Photography and Culture

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Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect: The

Passport Photograph

Lily Cho

To cite this article: Lily Cho (2009) Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of
Affect: The Passport Photograph, Photography and Culture, 2:3, 275-287, DOI:
10.2752/175145109X12532077132310

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Photography
& Culture Citizenship, Diaspora
Volume 2—Issue 3 and the Bonds of
Affect: The Passport
November 2009
pp. 275–288

Photograph
DOI:
10.2752/175145109X12532077132310

Reprints available directly

from the publishers Lily Cho
Photocopying permitted by
licence only
© Berg 2009 Lily Cho is Assistant Professor of English at the University of
Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Her recent
publications include “Future Perfect Loss: Richard Fung’s Sea in
the Blood”, Screen 49(4) (2008) and “Asian Canadian Futures:
Indenture Routes and Diasporic Passages”, Canadian Literature
199 (2009).

Abstract
The foreclosure of emotion in a passport photograph,
the identity document that ties a person to a nation,
illuminates a contradiction between feeling and citizenship.
On the one hand, as these instructions for the passport
photographs suggest, emotion obscures the identity
of the citizen. On the other, as I will discuss in further
detail, emotion, or the capacity for it, is very much a
part of the conception of the modern citizen. My paper
will take up this contradiction in order to examine the
relationship between diaspora and citizenship. Through an
exploration of the passport photograph, I argue diasporic
subjects lay bare the problem of emotion at the heart of
contemporary citizenship.

Keywords: diaspora, citizenship, passport photographs,

feeling

If you have recently had your passport photo taken in

Canada, the United Kingdom or the United States, you may
recall a curious injunction against emotional expression. For
a photograph to be acceptable for use on a passport, it
must, in addition to following many specifications for lighting,
composition and background, portray its subject as an

Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 275–288

276 Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect Lily Cho

emotionally empty one. Passport Canada, the One might argue that the instructions
federal department overseeing the issuing for the passport photo are about security
of passports in Canada specifies: “Applicant and biometrics and the urgency of the task
must show a neutral facial expression (no of recognition. That might be the case even
smiling, mouth closed) and look straight at though almost everyone I know has, at
the camera.” The United Kingdom’s Identity one time or another, disparaged the lack of
and Passport Service asks that the subject of resemblance between their passport photos
a passport photograph must have a “neutral and the way they normally look. And it is
facial expression” with the “mouth closed doubtful that, in that fraught moment of
(no grinning, frowning or raised eyebrows).” the encounter with a border patrol officer,
Similarly, the US Department of State’s any one of us looks as neutral or as natural
guidelines for acceptable passport photos as our passport photos make us out to be.
insist: “The subject’s expression should be Whether or not these acceptably neutral
natural, with both eyes open. Please refer and natural facial expressions allow for easier
to the photographs found on this website identification, they do indicate not only what
for acceptable facial expressions.” The a citizen is supposed to look like, but also
“acceptable” facial expressions reveal no what being a citizen should feel like. The
emotion. They are natural only insofar as injunction against emotion in the passport
they are completely emotionally neutral. photograph projects the way in which the
That is, they are not natural at all. They ideal citizen, in the eyes of the state, is an
expose a citizen-subject caught and emotionally neutral one. Let me suggest that
composed for identification purposes. This the photographs that identify us as citizens
subject is neither angry, happy, sad, disgusted, must be without emotion because they are
nor even particularly present. themselves a vestigial reminder of the fraught
The foreclosure of emotion in a passport relationship between emotion and citizenship.
photograph, the identity document that The relationship between emotion and
ties a person to a nation, illuminates a citizenship is predicated by the question of
contradiction between feeling and citizenship. the humanity of the citizen subject. Examining
On the one hand, as these instructions for the pre-history of modern citizenship, Susan
the passport photographs suggest, emotion Maslan argues that modern citizenship
obscures the identity of the citizen. On attempts to resolve a foundational divide
the other, as I will discuss in further detail, between the “human” and the “citizen”
emotion, or the capacity for it, is very much a upon which the early modern models of
part of the conception of the modern citizen. citizenship depend:
My paper will take up this contradiction in
If we think that “human” and “citizen”
order to examine the relationship between
are or should be corresponding and
diaspora and citizenship. Through an
harmoniously continuous categories it is
exploration of the passport photograph, I
because we think in the wake of the 1789
argue diasporic subjects lay bare the problem
Declaration. In the early modern political
of emotion at the heart of contemporary
imagination, to be a citizen meant to cease
citizenship.

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Lily Cho Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect 277

to be human. This is the legacy that the which turns on the problem of recognition
Declaration tries to overcome and that and misrecognition.
it conceals … and so the new Republic Suggesting a strong relationship between
turned to, or better yet, invented—the photography and citizenship, Azoulay
language of universalism to repress outlines the problem of recognition and
and resolve the tensions it can neither misrecognition in her argument for a civil
dissipate nor acknowledge. (Maslan 2004: contract of photography. She proposes that
372) there is a “civil contract” in photography
which functions analogously to the civil
Maslan’s argument breaks the familiar contract of citizenship:
Greek to Roman to French to American
narrative of citizenship’s progression as a The conceptual valences between
concept. Her examination of pre-modern photography and citizenship are in fact
citizenship in relation to the legacy of two fold. Because … photographs are
the French Revolution, an event closely constructed like statements (énoncés),
connected to modern conceptions the photographic image gains its meaning
of citizenship, reveals a deeply uneasy through mutual (mis)recognition, and this
relationship between the universal claims of meaning (even if not the object itself)
citizenship and the exclusions of its practice. cannot be possessed by its addressor and/
As Giorgio Agamben notes, the discontinuity or addressee. Citizenship likewise is gained
of the human and the citizen through recognition, and like photography,
is not something that can simply be
is implicit, after all, in the ambiguity of possessed. (Azoulay 2008: 25)
the very title of the 1789 Déclaration de
droits de l’homme et du citoyen, in which Azoulay’s argument suggests that
it is unclear whether the two terms are photography and citizenship are intimately
to name two distinct realities or whether bound by the work of recognition and the
they are to form, instead, a hendiadys perils of misrecognition. The need for the
in which the first term is actually former and the dangers of the latter are
always already contained in the second. a reminder of the formal demands (plain
(Agamben 2000:19) background, impassive facial expression, head
framed at the centre of the photograph)
In her reading of Agamben, Ariella of identification photographs themselves.
Azoulay observes a much more significant Even though Azoulay’s analysis focuses
tension between the rights of Man set largely on journalistic images of the Israeli–
against that of the community of citizens: Palestinian conflict, the genre of identification
“When [Agamben] identifies the man of photographs attend precisely to her
the declaration as a trace of homo sacer, argument. The necessity of recognition gives
whose invention preceded that of political rise to the stark formalism of identification
man, as the basis of political sovereignty, he photographs for passports.
misses the direct threat that man poses to Of course, the insistence upon the
the citizen” (Azoulay 2008: 61). It is a threat passport itself suggests a certain faith in the

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278 Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect Lily Cho

notion that people are who their documents Azoulay’s (2008) suggestion of photography’s
declare them to be. “With the widespread construction as an “énoncé” evokes the
use of a similar passport,” Mark Salter notes, notorious portrait parlé (spoken portrait)
“the examination at the border came to be developed by Alphonse Bertillon in the
centered on whether documents—rather nineteenth century. With his development
than the traveler herself—were in order” of anthropometry, where the human body
(Salter 2003: 28). The introduction of could be measured and broken down
the passport photo was one attempt into a series of written codes, Bertillon
at maintaining the fidelity between the standardized the identification photographs
traveler and her passport. According to of criminals and denoted them to be portraits
John Torpey’s The Invention of the Passport, parlés, portraits that spoke so that they
a man named Richebourg claimed in an could “be read in many cities, provinces,
article in the July 22, 1854 edition of La across jurisdictions” (Cole 2001: 43). The
Lumière to have introduced the idea of the passport photograph does not communicate
passport photograph (Torpey 2000: 172, “an electric body of speed, transmitted
n.62). Salter’s investigations into the archives telegraphically” the way that Bertillon’s
of the British Passport Office reveal that mugshots did (Matsuda quoted in Cole 2001:
passport photographs became a standard 43). It was never broken down with such
requirement for British passports as of 1916 precision. Nevertheless, it calls to mind the
when Form A was revised and “we see the burden of identification photos to speak,
first issuance of a passport in a recognizable to announce and respond to the question
form: a folded sheet of cardboard, not paper, posed but not asked regarding the truth of
that included the coat of arms of the country, one’s identity, the fidelity of one’s appearance
a photography of the bearer, and an official with that of image on the document, to
standardized message from the secretary declare prima facie that one is who one
of state for foreign affairs” (Salter 2003: 28). claims to be.
Azoulay poses that “the camera modified the As the history of the passport reveals,
way in which individuals are governed and it is a document of suspicion rather
the extent of their participation in the forms than recognition. The introduction
of governance” (Azoulay 2008: 89). With of identification photos in passports
the introduction of the photo requirement only further posed the question of the
on passports, the camera modified the tenuousness of the connection between the
governance of individual movement along person and the document that purports
the lines of identification invented not for to identify that person. Torpey (2000)
tracking the traveler, but rather the criminal. observes that in 1791, with the victories of
The protocols of the passport the revolution still fresh, the French National
photograph share something with those Assembly voted to abolish passport controls
of another set of identification photos, in favor of cosmopolitanism and freedom
the mugshot. Recalling her assertion of a of movement. Only a year later, passport
civil contract of photography where the controls were reinstated and increasingly
photograph constitutes a “statement,” refined, thus laying the foundation for the

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Lily Cho Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect 279

contemporary passport. Torpey argues … Michael Ignatieff has called a “society of

that the invention of the passport emerged strangers.” (Cole 2001: 9)
as a response by an increasingly suspicious
The status of the stranger, the
state to control and identify the enemies
foreigner, stands in tension with that of a
that it saw everywhere but could not easily
community whose integrity is, as Benedict
identify. After 1792, “the revolutionary
Anderson famously suggests, imaginary. The
governments, beset by enemies domestic
diasporic subject’s difference challenges
and foreign, real and imagined, sought to use
the homogenizing stipulations of national
passport controls and other documentary
citizenship and illuminates the contradictions
means … to regulate the movements of
of citizenship. These are contradictions
émigrés, counterrevolutionary brigands,
that turn on feeling. Citizenship is both
refractory priests, itinerant mendicants,
bonded by affect and, in the instance of its
conscripted soldiers, and the foreign-born,
visual manifestation through the passport
among others” (Torpey 2000: 55–6). Well
photograph, hindered by it. The injunction
into the twentieth century, the passport
against emotion in passport photos projects
was understood to be a punitive document.
a fantasy of a passive, transparent, and
“The 1921 conference of the International
readable national subject.
Parliamentary Union in Stockholm expressed
The figure of the foreigner poses a
its condemnation of the passport system and
distinct challenge to this fantasy in that the
called for greater freedom of movement”
foreigner’s subjectivity cannot be easily
(Torpey 2000: 27). While the passport may
assimilated into this discourse of citizenship.
seem relatively benign, indeed desirable, in
Torpey’s recognition, through the work
the contemporary period, the consolidation
of Gérard Noiriel, of the problem of the
of its usage attests to a long history of state
“foreigner” suggests a strong connection
suspicion leveled with particular acuity upon
between the idea of Man and the notion of
anyone who does not want to stay put.
the foreigner located within the founding of
In a historical moment when more
the 1789 Declaration itself:
people move around more than ever before,
these claims in these moments have become Noiriel has written that the modern
more frequent and more fraught. As Simon conception of the “foreigner” came
Cole notes of the crisis engendered by the into being with the French Revolution
urbanization movements in nineteenth- as a result of the elimination of feudal
century Europe, privileges on 4 August 1789, which
formally created a national community
People in modern cities might not be
of French citizens. This Act was, however,
who they claimed to be. They could be
in inherent and insoluble tension with
anyone; they could come from anywhere.
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Nineteenth century society shifted from
Citizen, which proclaimed equality of all
a closely hierarchical society of ranks and
individuals and thus tended to promote
orders, in which everyone knew his or her
the rights of foreigners as such. (Torpey
place and the place of others, into what
2000: 28)

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280 Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect Lily Cho

This tension between the rights of Man This split in the declaration allowed for
and that of the community of citizens does the recognition of the humanity of oppressed
not simply lie in that classic liberal problem of racial others such as Asians and Africans,
individual desire set against that of communal but it also explicitly denied them any kind of
need. Rather, this tension can be located in obvious access to the rights and privileges of
the problem of the rights of the foreigner, citizenship. Moreover, this division of human
coded as individual Man, which poses a from citizen was delineated along the lines
threat to the rights of the citizen. of feeling in opposition to reason: “For,
Arguing for a sharper understanding of despite commonplace assumptions about the
the chasm between the figure of man and Enlightenment, the primary qualification for
the figure of the citizen in contemporary inclusion within the category of the human
understandings of citizenship, Maslan also was the capacity to feel, not the capacity to
draws attention to the foreignness of the reason” (Maslan 2004: 358). Thus a duality
figure of Man and suggests how this figure is established where humans feel but citizens
is indeed racialized. As she observes, the must reason.
very title of the 1789 Déclaration des droits As the need to mediate that divide
de l’Homme et du Citoyen indicates the between man and citizen became more
continuity between the figure of the human pressing, it was feeling and emotion that
and that of the citizen cannot be taken for were pressed into service. As Maslan
granted. observes, the Marquis de Lafayette, argued
that the declaration should “dire ce que tout
The authors of the Declaration
le monde sait, ce que tout le monde sent”
understood that they were in the process
(Maslan 2004: 358). The world should not
of elaborating two distinct kinds of rights:
only know but also feel these foundations
rights proper to an individual outside of
of contemporary citizenship. The capacity
any constituted political body—that is, in
to feel thus became just as, perhaps even
the language of the eighteenth century,
more, indicative of humanity as the capacity
natural rights—and rights proper to a
to reason. The physical fact of being
member of an organized political body or
human came to matter less in the ancien
state. It would appear, then, that natural
régime than emotional aspects of human
rights are those that belong to man
existence. “Sentimentalizing the ‘human’ of
and political and civil rights are those
human rights implied a shift from bodies
at the disposal of the citizen. Asian and
and their sufferings, to persons and their
Africans, both favorite French examples of
unhappinesses, from biology to the mental
oppressed peoples, would be recognized
and emotional cognates of physical suffering”
by the Declaration not as citizens of
(Maslan 2006: 80). Emotion and affect could
France, of course, but rather in their
negotiate the chasm between the human
capacity as men—a title which confers
and the citizen.
upon them a body of rights that must be
However, the reliance upon emotion
acknowledged and recognized by all other
and feeling to humanize the figure of
human beings. (Maslan 2004: 360)
the citizen depends upon the idea that

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Lily Cho Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect 281

emotions are an indication of human about their desires, or rather, because their
subjectivity. With reference to subjectivity desires are undivided” (Terada 2001: 156).
in general, Rei Terada notes the fallacy of As a “well-known counterillustration,” she
what she calls the “expressive hypothesis” offers the case of the replicants in Philip K.
where “[t]he claim that emotion requires Dick’s Bladerunner:
a subject—thus we can see we’re subjects, In the film … the explicitly sentimental
since we have emotions—creates the moment for the replicant played by Sean
illusion of subjectivity rather than showing Young—the one time she cries—is the
evidence of it” (Terada 2001: 11). It has moment when she discovers that she’s a
become conventional, as Terada notes, replicant, whose memories are not her
to think of emotion as something “lifted own. We assume she had feelings before,
from a depth to a surface” through the but reserving the sight of her tears for
mechanism of expression (Terada 2001: this occasion dramatizes the fact that
11). Expression “serves as the distracting destroying the illusion of subjectivity does
white handkerchief ” which naturalizes the not destroy emotion, that on the contrary,
logic of the expressive hypothesis (Terada emotion is the sign of the absence of that
2001: 11). This white handkerchief also illusion. (Terada 2001: 157)
distracts from the role of representation
in feeling. “We are not ourselves without “Unlike replicants,” Terada argues, “zombies
representations that mediate us, and it is don’t experience themselves as though they
through these representations emotions get were someone else” (Terada 2001: 157).
felt” (Terada 2001: 21). For Terada, the death Terada’s deeply provocative description
of the subject ascribed to contemporary of the feeling dead subject, the replicant
postmodern theory does not mean the who experiences herself as though she
death of feeling. On the contrary, the death were someone else, reveals the alienation
of the subject inaugurates feeling. of the unfeeling photographed citizen and,
The dream of a feeling citizen cannot specifically, the problem of the diasporic
hide the monstrous anti-human heart of the citizen. Insofar as diaspora is a state of
original citizen subject. Terada shows us that dislocation where one becomes located
that feeling is not a guarantee of subjectivity. through a process of experiencing one’s
On the contrary, emotions can indicate the home—the site of one’s identity—as
death of the subject and real subjectivity though it were someone else’s, there is
can be an indication of monstrosity. As some resonance between the replicant of
she wryly observes of the monsters in Terada’s example and that of the person in
George Romero’s zombie films, they seem diaspora. In diaspora, the notion of identity
to “emblematize postmodern subjectivity” as something that might be grounded in an
because “everyone knows that if there’s one idea of home is highly mediated through
thing dead subjects don’t have, it’s emotion” representation and narrative. As Vijay Mishra
(Terada 2001: 156). However, she points understands,
out that the opposite is the actual case: It is becoming increasingly obvious that the
“Romero’s living dead are notably undivided narrative of the damaged home … takes

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282 Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect Lily Cho

its exemplary form in what may be called themselves as though they were someone
diasporas, and especially in diasporas of else, as though there were no contradictions
colour, those migrant communities that do between being diasporic and being a citizen.
not quite fit into the nation-state’s barely Feeling does not mediate the divide
concealed preference for the narrative of between man and citizen. It exposes it.
assimilation. (Mishra 2005: 112) Diasporas take up the dream of the feeling
citizen not as a way of burying or resolving
It has become something of a convention
the divide between humanity and citizenship,
in diaspora studies to talk about the ways
but rather as a way of engaging it. What
in which “home” does not exist except
will save citizenship from the monstrosity
in memory, as a representation, and a
of real subjectivity will be a recognition
problematically misremembered one at
of the distance between the person in
that. And part of that convention involves
diaspora and the citizen—a recognition of
the tragic moment of recognizing that the
the mediation necessary for the diasporic
diasporic person’s home is not what they
person to become a citizen. The moment
thought it was, that it exists as a fantasy or
of the breaking of the illusion of some kind
unreality which can be shattered and which
of naturalized continuity between diaspora
renders the diasporic home experienced
and citizenship is not so dissimilar from the
only as though it belonged to someone else.
moment in which the replicant recognizes
Indeed, not only does the diasporic
the death of her subjectivity. It is what makes
share something with the replicant, but
her less, and not more, monstrous.
the figure of man-citizen promoted by the
Given the explicit references to racialized
ancien régime recalls the living dead in their
others such as Asian and Africans that Maslan
unwavering and undivided desires. Through
(2004) points to, racism constitutes at least
the work of Elisabeth G. Sledziewski, Maslan
one source of the divide between man and
points out that “the desire to create the
citizen in the French declaration. It made
unified man-citizen, a subject who would feel
clear that one could be human in the eyes
his ties and obligations of citizenship as a part
of the declaration, but not a citizen. The
of his interiority just as he would understand
case of the Haitian revolution and Toussaint
his familial and amical bonds as part of his
L’Ouverture’s mistaken belief in his own
civic participation, was a central motive force
access to citizenship makes this exclusion
in the creation of revolutionary legislation”
clear. Recognizing the divide between the
(Maslan 2006: 75). The citizen is expected
person in diaspora and that of the citizen is
to feel unwaveringly bound to home and
an acknowledgment of the racism embedded
country in ways where the idea of home
within the concept of citizenship. To
does not contradict the idea of national
become a citizen, one must let go of one’s
belonging. In contrast, the person in diaspora
particularity, suspend it, so as to become part
becomes a citizen knowing that they become
of something more general, more universal.
one at the expense of distancing themselves
The moment when a diasporic subject
from themselves. They must experience their
must choose to side with the generalizing
home as though it was someone else’s, and
principles of citizenship and to let go of the

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Lily Cho Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect 283

specificity of diaspora is an uneasy one. It are engaging in a version of the dream of

is also one in which he or she can see the the feeling citizen even as they highlight the
racism attendant upon citizenship. contradictions of diasporic citizenship. Shelly
The work of Shelly Low, to which I now Low’s work does precisely this. Low’s “Self-
turn, helps reveal the ways that diasporic Serve” consists of a series of three digital
citizens deploy emotion to mediate the prints. They are self-portraits with objects
contradiction between the diasporic person such as plastic Chinoiserie soupspoons and
and that of citizen. You could say that they bowls (see Figure 1).

Fig 1 Shelly Low, Self-Serve, 2006. 58 in. × 58 in.

Digital Prints.

(a)

(b) (b)

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284 Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect Lily Cho

In each print, the objects obscure parts Low marks the difficulty of negotiating
of her face. In their form, these portraits the specificity of diasporic difference
recall the stark impassivity of the passport where economic assimilation relies upon a
photo or the mugshot. She faces the camera. performance of that difference which risks
Her head and shoulders are centered and exaggerating and stereotyping it. Difference
fill the frame. The background is completely must be objectified in order for it to slide
neutral and plain. She is lit so that there seamlessly into a larger cultural whole. In
are no shadows on her face. Similarly, the asking what it is that the diasporic subject
background is devoid of shadows. The holds onto, Low also implicitly asks what it is
setting is stripped of anything that might that the diasporic subject must let go of too.
mark the place she occupies when the Using objects that are almost excessively
photos are taken. While her face remains Chinese in their decorative plasticity, Low’s
without emotion in these images, the parts portraits illustrate how diasporic difference
of her face that are obscured suggest the carves emotion out of the picture and, at the
possibility of affects and feelings embedded same time, insists upon it through the stark
within these portraits. Low smuggles emotion fact of its absence. Emotion may seem to
into these images even as she captures its be lost, but it is actually palpably present in
evacuation. its very obscurity. In obscuring the face, and
These “self-portraits” are part of a parts of it, Low’s images draw a connection
larger project called Self-Serve at La Pagode between emotion, self-identity and facial
Royale that deals specifically with questions expression. As Silvan Tomkins notes, “the
of cultural identity through the locus of the self lives in the face, and within the face the
Chinese restaurant. Her questions about the self burns brightest in the eyes” (Tomkins
function of the Chinese restaurant as a space 1995:136). Notably, two out of three of these
of negotiation for cultural difference point portraits obscure Low’s eyes. Tomkins’s work
directly to the contradictions of diasporic drew on Charles Darwin’s (1998 [1889])
citizenship. She notes in her artist’s statement: studies of emotion and facial expression.
As Paul Ekman reports in his afterword to
I am interested by the conundrum
Darwin’s The Expression of Emotion in Man
within cultural identity and ethnicity:
and Animals, “Tomkins’ ideas about expression
whereby the desire of the immigrant to
were consistent with what Darwin had
assimilate into the economy eventually
written” (Ekman 1998: 374). Setting aside
compromises their own cultural identity
the longstanding debate about whether
… Chinese restaurants … ‘serve up’
or not the facial expression of emotion is
notions of an ethnic or exotic ‘other’
innate and universal across cultures, both
according to what they feel their clientele
Darwin (1998 [1889]) and Tomkins (1995)
wants or expects … what are the things
anchored their study on the face and the
that become cultural signifiers? What
connection between facial expression and
are the experiences we hold on to and
emotion. Let me bring the work of Darwin
perpetuate? (Low nd)
and Tomkins into dialogue with that of Terada
by considering this implication: if emotion

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Lily Cho Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect 285

lies in its representation, then the face must groups of his facial muscles without causing
be one of the most powerful mediums involuntary response among others. It was
of emotional expression. The passport as if, as Duchenne chillingly remarked, he
photograph and Low’s portraits suggest that were ‘working with a still irritable cadaver’”
there is indeed a strong possibility for the (Prodger 1998: 405). Because photographic
expressive potentiality of the face to expose processes had not accelerated enough to
the contradictions of citizenship. capture the emotions Darwin wanted to
Not only is Darwin’s study (1998 [1889]) reveal, Duchenne’s plates froze “the activity
of the face so resonant for thinking about of his subjects long enough to accommodate
emotion and expression, the process by the lengthy exposure times necessitated by
which he arrived at the visual evidence for photographic technology” (Prodger 1998:
his thesis also recalls the fine line between 405). That is, in order to illustrate emotion,
humanity and monstrosity for emotional Darwin had to turn to images of a man
expression. It is a process that in and of itself who had completely lost the capacity to
is richly suggestive of the contradictions express emotion, who was a cadaver-like
of citizenship. Darwin’s study relied upon zombie requiring electrical stimulation to
a number of photographs of various facial show emotion. That some of the most
expressions taken by Oscar Rejlander, exemplary images of emotional expression
James Crichton Browne, Guillaume- in Darwin’s work relied upon a figure whose
Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne, Adolph face had lost feeling recalls that other ideally
Diedrich Kindermann and George Charles emotional void figure, the contemporary
Wallich. As Philip Prodger notes in his citizen. There is a perverse irony in the
essay, “Photography and The Expression contemporary demand by the state for
of Emotions,” Darwin’s book “was one of images of its citizens that are devoid of
the first scientific books ever published emotion. Now that photographic technology
with photographic illustrations” and it thus has accelerated to the point where a whole
“played a major role in bringing photographic range of nuances of expression could be
evidence to the scientific world” (Prodger captured, there is no small contradiction in
1998: 400–401). For Darwin, photography the demand for an image of citizenship that
would allow people to see emotions that must hold any of those emotions at bay
were otherwise too fleeting. Prodger points long enough for the citizen to adopt the
out that Darwin was particularly interested expression of Duchenne’s patient.
in capturing “the ephemeral movements of The demand for emotional neutrality in
facial muscles for analysis” (Prodger 1998: the passport photograph encapsulates the
403). Darwin partly solved this problem by contradiction of citizenship even as Low’s
using a series of plates taken by Duchenne self-portraits illuminate them. As I have been
of a patient at La Salpêtrière hospital upon arguing, the contradiction of citizenship lies
whom a number of electrical experiments in being both diasporic and a citizen where
were being carried out. The patient “suffered the diasporic subject’s divided feelings for
from an anaesthetic condition of the face, “home” challenges citizenship’s demand for
which made it possible to stimulate individual a subject whose feelings are undivided. This

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286 Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect Lily Cho

contradiction emerges from the demand for subjectivity made by the state in the name of
the capacity to feel despite the injunction citizenship. In echoing the visual protocols of
against emotion in the very document that the passport photo, albeit with a difference,
identifies one as a citizen. they highlight the complicated relationship
Azoulay’s civil contract of photography between feeling and citizenship. As Terada’s
plays out in very literal ways in the passport work emphasizes, feeling alone will not make
photo and in Shelly Low’s subversion of the human subjects more human and thus feeling
conventions of the identification photograph. alone cannot mediate the contradictions
Stripping away anything that might obscure between citizenship and humanity embedded
identity, anything that might distract from within the origins of contemporary
the task of recognition, the passport photo citizenship. Perhaps only when the distance
announces its engagement with the civil between the human and the citizen can be
contract in its open claim for recognition. recognized in that alienating moment of
Low’s self-portraits expose the ways in which experiencing oneself as though one were
race always already frustrates recognition. somebody else, and one’s home as though it
The overtly Chinese objects she uses to were somebody else’s, will citizenship come
obscure parts of her face highlight race as close to fully embracing the bonds of affect.
something that can be over-identified, so
overt that it can frustrate recognition. As References
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