Lives “on hold”

Abstract

The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) isthe focus of this article, which examines stories published in the “Horror Affairs” column of thepopular South African tabloid, the Daily Sun. These highly emotional stories tell of the despair anddesperation felt by individuals at the lack of an ID book, which is blamed on the inefficiency of thestate Department of Home Affairs. In order to explicate this relationship I make use of Agamben’snotion of “bare life” and the camp in conjunction with Lacan’s idea of the Symbolic Order toargue that if the Identity Document provides the means by which the individual is made to signify,the lack of an Identity Document threatens to reduce the individual to “bare life”. By publishingthe stories of those deprived of the visibility that the ID provides, the Daily Sun, I show, directlyengages in this exchange, and, in contrast to Home Affairs, bestows its own even stronger gift ofidentity by the fact of appearance in its pages.