Captive Passages: Geographies of Blackness in Guantánamo Memoirs

Li, Darryl

doi:10.1111/traa.12225

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(19 reference statements)

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“…And just as not all anthropology of law is ethnographic lawyering, not all ethnographic lawyering is necessarily anthropology of law. In my own work, the simplest varieties of ethnographic lawyering have entailed taking theorists' (mis)readings of juridical concepts such as sovereignty and habeas corpus as points of departure for exploring concepts such as empire (Li, 2018) and captivity (Li, 2022). In my fieldwork with accused "jihadists," attention to different forms of attorney-client relationality has provided models for navigating certain ethical considerations around disclosure (Li, 2020, 18-22).…”

Section: Ethnographic Lawyering: Orientation and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to read a case: Ethnographic lawyering, conspiracy, and the origins of Al Qaeda

2023

American Anthropologist

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This article delineates a particular orientation to combining professional legal training and anthropological scholarship that I call ethnographic lawyering. Ethnographic lawyering takes legal form as an object of anthropological analysis, loosely inspired by the Marxist jurist Evgeny Pashukanis's theorization of law as a social relation. If ethnographic method in anthropology entails theorizing from the concepts and experiences of interlocutors, then ethnographic lawyering analytically centers the subjectivities, logics, and relationalities that legal form both presupposes and animates. Ethnographic lawyering brings to light the contingent lives of legal form. To demonstrate this method, the article uses the example of conspiracy in early US court cases involving Al Qaeda, informed by the author's experiences as an attorney and anthropologist in litigation arising from the war on terror. An ethnographic lawyering approach illuminates how conspiracy's distinct forms in criminal law, the law of evidence, and tort law each bring far-flung subjects, events, and actions together into reified entities even as they atomize and recombine social relations. This dynamic tension resembles the vertiginous nature of conspiracy theorizing in general. K E Y W O R D Sethnographic lawyering, anthropology of law, conspiracy, Al Qaeda, war on terror ResumenEste artículo delinea una orientación particular para combinar el entrenamiento legal profesional y la investigación antropológica que llamo la abogacía etnográfica. La abogacía etnográfica toma la forma legal como un objeto de análisis antropológico, aproximadamente inspirada por la teorización de la ley como una relación social del jurista marxista Evgeny Pashukanis. Si el método etnográfico en la antropología conlleva a teorizar desde los conceptos y experiencias de los interlocutores, la abogacía etnográfica centra analíticamente las subjetividades, las lógicas y las relacionalidades que la forma legal tanto presupone como anima. Para demostrar este método, el artículo utiliza el ejemplo de la conspiración en casos tempranos de la corte estadounidense envolviendo a Al Qaeda, informado por las experiencias del autor como un abogado y antropólogo en litigación derivada de la guerra contra el terrorismo.Una aproximación de la abogacía etnográfica ilumina cómo las formas distintas de la

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Section: Ethnographic Lawyering: Orientation and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to read a case: Ethnographic lawyering, conspiracy, and the origins of Al Qaeda

2023

American Anthropologist

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“…What does this blurring of languages tell us about US understandings of history and politics? And for an understanding of US democracy, it is critical to undertake scholarship focusing on “the grounded geographies of the war on terror” (S. Al‐Bulushi, 2021, p. 820), which can illuminate how systems of violence and policing abroad are interrelated with those in the United States (Li, 2021; Ralph, 2020; Tahir, 2019).…”

Section: Decolonizing Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonizing Middle East anthropology

Bishara

2023

American Ethnologist

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In the anthropology of Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), there is an effort underway to decolonize the field. This process is taking shape in academic writing, in academic institutions, in field practices, and among broader publics. It must arise from priorities in the region; it also builds on wider scholarship on race, indigeneity, and militarism. It requires an expansion of the bounds of politics, consideration of who can participate, and reconsideration of what the goals of political action are. It entails working toward liberations that are always plural. Decolonizing SWANA anthropology faces distinct challenges in the field, the university, and publication processes because scholars produce critiques that expose contemporary colonialisms, including those related to the long war on terror, Israeli settler colonialism, and other colonialisms in the region. Thus, scholars equip themselves with tools to confront and transform academic institutions. Collaborative research designed to produce change can be an important part of decolonizing anthropology, but such research is not possible across all settings.

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“…Also see Kafer 2013;Clare 2017;Schalk 2018;Kafai 2021. 2 Although I use the terms captive and prisoner interchangeably at times, I nonetheless prefer captive as it is most precise to the coerced liminal space, or what anthropologist Darryl Li (2022) writes of as an "enforced stillness," that those held captive at Guantánamo Bay have been made to endure. Li writes further that "captivity implies mobility; someone is taken, often across great geographical and cultural distances, transported in the grip of another" (24).…”

Section: Slow Death and The Temporality Of Waitingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Past and Future: The Slow Death of Indefinite Detention

Velasquez-Potts

2023

Catalyst

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The detention camp at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station has been operative for more than twenty years now. Since 2002 prisoners have been force-fed as punishment for staging individual and collective hunger strikes in protest of indefinite detention. The oldest captive is in his seventies, but the majority are middle-aged. In 2019 Carol Rosenberg reported that with the aging of those incarcerated, the Pentagon is now in the early planning stages for “terrorism suspects” to grow old and die at Guantánamo Bay, necessitating the building of a hospice wing at the detention camp. This essay asks what it means to think of hospice care in a torture facility, arguing that the military is using the possibility of hospice as a curative, both politically and rhetorically, to disavow the effects of torture on the bodyminds of captives.

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Captive Passages: Geographies of Blackness in Guantánamo Memoirs

Cited by 8 publications

References 38 publications

How to read a case: Ethnographic lawyering, conspiracy, and the origins of Al Qaeda

How to read a case: Ethnographic lawyering, conspiracy, and the origins of Al Qaeda

Decolonizing Middle East anthropology

Between Past and Future: The Slow Death of Indefinite Detention

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