The Undocumented and Archipelagic Universal in Miko Revereza's No Data Plan

Abstract

This article argues that the archipelagic serves as a potent cultural geographic figure challenging resurgent nationalisms in two specific ways. First, it enables us to explore a simultaneous proximity and distance in cultural politics; second, it leads us astray from the conceptual binary that would insist that it is simply other to the nation. In doing so, it arrives at a universalism that is fundamentally differentiated. The essay pursues this framework through an analysis of Miko Revereza's recent documentary film, No Data Plan (2019), which explores Revereza's undocumented status in the United States, and its repertoire of aesthetic techniques, including its erratic and partial framing of his train journey across the country as well as its disjointed soundtrack. Above all, the essay draws attention to the film's use of captions, through which Revereza's mother's story is narrated, and which cannot be reconciled with the rest of the film. Her captions hover in proximity to the filmic diegesis without seeking presence, rejecting a dialectical engagement with a presence in the film that stands in for a documented presence in the nation. By choosing instead to “speak nearby,” she disturbs conventional cultural political logics and dwells within an archipelagic relation to the film, her son, and the world.