PhD candidate, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)

Research Project:

Affective Identities: Denaturalization and the Politics of Nationality in France

My doctoral dissertation investigates denaturalization (i.e. the deprivation of citizenship). The context is the politics of citizenship and nationality in France. Combining research insights from history, legal studies, security studies, and narratology, it demonstrates that the language of denaturalization shapes national identity as a form of formal legal attachment but also, and more counter-intuitively, as a mode of emotional belonging. As such, denaturalization operates as an instrumental frame to maintain and secure the national community.

Going back to eighteenth-century France and to both World Wars, periods during which governments deployed denaturalization as a weapon against “threatening” subjects, the analysis exposes how the language of denaturalization interweaves concerns about immigration and national security. It is this historical backdrop that helps understand the political impact of denaturalization in contemporary counterterrorism politics, and what is at stake when borders and identities become political weapons.

This research project follows on my MA thesis entitled "Diplomatic Practices from the Perspective of Population and Ethical Encounters". There I problematized systems of recognition and processes of identity formation related to institutional norms instigated by the nation-state. I explored the complex cultural implications of the diplomatic network, while, at the same time, demonstrating where social theory and cultural analysis can help to tackle institutional norms and re-state human encounters at the core of juridical political issues.

Publications:

Peer-reviewed article:

- Beauchamps, Marie. "The Forfeiture of Nationality in France: Discursive Ambiguity, Borders, and Identities." Space and Culture. 2015. Web publication.

Commissioned column:

- Beauchamps, Marie. "What We Have to Know; On a Modest Proposal Called Denaturalization." Commissioned column for the Amsterdam Theater School public talk show HAlf6. Amsterdam, Lectoraat Podimkunst in transitie, 2014.

Conference Papers and Lectures

-           "In Whose Name? The Authority of Denaturalization in France", research paper presented at the Political Community: Authority in the Name of Community summer school, June 2014, Aberdeen, Scotland.

-           "Modelling the Self, Creating the Other: French Denaturalization Law in the Context of WWII", conference paper at the BISA conference, June 2014, Dublin, Ireland.

-           "'Terrorism and National Identity; Denaturalization in the Security Paradigm", research paper presented at the European International Relations Summer School: "Security, Borders, Mobility", organized by the Kent University, King's College London and Sciences-Po Paris, 2013, Brussels, Belgium.

-           "'Terrorism' and National Identity; Denaturalization in the Security Paradigm: Irregularity and Political Struggles", conference paper held at the workshop on Deportation, Detention, Drowning in la Mer Mortelle: Critical Perspectives on the Irregularization of Migration, 2013, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 -           "Universal Political Ideals v.d. Loving the Patrie: Olympe de Gouges's Trial", conference paper at the NICA symposium on Love and Politics 2013, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 -           “L’altérité dans le discours de la Révolution Française ; une généalogie des lois de dénaturalisation en France”, presentation in the seminar series 2012 at the Centre for Political Theory, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

 -          “Politics of Security and the Forfeiture of Nationality in France”, conference paper in panel on Immigrants vs. States at the Crimmigration Control Conference 2012, Coimbra, Portugal.

 -          “Re-drawing of Borders in the Age of Securitization”, conference paper in panel on Space, Borders and Identities at the International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2012, Paris, France.

-          “Mechanisms of Framing: Denaturalization in the Age of Securitization”, conference paper in panel on Migration and the Media at the International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2012, Paris, France.

-          “One Word: Two Nations”, paper given as part of my research visit at the University of London Institute in Paris (2012), Paris, France.

-          “Denaturalization Law and the Framing of Migrant Identities in the Context of Security Culture”, conference paper at the ASCA international workshop 2012, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

• "The Forfeiture of Nationality in France: Discursive Ambiguity, Borders, and Identities"

• European International Relations Summer School (EIRSS): "Security, Borders, Mobility"

• Deportation, Detention, Drowning in la Mer Mortelle: Critical Perspectives on the Irregularization of Migration 2013

• Love and Politics: Passion, Affection, Community Symposium 2013

• Centre for Political Theory, Université Libre de Bruxelles

• Crimmigration Control Conference 2012

• International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2012

• ASCA International Workshop 2012

•  Exclusion's Circumference research group

Social and cultural borders are becoming increasingly fragmented, displaced and plural. Globalization, immigration and the shifting parameters of the nation-state are topical phenomena that raise new questions concerning forms of community and that ask for new forms of representation. The growing scholarly literature on these topics translates an acute need to rethink the ways in which the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion is being understood in processes of community formation and its representation. This research group wishes to investigate whether the binary opposition between in- and exclusion is sufficient to understand the many facets of changing social relationships, political imagination, cultural representation, and juridical adaptations of this dynamic. We wish to tackle these topics from a wide and thoroughly interdisciplinary perspective, inviting scholars interested in issues of memory, heritage, identity, and representation as well as in those of migration, globalization, and national belonging. Possible case studies include the construction of national identity through militarism in Israel (Noa Roei), denaturalization laws in France (Marie Beauchamps), issues of xenophobia in South Africa (Hanneke Stuit), and participatory art and activism (Sruti Bala). Through a six-weekly reading group in which attention will be paid to a specific text’s or object’s investment in the creation and representation of exclusion, the group will work towards the organization of a symposium, which is meant to lead to the compilation of a publication on this theme.

•  Co-organisor and coordinator of the international workshop "Security/Mobility; Between Imagination and Authority," University of Amsterdam, September 25-26, 2014.

The workshop focused on the different ways in which security and mobility are imagined to operate in the context of preemptive modes of security, and on how these security/mobility imaginaries become sedimented in material and discursive manifestations. It interrogated the effects of security and mobility architectures in the broadest sense–including borders, databases, discourses, and bureaucracies.

Keynote speakers were:

Prof. Dr. Louise Amoore, Prefossor in the Department of Geography, Durham University

Dr. Debbie Lisle, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Cultural Studies, Queen's University Belfast

Prof. Dr.  Luis Lobo-Gerrero, Professor of History and Theory of International Relations at the University of GRoningen

• Participant in the European International Relations Summer School (EIRSS): "Security, Borders, Mobility"

Organized by the University of Kent, King's College London and Sciences-Po Paris. September 2013, Brussels, Belgium.

• Together with Miriam Meissner and Tim Yaczo, I organized the ASCA International Workshop 2013 on the topic of mobility (association, demarcation, transformation), which took place in April 2013.

The ASCA 2013 international workshop and conference concentrates on the notions of mobility, culture, and concepts through the themes of ‘dislocating agency’ and ‘moving objects’. We explore the cultural, political, and aesthetic values associated with phenomena of associations, demarcations, and transformations. How do ideas that ‘circulate’ affect or infect their environments? When languages or communications travel, what types of changes occur? What are the advantages or disadvantages of visualizing disciplines in terms of territories? When people ‘pass’, ‘cross over’, or ‘transition’, what do they teach us about how to imagine points of departure or destinations? Are those connections desirable or unavoidable? Over the course of the workshop, we urge questions of the imaginary and political consequences of the ways in which various cultures establish links between, on the one hand, notions of progress, revolution, integration, economic development, ageing, or healing, and, on the other hand, nomadism, border-crossing, migration, or commuting.

The keynote speakers at the workshop were:

• Prof. Dr. Sara Ahmed, Professor in Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London;
• Prof. Dr. Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley and Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School;
• Prof. Dr. Engin Isin, Professor in Politics and International Studies and Chair in Citizenship at The Open University, Milton Keynes.

• Exclusion's Circumference

• International workshop Security/Mobility: Between Imagination and Authority

• European International Relations Summer School (EIRSS): "Security, Borders, Mobility"

• International ASCA workshop 2013: Dislocating Agency, Moving Objects:

2013-2014:

• Cultural Conflicts - BA literary studies, minor The Politics of Language, Literature and Culture, and Undergraduate Certificate Program in Humanities

• Tekstanalyse 2 en Case studies - BA Literatuurwetenschap

• No ancillary activities