Frontier Subjectivity: Black Aliens and the Legal Geographies of Citizenship in Nineteenth Century Midwest

• In Event: Cowboys, Aliens, and Astrapreneurs: Reading Blackness in Frontier Imaginaries

Abstract

The frontier stands as an enduring imaginary in the production of the United States. It is a primary geographic analytic from which to understand quintessential American nationalism, from Manifest Destiny in the 19th century to foreign policy in the 20th century and renewed interest in outer space in the 21st century. In geography, the frontier is a useful tool to track the spatial movements of capital investment across scales from within the city to resource extraction. As a “material-semiotic” for U.S. empire and colonialism (Palmer, 2020), I argue that sustained engagement between Black studies, Black geographies and the frontier is necessary for a deeper understanding of black subjectivity in American empire. This paper explores one such subjectivity – the Black alien – through the archive of blackness in Minnesota. I analyze newly found archival evidence by Karen Sieber of the presence of the Underground Railroad in Minneapolis and the legal geographies of 1857 Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford that altered the geographic conditions of citizenship for Black Midwesterners. This paper draws on conceptions of “the alien” from Asian-American studies, “alienation” from Black Marxists and legal theorist on the alien/citizen dialectic, alongside science fiction studies and alien iconography in popular culture.

Author

• Jane Henderson, Dartmouth College