The Wall and the Boarder: The Project of Black and Indigenous Expulsion

In conversation with Razack’s (2002) conceptualization of how space becomes raced through law, this paper highlights how the constitution of spaces reproduces racial hierarchies, exploring how spatial practices are required in the making and maintenance of a post-racial society. Under the regime of neoliberalism, through the politics of everyday terrorism, cruelty and zones of disposability, bodies have become naturalized boarders of social conflict, negotiation and violence. This paper engages with the social expulsion of Black and Indigenous bodies and the myth of “degeneracy” that is often plagued with these particular communities. By examining the reality of Black and Indigenous bodies as “unproductive”, this paper aims to examine how the micro politics of space, determines the [in]ability to read these bodies as part of the nation state. Despite the outright physical extermination of Black and Indigenous communities, their survival compels capitalist regimes to reconsider what it has spent centuries invisibilizing –the violent nature of its system. Bodies as naturalized boarders, constitute a hallmark signature and amplification of neoliberal politics of disposability, uncovering the material and symbolic violence of the nation in the sustenance of the White settler state.