds of review. Overall, he has significantly strengthened his analysis/argument. The threads of his thoughts/ideas now flow better and are more nuanced and coherent. That said, I think generality remains an issue in some places in Lee’s final rendition that generate some further questions. Given this, I will use the space here to provide some final thoughts and reflection. First, in one place Lee writes that “Both AAPT and Asian American politics extend the concept of ‘the political’ to cover social and cultural dynamics... , working against the tendency of political scientists to restrict politics to state and market domains.” The

Suicide bombing as acts of deathly citizenship? A critical double-layered inquiry

While prevailing terrorism research often asks what we can do to eliminate the threat of suicide terrorism, this article switches the question by asking: what problems might the agency manifested in suicide bombing (even if unlawful and irresponsible) solve for us? In critiquing the sociological positivist approach that seeks to uncover the causes of suicide terrorism – and in the process reveals a hidden ideology that sustains the binary of ‘democracy’ versus ‘terrorism,’ and portrays the latter as a threat to the former – I extend upon the legacy of Fanonian violence to conduct a critical double-layered inquiry in connecting suicide bombing to the agency of citizenship. In the first, political layer of inquiry, I borrow from the works of social theorists Engin Isin and Melanie White in arguing that suicide bombing in the Palestinian situation can be read as a moment of ‘acts of deathly citizenship’. However, by pointing to three insufficiencies in the first layer of analysis – the role of rationality, the role of the quotidian, and the role of subculture – I argue for the need of a second, cultural layer of inquiry that looks at suicide bombing not only as a momentary political act, but as a sustained and permeating ‘subcultural script’ of deathly citizenship that challenges the liberal national script founded on the individual pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.