Heath Wing, a West Texas native, received a PhD from Texas Tech University in 2015. Currently an Assistant Professor of Spanish at North Dakota State University, he specializes in and has published articles on Latin American literature, biopolitics, and state violence. He also translates for contemporary Latin American writers and poets from Spanish and Portuguese. His translations have appeared in magazines and journals such as Fishousepoems, Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote, Waxwing, and Hinchas de Poesía. His work in translation recently appeared in the anthology of contemporary Brazilian writers titled Becoming Brazil: New Fiction, Poetry, and Memoir (MANOA).
Abstract: Although national borders elicit geopolitical notions, in the 21st century borders are about people—their movements and migrations. In today’s terms, borders mark the point where politics and life converge, and are, therefore, biopolitical spaces. Nowhere is this truer than the U.S-Mexico border, where the precarious nature of life is codified and regulated by state power. This talk will address U.S. border policies and practices as they relate to life, [il]legality, and politics.
By Dr. Wing
Cuero de lobo “emprestao”: State of Exception and the Wolf in José Hernández’s Martín Fierro This article provides a biopolitical reading of José Hernández’s Martín Fierro. The passage of Fierro’s political life, from soldier to bandit, is elucidated by the suspension of law known as the state of exception, manifested through the draft at the time. Fierro’s subsequent displacement to the military outpost on the frontier can be likened to a form of camp—a space of perpetual state of exception. It is here that life is placed on the threshold between human and animal existence, leading Fierro to the creaturely existence of a bandit, represented in the poem by the trope of the werewolf.
Sovereign Exception and Grievability in Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões Newspaper coverage of the Canudos War dehumanized the sertanejos, portraying them in such a way that empathy or grief for their suffering was inaccessible to the Brazilian readership. Euclides da Cunha, a war correspondent for the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, was amongst those who contributed to the state’s war narrative that represented the sertanejos as an inhuman mass and glorified the republican soldiers as heroes. However, in retrospect to the war, Euclides writes his Os sertões, undermining much of the journalistic rhetoric established during the war by exposing the republican soldiers’ cruel acts of violence and condemning the war as illegal. In effect, he inadvertently elevates the sertanejo to the level of a perceivable individual whose death can be mourned. This article juxtaposes a reading of newspaper coverage of the Canudos conflict with Euclides’ account in Os sertões. In doing so, this article elucidates the relationship between life and suspended law, ultimately providing a biopolitical reading of these texts.
States of exception on American frontiers: Biopolitics, violence, and nation in Blood Meridian, Martín Fierro, and Os Sertões Through an analysis of landmark literary and journalistic works from an English, Spanish, and Portuguese context, my dissertation focuses on frontier studies, biopolitics, state racism, and human rights. This project is concerned with nation-building in the Americas and the processes by which the bodies of a population are sifted out, some integrated into the nation-state while others are made the exception, disposed of their rights and often violently excluded.
Articles
Beyond Trump’s Big, Beautiful Wall, NACLA Report on the Americas, 2017, vol. 47, is. 2 In the fall of 2016, Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico divide seemed like an unlikely presidential candidate’s campaign bluster. Since the New York real estate magnate’s swearing-in as Barack Obama’s White House successor on January 20, 2017, it is now a serious Executive Branch threat.
Debacles on the Border: Five Decades of Fact-Free Immigration Policy, ANNALS, AAPSS, 684, July 2019 Since 1987, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has compiled extensive data on the characteristics and behavior of documented and undocumented migrants to the United States, and made them publicly available to users to test theories of international migration and evaluate US immigration and border policies. Findings based on these data have been plentiful, but have also routinely been ignored by political leaders, who instead continue to pursue policies with widely documented, counterproductive effects.
Constructing a Desert labyrinth: The Psychological and Emotional Geographies of Deterrence Strategy on the U.S. / Mexico Border, Emotion, Space and Society, vol. 38, February 2021 Confinement, hindrance, and time bring anxiety, fear, and stress, often accompanied by confusion and desperation. In the case of undocumented immigrants in the Sonoran Desert, such conditions are manipulated by way of surveillance and policing. These conditions, in combination with physical exertion, augment a physiological stress response that coalesces with existing traumas and fear. We undertake a critical mapping of relations among enforcement infrastructure, migration routes, and measurable features of the physical landscape to demonstrate that a corridor in the region functions as a labyrinth, an outcome of a combination of threats and stressors determined by the spaces migrants find themselves in after crossing the U.S./Mexico border.
Collateral Subjects: The Normalization of Surveillance for Mexican Americans on the Border, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2020, Vol.6, Is. 4 The US-Mexico border has been of particular interest to the Trump administration in its ongoing efforts to restrict immigration. Though unauthorized immigrants are the purported targets of measures to increase border enforcement, US-born individuals of Mexican descent also bear the consequences of nativist policies. Based on 42 in-depth interviews, I focus on late-generation (third-plus) Mexican Americans to analyze individuals' experiences with surveillance by US Customs and Border Protection in Nogales and Tucson, Arizona.
National Resources
A Guide to the United States’ History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations, by Country, since 1776: Mexico “Diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico have been intimate and often contentious. At the outset, the issue of granting recognition to an independent Mexico divided American leaders such as Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. After finally recognizing Mexico in 1822, the U.S. push for territorial expansion led to a war between the two countries (1846-48). Political instability in Mexico followed and produced strains in U.S.-Mexican relations. Diplomatic relations have not been severed since 1917.”
Can the President Close the Border? Relevant Laws and Considerations, Congressional Research Service, April 12, 2019
Destroying Sacred Sites and Erasing Tribal Culture : the Trump Administration’s Construction of the Border Wall Oversight hearing before the Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States of the Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Sixteenth Congress, second session, Wednesday, February 26, 2020.
Trauma at the Border: The Human Cost of Inhumane Immigration Policies, The United States Commission on Civil Rights, Oct. 2019
Mexican Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, November, 2020
Undocumented Migration Project, UCLA
International Resources
Mexican Migration Project The Mexican Migration Project (MMP) was created in 1982 by an interdisciplinary team of researchers to further our understanding of the complex process of Mexican migration to the United States. The project is a binational research effort co-directed by Jorge Durand, professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Guadalajara (Mexico), and Douglas S. Massey, professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, with a joint appointment in the Woodrow Wilson School, at Princeton University (US).