Hello All,

Counter-Memory

What frightens about the dead undocumented immigrant is not his lack of papers, because this does not matter once he is dead. Rather it is that he does not fit in to the larger logic which surrounds all of us, which identifies and places us. Even dead, he does not fit in; his biopolitical life, and indeed his death, cannot be appropriated by the state. He cannot be defined or situated, and as such poses the ultimate threat to this logic of identification, situation, and limitation: it exposes the inability of the state to fully and finally identify, situate, and limit.

Counter-memory is a way of remembering and forgetting that starts with the local, the immediate, and the personal. Unlike historical narratives that begin with the totality of human existence and then locate specific actions and events within that totality, counter-memory starts with the particular and the specific and then builds outwards toward a total story. Counter-memory looks to the past for the hidden histories excluded from dominant narratives. But unlike myths that seek to detach events and actions from the fabric of any larger history, counter-memory forces revision of existing histories by supplying new perspectives about the past.