CARING FOR “THE (NON)-INNOCENT” SAMARTH VACHHRAJANI
NO.12
Ideology has always been at the center of operation of the architecture discipline. Political ideologies have always motivated architects to work and act in certain way. Yet the discipline today is totally obliterated to this fact. It functions under the myth of “pure innocence” to mask itself from the political realities of the discipline. How does the discipline so inherently focused on the idea of building and helping the “innocent” figure forget that the figure of innocence is a produced idea?
DATUM
64
In 1990s, France passed a legislation where they, looked at politics of immigration from the lenses of humanitarianism. This legislation, which was called Humanitarian exception, allowed for sick bodies to reside in France and receive papers to do so. Here the sick body is the innocent figure in suffering. Miriam Ticktin, in her conversation with Leopold Lambert on the podcast Archipelago, recognizes that this focus of the French state on the innocent is based on the logic of humanitarianism where it is used to find the next innocent body in order to be complacent from the political framework. But in the course of this, other forms of immigration even economic migration became very hard to get approval for. Hence more people turned to this clause. There were instances, as documented by Ticktin, where bodies were biologically compromising such as exposing themselves to diseases such as HIV AIDS, for political recognition. But getting papers was highly dependent if the sick body seeking immigration, matched the colonial script of “the innocent”, that the French authorities and doctors assessing the sick bodies had. For example, Ticktin explains, an Algerian woman, was more likely to receive papers because she is stereotyped as the one on who violence is inflicted upon by an Algerian man. And this is also how the immigrants seeking papers would perform, to embody the script. This would make it extremely difficult for people who would not fit the ideal figure of innocence, and hence not receive papers. The inability to receive papers and stay in France have medical consequences on the “non-innocent” bodies. The myth on which nation-states operate to define “humanitarian” efforts or extend “humanity”, is the existence of absolute innocence. To care for the innocent requires the state to define who the innocent is and what are the parameters to qualify.
