Abstract
Visible Collective is a project by Naeem Mohaiemen and collaborating artists, activists, and lawyers. Since 2004, the project has traced hyphenated identities and ideas of loyalty in times of security panic. The majority of detained migrants in post–9/11 hysteria are from the invisible underclass— shadow citizens who drive our taxis, deliver our food, clean our tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers. The only time we “see” them is when we glance at the license in the taxi partition, or the ID card around their neck. When detained, they cease to exist in the consciousness. This impulse to create an insider/outsider dynamic with “loyalty” overtones has a long pedigree: the World War I incarceration of German Americans; 1919 detention of immigrants in the anarchist bomb scare; World War II internment of Japanese Americans; execution of the Rosenbergs; HUAC “red scare”; harassment of Deacons For Defense; COINTELPRO infiltration of Black Panthers; and rise of the Minutemen militia. [disappearedinamerica.org]
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