Legislating Race, Grammars of Patriarchy: Citizenship, Statelessness, and Velma Demerson’s Incorrigible

Abstract:

The violent legacies of modern citizenship continue to resurface in debates today about the values of birthright citizenship, belonging and statelessness. Velma Demerson’s Incorrigible, an autobiographical text about a young, white woman who is incarcerated and experimented on because she has a Chinese fiancé in 1939, returns us to the first half of the twentieth century, and reveals the paradoxes, and circular logic, of citizenship discourse in Canada.


This article “Legislating Race, Grammars of Patriarchy: Citizenship, Statelessness, and Velma Demerson’s Incorrigible” originally appeared in Agency & Affect. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 223 (Winter 2014): 13-30.

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