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Today’s academy is a dystopia. Many scholars of color and international scholars face the daunting challenge of navigating neoliberal state institutions that are often built on legacies of racism, colonialism, and classism. This essay brings attention to the feelings of despair, anxiety, and paranoia felt by many scholars of color in the fields of humanities and social sciences, but whose narratives too often become ones of abrupt exit from the Ministry of Knowledge (and) Entrepreneurship (MKE). The essay relies on a discussion of Anzaldúa’s intimate terrorism, the composition of today’s academy, and the sense of never-quite-being. These themes emerge out of a dialogue with Anzaldúa, Deleuze, and Harney and Moten, who each have something to say about navigating institutions of power from a position of in-betweenness. Then, I assemble themes from contemporary popular dystopia films to develop a performative fiction—a narrative of never-quite-being that embodies the critical theory and dystopic themes woven through the experiences of a border-body in the academy. The essay ends with a discussion of what being intimate looks like for someone that never-quite-is, informed by Anzaldúa’s concept of mestizaje and Deleuze’s nomad thought.

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Alabama House Bill (HB) 56 passed in 2011 and was written by Kris Kobach. The bill targets migrant groups, pressuring them to “self-deport”. Kobach’s language subjugates migrants in a way that defines their bodies with shame. I am interested in how Goodnight and Natanson conceive of risk in the practice of social argumentation. For that, I employ philosophical perspectives of affect to reconsider language as relational, and demonstrate how affective language moves bodies. I then consider the channeling of affect and the ways negative affects get strategically directed at defined subject-individuals, shifting presumption of not belonging onto those bodies exhibiting migrant characteristics within the state. Affect, modulated through language, creates affective boundaries, and I demonstrate how Kobach obliges citizens of Alabama to participate in both the shaming of the undocumented migrant and the maintenance of the affective boundary keeping the undocumented migrant body from citizenship.