Abstract
This book is about borders and border transgressors. The paradigmatic image of the world today is undoubtedly one of bodies, squeezed between pallets inside a truck. The picture is taken by an X-ray camera on a border between nation-states. It exposes those that are invisible, the people without papers on the wrong side of the border. The X-ray image shows the naked, white bodies on a black background — a silhouette of human beings. Metaphorically, human bodies are also stripped: of their political rights. The image depicts a depoliticized body, in Giorgio Agamben’s words, the homo sacer (1998), personifying ‘the naked life’, which differs from the politicized form of life explicitly represented in the notion of citizenship. The X-ray image testifies to a hegemonic topography of borders.
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© 2010 Shahram Khosravi
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Khosravi, S. (2010). Introduction. In: ‘Illegal’ Traveller. Global Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281325_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281325_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31175-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28132-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)