Abstract
Dressed in a dark suit and wearing a slouch hat set rakishly on a thatch of black hair showing gray about the temples, was how a certain Frank Woodhull appeared on 4 October 1908 before a Board of Special Inquiry on Ellis Island, New York.—Or rather, this is how the subject in question first appeared in the New York Times the following day. Starting from the example of the subjectivation process of Frank Woodhull, the article raises the question of what kind of place Ellis Island was. It asks what kind of dispositive is that, an immigration station, and in which way scenic configurations took part in subjectivation on Ellis Island? To address these questions the article first outlines the process of immigration registration on Ellis Island. In passing through the various stations of immigration controls, it becomes clear in which form the gouvernmental act of subject constitution was based on an ensemble of paper and architectural media and, at the same time, demanded a series of performative proofs of identity, which were scenographically arranged. In the focus on the Boards of Special Inquiry – these theaters of law – the scenic aspects of subjectivation become doubly evident: through the structure of the space and the dramaturgy of the hearing, as well as through the importance of a good performance and a convincing story, which determine the results of the hearings.
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Notes
- 1.
See the report of the New York Times from 5 October 1908 archived online (Author unknown 1908).
- 2.
Since the transcripts of the meeting of the Board of Special Inquiry from 4 October 1908 have unfortunately been lost—like all transcripts of special inquiries on Ellis Island—I must base my explanations on the extensive report of the hearing on the New York Times (cf. also Rand 2005, who carried out extensive archive work on the case). However, the nameless author of the article in the New York Times must have had access to the transcripts, or else she/he attended the meeting of the Board. This is suggested by the extensive quotations from the inquiry.
- 3.
In a queer-sensitive historiography, in cases of cross-dressing or transgender persons, it is conventional to use the preferred pronoun of the person involved. This is why I generally write about Frank Woodhull and “him” (cf. also Rand 2005, pp. 67–107).
- 4.
Threshold terms between theater and history studies (like stage and drama) are purposely used here; not to function as rhetorical subtleties, but rather as mental figures of the presented connection (on this, see also Neumann et al. 2000).
- 5.
Along with LPC, likely to become public charge, trachoma (Ct) was one of the most frequent reasons for rejection of immigrants entering through New York. The eye infection was considered extremely contagious, and since it generally led to blindness, those infected were considered doubly dangerous for the non-existent welfare state (cf. Connato 2010, pp. 191–126).
- 6.
On the constitutive contribution of the architectural media of registration to the process of subjectivation on Ellis Island, see Sander 2016.
- 7.
Cf. Agamben (2011, p. 46): “Persona originally means ‘mask’, and it is through the mask that the individual aquires a role and a social identity.”
- 8.
The first Federal Immigration Act of 1891 excluded “All idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of felony or other misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, [and] polygamists” from entering the US. Following the additions of “anarchists” in the version from 1903, the amendment of 1907 added “imbeciles, feeble-mindeds, … persons with tuberculosis, [and] persons, who’s ticket had been paid for by a foreign government or any private organization” (see the passages of the respective laws, quoted in Unrau 1984, pp. 13–70; Moreno 2004, pp. 113–120). The categories for exclusion were constantly being expanded and exacerbated in the immigration law. In this way they indicate the continuously shifting normative limits of society.
- 9.
The status of a person was explicitly derived, according to Agamben, from the personal rights and concepts of the Roman patricians, which is to be seen in contrast to those of the slaves, who could have neither ancestors nor mask nor name according to Roman law, and could therefore also not have a persona nor legal capacity (servus non habet personam), writes Agamben (Agamben 2011, p. 46).
- 10.
The subject status (in the sense of governmentality) and the identity of a person (as a social role or mask) do not fundamentally coincide. A criminalistically measured or biometrically constituted subject, for example, cannot found any personal identity at all, as Agamben explains in his essay. For identity is bound to recognition by other members of the community and presupposes the individual’s ability to assume a social role (or mask) without becoming reduced to it (cf. Agamben 2011, p. 48 f.). The technical and media identification procedures, which were developed in the second half of the nineteenth century for methods of police identification and were also used on Ellis Island, however, fundamentally changed the concept of identity. Now identity was no longer in reference to the recognition and social status of the person. With the emergence of the discourse figure of the “persistent criminal—a figure that the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century were practically obsessed with, as Agamben writes—the question of “established identity” became an urgent problem for all those who saw themselves as “defenders of society” (cf. ibid., p. 48). The development of identification systems like the Bertillonage (standardized suspect photos and files) and Galton’s fingerprinting system meant that for the first time, identity was no longer dependent on “the social persona and its recognition by others but on biological data,” to which it was not necessarily related, as Agamben writes (cf. ibid., p. 50 f.). However, in order to make a distinction between the gouvernmentally constituted subject and the persona, I do not follow Agamben’s use of the terms here, but rather insist on the difference between the terms and concepts of subject (as etymologically subjugated) and identity (as a social role or mask).
- 11.
- 12.
For the conception of ‘The Visible and the Articulable’ as the two sides of the formation of knowledge and the functioning of power, see Deleuze (2006, pp. 47–69).
- 13.
For the medial and material conditions of subject constitution onboard the transatlantic liners on the high seas, see also my paper “Precarious Passages: On Migrant Maritime Mobilities, ca. 1907” (to be published 2018).
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Archive Material
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The New York Public Library. Digital Collections. Immigrants being registered at one end of the Main Hall, U. S. Immigration Station. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6191646f-18f3-432a-e040-e00a18063fa6. (Accessed: 15.6.2016).
The New York Public Library. Digital Collections. Immigrants seated on long benches, Main Hall, U.S. Immigration Station. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-d8d7-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99. (Accessed: 15.6.2016).
Illustrations
Fig. 1: List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States, List of passengers S.S. New York, sailing from Southampton, Sept. 26 1908, Liberty Ellis Foundation.
Fig. 2: Board of Special Inquiry, Ellis Island, NY (postcard, 1925), Historisches Museum Bremerhafen.
Fig. 3: Documentation of the Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival; page two of the passenger list of S.S. New York, arriving at Port of New York, October 08, 1908, Liberty Ellis Foundation.
Fig. 4: The Registry Room, fotography by Edwin Levick, ca. 1902–1910, New York Public Library.
Fig. 5: Final inquiry with interpreter and regestry clerc, fotography by Lewis Hine, Ellis Island 1904, Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
Fig. 6: Frank Woodhull a. k. a. Mary Johnson, fotography by Augustus F. Sherman, Ellis Island 1908, Ellis Island Archives.
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Sander, S. (2019). Subjectivation Against a Backlight. Scenes of Evidence Production, Ellis Island 1908. In: Friedrich, L., Harrasser, K., Kaiser, C. (eds) Scenographies of the Subject. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-12906-4_7
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