Arendt, Agamben and the Issue of Hyper-Legality

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'A marvelous achievement, Arendt, Agamben and the Issue of Hyper-Legality uncovers the dark subtext to a democratic idealism that masks brute racism. Deeply researched and powerfully written, Arnold's book takes us through a disturbing but increasingly necessary examination of a country where law has become handmaiden to the worst excesses of stigma and criminalization.'-Colin Dayan, Professor at Vanderbilt University and author of The Law is a White Dog and With Dogs at the Edge of Life

'With a wide-ranging, sophisticated, and critically compassionate exploration of deep dilemmas within the U.S. immigration, "anti-terror," and criminal justice systems, Kathleen R. Arnold offers important insights and thoughtful proposals relating to sanctuary and due process. This book will be of great interest to those who seek to understand the realities and (overlapping) fates of migrants and disenfranchised citizens in the United States.'-Daniel Kanstroom, Professor of Law, Boston College Law School

'Arnold deftly illuminates how the state manipulates law and geography to further suspend the rights and diminish the personhood of those already on the margins of membership: prisoners, noncitizens, and immigrants. This timely book is both an astute work of political theory as well as a cutting political commentary on the increasing convergence of immigration and criminal law.'-Monica W. Varsanyi, City University of New York

'... the great contribution of Arendt, Agamben, and the Issue of Hyper-Legality: In Between the Prisoner-Stateless Nexus is its challenge to established disciplinary, conceptual, and thematic divisions in the study of confinement. Arnold not only adds to the burgeoning scholarship on mass incarceration and the immigrant detention and deportation regime but she also connects these phenomena to political theory debates about sovereignty, biopower, and the state of exception. Her arguments are relevant for all areas of political science and show that rigid boundaries between subfields and disciplines hinder our understanding of contemporary power arrangements.'-Anna Terwiel, Perspectives on Politics