EVENT DETAILS

HOMESCAPES/WARSCAPES SERIES: Rightlessness: Hunger Strikes and Force-feeding at Guantanamo in U.S. History

Naomi Paik will address themes raised in her new book, Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps Since World War II, which grapples with the history of U.S. prison camps that have confined people outside the boundaries of legal and civil rights. Removed from the social and political communities that would guarantee fundamental legal protections, these detainees are effectively rightless, stripped of the right even to have
rights. While situating these camps and rightless people in the long history of U.S. racism and nationalism that has also ensnared Asian American subjects like Japanese American internees, this talk will specifically focus on the U.S. state¹s efforts to force-feed hunger strikers at the current Guantánamo camp. By interpreting the testimonies of hunger strikers, Paik examines the prisoner body as a site of power and struggle waged between the U.S. state and the prisoners, who expose the paradox between the U.S.’s professed commitment to rights and democracy and their own rightless condition and living death.

Naomi Paik is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her book, Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (UNC Press, 2016), reads testimonial narratives of subjects rendered rightless by the U.S. state through their imprisonment in camps. She has also published articles in Social Text, Radical History Review, and Cultural Dynamics and is developing a new
project on military outsourcing. Her research and teaching interests include comparative ethnic studies; U.S. imperialism; U.S. militarism; social and cultural approaches to legal studies; transnational and women of color feminisms; carceral spaces; and labor, race, and migration.

Co-sponsors include:
Humanities Commons
Center for Critical Korean Studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Anthropology
Art History
The Korea Law Center