A tour de force of Mexican rhetoricity and racialization

Abstract

Lisa Flores ’ book, Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of the “ Illegal ” Immigrant is a tour de force of Mexican/American history, rhetoricity, and racialization. Flores argues that racialization is rhetorical, which is to say performative, inter-sectional, and crafted in public discourse. Flores argues that racialization creates shared perceptions of Mexicans that take the form of body logics of race and mobility logics of borders (13). Body logics are the sightlines of race that tie racial categories to assumptions of inferiority and superiority. Mobility logics “ trace the varied racialized associations that prompt the sensing of race ” (13). The mobility logics connect the perceptions of bodies to the lived mobilities of everyday life