marginality

is a lyricism which may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.

The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order. Michel Foucault

is paradoxical in that one ties oneself to the state by standing outside of it an constitute it locally by fleeing from it.

Can one be simultaneously inside and outside the state' This is the dilemma of marginality. Uma Adang introduced me to the paradox: Marginals stand outside the state by tying themselves to it... they constitute the state locally by fleeing from it. As culturally 'different' subjects they can never be citizens... as culturally different 'subjects,' they can never escape citizenship (Tsing 1993: 26)

is always with us. Today the poor, the vagrant, and the prisoner are the objects in a structural game of exclusion who came to fill the gap left by the figure of the leper when it was no more than a distant memory.

Once leprosy had gone, and the figure of the leper was no more than a distant memory, these structures still remained. The game of exclusion would be played again, often in these same places, in an oddly similar fashion two or three centuries later. The role of the leper was to be played by the poor and by the vagrant, by prisoners and by the 'alienated', and the sort of salvation at stake for both parties in this game of exclusion is the matter of this study. Michel Foucault

marginality, n.Definitions

marginality