38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] 1/16/2021 12:59 PM STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 249 I. THE PRESCRIBED ORTHODOXY: THE INTERNATIONAL DEFINITION OF STATELESSNESS If a State is allowed to consider who its citizens are and are not, and if a State could determine who is entitled to rights under the Statelessness Convention, then the State is more than a determiner of status; it is the giver of status, rights, and even life. Given these realities, the first question should be: why and how should statelessness be revisioned to respond to our present reality of a statist world? Before arguing why and how statelessness should be revisioned, this Section first discusses the international definition of statelessness. I present a very brief history of the quest to define statelessness, then examine international law's current definition of statelessness, and analyze the dominant approaches to interpreting the definition. Then, I describe the identification of statelessness and its nature in our predominantly statist world. An Abbreviated History of Defining Statelessness Prior to its development as a legal concept in 1954, statelessness was sporadically discussed in the humanities, and even less so in law. 35 Statelessness is an old phenomenon, 36 perhaps as old as the State and State discretion. 37 People 35. See Mira Siegelberg, The Question of Questions: The Problem of Statelessness in International History, 1921-1961, Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University (2014) (arguing that the transformation of statelessness from an important intellectual problem in the period after World War I to an ambiguous moral problem associated with human rights after 1948 contributed to its marginalization as an object of humanitarian concern and as an important category for comprehending international political and legal order). Cf. literature in history and social sciences. See generally CENTERING THE MARGIN: AGENCY AND NARRATIVE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA (Alexander Horstmann & Reed L. Wadley eds., 2006); C. MAGBAILY FYLE, INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN CIVILIZATION: PRECOLONIAL AFRICA (1999); JOHN PARKER & RICHARD REID, THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MODERN AFRICAN HISTORY (2013); C. PATTERSON GIERSCH, ASIAN BORDERLANDS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF QING CHINA'S YUNNAN FRONTIER (2006); Kataoka Tatsuki, Becoming Stateless: Historical Experience and Its Reflection on the Concept of State among the Lahu in Yunnan and Mainland Southeast Asian Massif, 2 SE. ASIAN STUD. 69 (2013). 36. See United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [hereinafter "UNHCR"], Current UNHCR Activities on Behalf of Stateless Persons, ¶ 1, U.N. Doc. EC/1995/SCP/CRP.6 (Sept. 21, 1995); UNHCR, Information and Accession Package: The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, ¶ 8 (1996, revised in 1999). If ancient Rome were considered a State, then the earliest deprivations of citizenship in Roman law, including banishment (aquae et ignis interdictio) and deportation in its severe form (deportation in insulam), would be some of the nascent causes of statelessness. PAUL WEIS, NATIONALITY AND STATELESSNESS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 117 (2d ed. 1979). 37. Despite the problems associated with statelessness, some give up on citizenship and voluntarily choose to become stateless. These individuals retain, in a limited sense, the discretion to be stateless if and only if they choose to be and if the State says they are. The Westphalian system ushered in dogmas and doxas of sovereignty: territorial sovereignty (dominium) and personal sovereignty (imperium), or supreme authority over all citizens of the State at home or abroad. We can trace discretion from sovereignty. See Eric Allen Engle, The Transformation of the International Legal System: The Post-Westphalian Legal Order, 23 QUINNIPIAC L. REV. 23, 24 n.5 (2004).