When the Nation Conquered the State

• In Event: The Uses and Disadvantages of Arendt's Concept of the Nation

Abstract

In this paper, I will explore Hannah Arendt’s work in terms of the merging of the US criminal justice and immigration systems beginning in the mid-1990s. Arendt’s work suggested that the stateless were a contemporary phenomenon and so rightless that they lacked even the protections afforded criminals. I take this comparison to not merely reflect a momentary aside, illustrating the degree to which innocent refugees are dehumanized due to their foreign status, in contrast to criminals. Rather, this split also indicates an oft-unremarked faith in sovereignty and the state, despite Arendt’s censorious remarks. This paper will examine how Arendt is often taken to be critical of the nation-state, particularly to the degree that racial criteria (the “nation” in a eugenic context) “conquer” the state (that is, the rule of law, democratic equality, and the right to rights) and yet does not fulfill this critical promise. Rather, even in The Origins of Totalitarianism, the binary drawn between criminal and stateless person is indicative of a more ambivalent and sometimes idealized vision of liberal representative democracies. My aim is to understand the depth of Arendt’s concerns, which require a more ambivalent approach by any interpreter of her work, as well as how they can both illuminate contemporary issues while also glossing over others, to the degree that an analysis is overly-wedded to Arendt. I conclude by urging scholars not to dismiss Arendt as overly contradictory (e.g.) but rather to approach her work as full of ambivalence and doubt.

Author

• Kathleen R. Arnold, DePaul University