QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL REFLECTION, DISCUSSION OR DEBATE • During the seminar, Matthew Gibney explained that banishment was often done in the past for the purpose of ‘communal forgetting’. To what extent do you think this idea is still present in denationalisation practices, as we see them today? Why would states rather deport and forget, than punish and rehabilitate? • During the Enlightenment, Voltaire criticized the use of banishment as a punishment, because it merely ‘recycled criminals between nations’, instead of solving the problem. A similar critique was made by Bentham. To what extent does this criticism apply in contemporary cases where denationalisation is used as a tool to combat terrorism or protect national security? • In early modern Europe, banishment for life was a form of civic death, often carried out in a highly ceremonial way. To what extent do we see this reflected in the contemporary context of denationalisation? Are modern Western governments relying on the tabloid press to perform banishment’s historic function of ‘public shaming’? Or is denationalisation most often carried out without ceremony, even in secrecy? • After listening to Matthew Gibney’s lecture, do you think that the increasing incidence of denaturalisation signals that more or less value is attached to the notion of citizenship? LEARN MORE… Matthew Gibney explained how the objections of receiving states to being treated as ‘dumping grounds’ for unwanted citizens from elsewhere played a significant part in the decline of banishment (e.g. sending back rattlesnakes on convict ships). Learn more about this phenomenon by researching or writing about it! • Find out more about ‘anti-transportation campaigns’: who organised them, what were the techniques used, how successful were they? • Reflect on the geopolitical context of modern denationalisation: which are the states performing banishment and which are the ‘dumping grounds’? What is the relationship between them and can you imagine an equivalent strategy being adopted by states that are today functioning as the ‘dumping grounds’ for banished citizens?