Dr. Katarzyna Marciniak
Dr. Katarzyna Marciniak, Professor of English at Ohio University, gave a keynote talk at the University of Tuebingen in April in Germany.
The Spring School 2016 at Tuebingen where Marciniak spoke was organized around the theme of “Participation in Media Cultures: Studying Participation within Immigration Societies.” It was sponsored by the Faculty of Humanities in the Institute of Media Studies at the University of Tuebingen.
Marciniak spoke on “Immigrant Protest, Immigrant Rage: Border Disorder and Transnational Cinema.”
Abstract: According to filmmaker Alex Rivera, we inhabit an era of “border disorder,” witnessing tensions between, on the one hand, the intensification of media technology, mobility, and boundlessness and, on the other, the aggressive militarization of borders. We also witness the explosion of political mobilization by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This presentation engages discourses of immigrant protest in various transnational films. My central concept is the “usability” of the foreigner as a figure whose physical or emotional labor sustains the citizen, even as the foreigner herself is considered disposable. The interrelated “usability” and “disposability” of foreignness are symptomatic of the paradox of foreignness itself, as both xenophobia and xenophilia are mobilized in the service of a nation.
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