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This book investigates politics of denaturalisation as a system of thought that influences seminal cultural political values, such as community, nationality, citizenship, selfhood and otherness. The context of the analysis is the politics of citizenship and nationality in France. Combining research insights from history, legal studies, security studies, and border studies, the book demonstrates that the language of denaturalisation shapes national identity as a form of formal legal attachment but also, and more counter-intuitively, as a mode of emotional belonging. As such, denaturalisation operates as an instrumental frame to maintain and secure the national community.
Going back to eighteenth-century France and to both World Wars, periods during which governments deployed denaturalisation as a technology against "threatening" subjects, the analysis exposes how the language of denaturalisation interweaves concerns about immigration and national security. It is this historical backdrop that helps understand the political impact of denaturalisation in contemporary counterterrorism politics, and what is at stake when borders and identities become affective technologies.
List of contents
Introduction
Part I: The Foreigner of the French Revolution
Chapter 1: The French Revolution: A Producer of Narratives about Citizenship
Chapter 2: Becoming Foreign 1: The Nation as Space Susceptible to Intrusion
Chapter 3: Becoming Foreign 2: The Nation and Its Affective Economies
Chapter 4: Becoming Foreign 3: The Nation and Its Juridical Community
Part II: Denaturalization in Times of War: Modeling the Self, Creating the Other
Chapter 5: From Belonging to Repression: Denaturalization and WWI
Chapter 6: Denaturalization in the Context of WWII: Expanding Denaturalization before the War
Chapter 7: Denaturalization in the Context of WWII: France's Totalitarian Infection
Part III: Terrorism, Nationality and Citizenship: France and Beyond
Chapter 8: Of the Link between the War against Terrorism and Denaturalization
Chapter 9: The 21st Century Struggles over Denaturalization
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the author
Marie Beauchamps is a guest researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. She is also a lecturer at the College of Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics (PPLE) and in the Literary and Cultural Analysis department, University of Amsterdam.
Summary
This book investigates politics of denaturalisation as a system of thought that influences seminal cultural political values, such as community, nationality, citizenship, selfhood and otherness.
