A. Naomi Paik. Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II.

Abstract

A. Naomi Paik’s comparative analysis of three camps used by the U.S. government to hold people in a state of rightlessness is provocative and raises many crucial issues in understanding state authority within a rights-based framework. Rightlessness is not just the absence of rights. It is a useful tool that the state has created and perpetuates to deal with populations considered to be problematic. From Japanese “enemy aliens” and their families during World War II, to asylum seekers from Haiti, to “enemy combatants” in the war on terrorism following September 11, 2001, camps were used to exclude individuals from rights and to isolate them from having any official way to protest their rightlessness. The isolation and symbolic violence of being denied rights, in addition to the overt violence of forcible capture or removal, transport, and in some cases beatings, abuse, or “enhanced interrogation,” inflicted trauma on rightless persons that created a need for personal testimonies of resistance. The creative and brave efforts individuals made to be heard, or to have a voice in some way, are one of the key sources of analysis the author uses in Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II to explore the meaning of rights and the traumatic effects of righlessness.