{"id":119851,"date":"2016-12-05T09:19:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T14:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=119851"},"modified":"2018-03-14T15:22:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T19:22:47","slug":"what-might-wall-with-mexico-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/12\/what-might-wall-with-mexico-look-like\/","title":{"rendered":"What Might a Wall with Mexico Look Like?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"grey-sidebar floating-sidebar col-xs-12 col-sm-4\">\n  <\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_119875\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-119875\" style=\"width: 115px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Ladha_9461.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-119875 img-responsive lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Ladha_9461.jpg\" alt=\"Hassanaly Ladha.\" width=\"115\" height=\"175\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 115px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 115\/175;\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-119875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hassanaly Ladha.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<p>Hassanaly Ladha is a philosopher, designer, and assistant professor at UConn. He teaches in the French and Francophone studies program in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, where he specializes in the relationship between architecture and philosophy. Born and raised in the Congo, Ladha holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in English from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Jacob Javits Fellowship and the Humanities Institute Fellowship at UConn.<\/p>\n<p>Ladha\u2019s recent works include The Mamertine Group, a digital humanities project with an emphasis on monumental state architecture in the United States, Latin America, and Africa. His current projects include a book titled <em>The Architecture of Freedom: Hegel, Subjectivity, and the Postcolonial State<\/em>. Ladha has lectured at the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure, the American University of Cairo, Universit\u00e9 de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Harvard University, as well as the University of Connecticut.<\/aside>\n<p>President-elect Donald Trump has already begun backing away from building the \u00a0\u201cbig, beautiful, wall\u201d he pledged to put up between the U.S. and Mexico, but the concept of a monumental divider\u00a0that became a rallying cry of his campaign continues to intrigue Hassanaly Ladha, assistant professor of philosophy and literature.<\/p>\n<p>For Ladha, a Muslim, the notion of such a wall brought together three ideas at the heart of his academic work at UConn: philosophy, architecture, and political theory. It also hatched a collaboration with Estudio Pi, an architectural design firm in Guadalajara, Mexico, to create a virtual rendition of such a wall that allows the public to imagine Trump\u2019s policy proposal in all of its \u201cgorgeous perversity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have long had an interest in how states think of themselves,\u201d says Ladha, a self-described architectural activist. \u201cI also have a professional history with designing buildings and I bring that into my work as a philosopher. I have wanted to create virtual architecture for a long time; when I came up with this idea I was so excited by it that I decided to formally create a design lab to pursue the project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The resulting Prison-Wall began taking shape in September, and was unveiled by Ladha and Estudio Pi creative director Leonardo Diaz-Borioli in the weeks before the election. The \u201cironically feasible\u201d proposal, conceived by Ladha and given shape through a collaboration between Ladha, Borioli, and his team of designers, calls for a 1,950-mile impenetrable wall along the U.S.-Mexican border \u201cbig enough to house, process, and assimilate or remove approximately 11 million undocumented foreign nationals.\u201d Ladha envisioned the mammoth four-story structure as a continuous, self-sufficient city with shopping, health care, residences for 6 million prison staff, and \u201cother facilities to sustain life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As presented on Ladha\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mamertinegroup.com\">Mamertine Group<\/a> website, the project mimics that of an actual project and, except for subtle tongue-in-cheek references, could conceivably be mistaken for one. Project specifications include detailed descriptions of the site, facilities and operations, legal considerations, and even cost metrics.<\/p>\n<p>To cover the $396 billion cost, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice would employ Mexican labor to operate the prison, reducing labor costs, language acquisition needs for management of the inmate population, and, through the creation of millions of jobs in Mexico, the incentive for illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States. Detainees would provide the labor needed to run factories in this city, and their \u201cincome\u201d would be diverted to defray the cost of the structure. The wall would be located on Mexican land and, as with the prison in Guantanamo, be an extra-judicial territory where prisoners would not be protected by the law.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Prison-Wall<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mamertinegroup.com\/prison-wall.html\">project website page<\/a> also pairs the images with texts, authored by Ladha, on the philosophical implications of border structures, prisons, and other architectural expressions of political will.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe beauty of the images and texts to me is that they convey the dangerously seductive nature of this rhetoric of exclusion,\u201d Ladha says of the project, \u201cof cultural purity and sovereignty; and also of the state that is founded on and maintains a certain homogeneity.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_119866\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-119866\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-119866 img-responsive lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Prison-Wall-image-3-border-crossing-over-a-river-v2-300x211.jpg\" alt=\"A border crossing visualized as part of a virtual architectural design for the concept of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. (Image by Augustin Avalos, Estudio Pi S.C., Hassanaly Ladha)\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Prison-Wall-image-3-border-crossing-over-a-river-v2-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Prison-Wall-image-3-border-crossing-over-a-river-v2-768x541.jpg 768w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Prison-Wall-image-3-border-crossing-over-a-river-v2-1024x721.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Prison-Wall-image-3-border-crossing-over-a-river-v2-597x420.jpg 597w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Prison-Wall-image-3-border-crossing-over-a-river-v2.jpg 2000w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/211;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-119866\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A border crossing visualized as part of a virtual architectural design for the concept of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. (Image by Augustin Avalos, Estudio Pi S.C., Hassanaly Ladha)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ladha notes that in his thinking about the relationship between walls and the philosophical concept of a state, he sensed that the state bordered by the wall would become something of a prison too. If the purpose of the wall is to exclude what is different, he says, the enclosed state becomes imprisoned by \u201cthe banality of sameness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Walls are not a new idea, Ladha says, and ultimately, it\u2019s the idea of the state and the notion of cultural purity that he is critiquing. Given the limitless nature of any project of exclusion or purification, <em>The Prison-Wall<\/em> ultimately articulates the philosophical and logical bankruptcy of building any such structure. Is he concerned at all that the project might be mistaken for a real one?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose that if you didn\u2019t understand irony, you\u2019d think perhaps we should build a pink wall,\u201d Ladha says. \u201cHopefully it makes people think, and raises some awareness around what it actually means to have a border wall and expel people. Why do we want to do these things? What is the idea of a state or a country? What kind of people are we embracing?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through a virtual architectural design, a UConn professor takes an ironic look at the relationship between border walls and the philosophical concept of a state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":119867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,2226,88,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2021],"class_list":["post-119851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-clas","category-global-affairs","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 13:02:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119851"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135280,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119851\/revisions\/135280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/119867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119851"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=119851"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=119851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}