The Disappearing State and the Quasi‐Event of Immigration Control

Immigration enforcement by sheriffs and police can be characterized as a proliferation of quasi‐events which never quite rise to the status of an event. This poses distinct challenges for feminist‐inspired scholarship on the state which seeks to document, ethnographically, how the state goes about its business on the ground. In this article we draw on our fieldwork experience in North Carolina and Georgia on sheriffs’ and police departments’ use of traffic enforcement and policing roadblocks to scrutinize drivers for their legal status, and ask how our ethnographic approach to the problem of state power inevitably stumbles in relation to the ordinariness of these practices. We conclude that feminist scholarship committed to an ethnography of the state could do much more to think through the potentially aporetic quality of that which is our common object of research—the state in practice.     

Russian Physicians in Harbin (1920-32)

This study analyzes medical practitioners’ adaptation to a dynamic cultural and political scene and examines the impact of medical refugees on a local community. In the early 1920s, there was an influential Russian medical community in Harbin that established medical societies and medical schools. The organization of medical societies was a part of the active formation of a professional community and represented a thoughtful measure for countering the control of Chinese officials. The high degree of cooperation between Russian and Chinese medical personnel in the medical-sanitary department of the Chinese Eastern Railway and in Harbin municipal medical facilities was a part of Harbin physicians’ activities.     

Spectres,monstres et fantômes: Les Chants de Maldoror et le spectacle de la fantasmagorie

As an introduction to his show in the Capucins' convent, Etienne Robertson states, "Gentlemen, the spectacle about to take place under your very eyes is not a frivolous one. It was created for the thinking man, for the philosopher who enjoys wandering among the tombs" (qtd. in Remise 41). The nineteenth century, and Robertson in particular, grant phantasmagoria a large place in history, even though the concept and the technique existed long before.

With such a success, it should not be surprising that phantasmagoria found its home in literature, especially in Isidore Ducasse's (Comte de Lautréamont's) texts. Indeed, Maldoror's Cantos, in which visual effects hold a significant place, seem to occur behind a thick fog that the reader appears to have difficulty escaping. Just as the spectacles of phantasmagoria are not meant for a "frivolous" audience, as Robertson said, the Cantos are not meant for a reader whom Lautréamont defines as "naive." This article will focus on the visual arts that were prevalent at the time and their influence on the Cantos. Using Roland Barthes's theory, the author shows that Maldoror's Cantos can be read as a spectacle of phantasmagoria in writing.