The Work of Humiliation: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Checkpoints, Borders and the Animation of the Legal World

Abstract

The policing of checkpoints demands a commitment from the soldier. These commitments are realized, as Robert Cover says of legal judgments, in the flesh of those subject to the policing and of those who police. Such commitments are sometimes difficult to maintain in the face of arbitrary policies and even arbitrary re-locations of checkpoints and borders. Obedience is required, but obedience is not simply an act of acceptance. This article employs a psychoanalytic lens and the work of animation theory to consider how obedience is legitimated in the minds of those who police borders and how practices of humiliation toward civilians at the borders function both to display the uncertainties abo..