Disappearing Rooms: The Hidden Theaters of Immigration Law

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Disappearing Rooms: The Hidden Theaters of Immigration Law

by Michelle Castañeda
illustrated by Molly Crabapple

Duke University Press, 2023

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-1-4780-1699-1

Paper: 978-1-4780-1963-3

eISBN: 978-1-4780-9356-5 (OA)

eISBN: 978-1-4780-2426-2 (standard)

About the Book

In Disappearing Rooms Michelle Castañeda lays bare the criminalization of race enacted every day in US immigration courts and detention centers. She uses a performance studies perspective to show how the theatrical concept of mise-en-scène offers new insights about immigration law and the absurdist dynamics of carceral space. Castañeda draws upon her experiences in immigration trials as an interpreter and courtroom companion to analyze the scenography—lighting, staging, framing, gesture, speech, and choreography—of specific rooms within the immigration enforcement system. Castañeda’s ethnographies of proceedings in a “removal” office in New York City, a detention center courtroom in Texas, and an asylum office in the Northeast reveal the depersonalizing violence enacted in immigration law through its embodied, ritualistic, and affective components. She shows how the creative practices of detained and disappeared people living under acute duress imagine the abolition of detention and borders. Featuring original illustrations by artist-journalist Molly Crabapple, Disappearing Rooms shines a light into otherwise hidden spaces of law within the contemporary deportation regime.

Duke University of Press Scholars of Color First Book Award Recipient

About the Author

Michelle Castañeda is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at New York University.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York.

Reviews

"The book … is a quintessential one in times of increasing hatred towards immigrants. This timely book will help the reader understand the intensity of immigration crises and the need for the growth of a humanitarian world than a world with borders."

-- T.S. Gangothri Social Identities

"Michelle Castañeda’s book Disappearing Rooms... is a tour de force that clearly demonstrates how the study of cultural performance provides an indispensable tool for understanding social performances and everyday life. Castañeda diagnoses various institutions at the sites of their theatrical manipulations—the disappearing rooms in her title—to show how immigration law, the prison-industrial complex, and even sometimes immigration activists stage these institutional mise-en-scènes in ways that play into the (in)visibility of carceral power."
-- Jennifer Tyburczy Theatre Journal

"This book offers a thoughtful, evocative analysis of immigration law through the lens of theatre and performance. . . . The research presented in this book is grounded in a range of scholarship, including Performance Studies, Latinx Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, and beyond. As to the field of Performance Studies, this book would be a great resource to introduce upper-division undergraduate or graduate students to concepts such as theatricality, performativity, and embodiment."
-- Yuge Ma Gender, Place & Culture

"Drawing on the 'experimental sensibility' (14) that performance artists bring to the space of rehearsal, as well as the forms of improvisation that characterize accompaniment, Castañeda shows the 'plasticity' (9) of that which otherwise seems like a foregone conclusion, including the intransigence of the current border regime. For anyone concerned to find new ways to contemplate such changes, Disappearing Rooms is one of the most compelling and confronting places to begin."
-- Anne McNevin Women's Studies Quarterly

"This book is fundamental for scholars in the socially conscious performing arts, law, post-colonialism, and race and ethnicity fields. For activists and practitioners involved with the justice system, Castañeda’s writings provide a powerful tool for self-reflection as she highlights her position of privilege while occupying those spaces, challenging readers to consider in what ways even those combating degrading immigration practices may end up contributing to the establishment of such policies."
-- Thais Moreira de Andrade International Criminal Justice Reveiw

"The book is useful for its insights into the history of US immigration practices and the attempts to strengthen, reform, or rectify them. It is also praiseworthy for its application of performance studies to legal procedures, with illustrations by Molly Crabapple being helpful in conveying the scenography of intimidating courtroom settings. . . . Moreover, it offers important insights for theatre scholars and practitioners as to how to comprehend and expose the hidden underbelly of the asylum process."
-- S.E. Wilmer Modern Drama

"Immigration law is a strange, terrorizing law that lacks legitimacy. We migration law scholars can forget this fact. Disappearing Rooms is here to remind us and to teach others. . . . Like the practice of migrant accompaniment (more below) that she enacts, depicts, and theorizes, this slim volume places us inside harrowing scenes and then challenges us to step out into the world and shatter the stage set."
-- Daniel I. Morales Law, Culture and the Humanities