38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 277 being through the very statement of articulating it." 233 As Judith Butler, a scholar on performativity, nonetheless admitted, there is no ground to the claim outside the claim. 234 The implication is that people could not simply lay very strong entitlements to rights via citizenship. Another critique is that Arendt rendered an overly simplistic consideration of the situation of statelessness. 235 To be a stateless person is to be unprotected by any specific law of a State. 236 Arendt's analysis assumed that human rights are empty and hollow, and that they are made concrete when connected with a political institution—the State. 237 Arendtian philosophy was conceived at a time when human rights were cheap talk, and Arendt presented a sharp critique to the abstract Rights of Man discussed in the first half of the twentieth century. 238 Formalism has emerged from Arendtian philosophy as applied by States. It is a fallacy that mere membership in a political community (formal nationality) ipso facto is full human rights protection. The substantive is reduced into the formal. States choose not to inquire into the substance of human rights protection, and perfunctorily consider a person fully protected once determined to have formal citizenship. 239 The ex ante assumption is that if individuals have citizenship, they have and enjoy human rights. Human rights are fetishized and essentialized into citizenship rights. 240 True, without citizenship, humans are in a Hobbesian state of nature. Those left outside the State are vulnerable to human rights violations. 241 It is a fallacy, however, to contend that human rights protection necessarily follows from mere political membership. Neither human rights nor citizenship practically guarantees the rights afforded by the other. The very formalistic nature of the present definition of statelessness aids the rise of this ideological fallacy. The definition does not presently require States to inquire into the substantive nature or quality of one's citizenship. After struggling to define statelessness in the 1954 Statelessness Convention, States ultimately 233. Id. at 23. For a good introduction to J. L. Austin and Judith Butler's performativity, see Stephen Young, Judith Butler: Performativity, CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING (2016), http://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/11/14/judith-butlers-performativity/ (last visited May 2, 2019). 234. DeGooyer, supra note 231. 235. Richard Bernstein, Hannah Arendt on the Stateless, 11(1) PARALLAX 46, 51 (2005). 236. Id. 237. Id. at 57. 238. Richard Bernstein, Are Arendt's Reflections on Evil Still Relevant?, 70 REV. POL. 64, 70 (2008). 239. See, e.g. AS (Guinea) Appellant - and – Secretary of State for the Home Department Respondent - and – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Intervener, (2018) E.W.C.A. Civ. 2234, United Kingdom: Court of Appeal (England and Wales) (Oct. 12, 2018) [hereinafter, "AS (Guinea)"]. 240. See generally Amir Biparva & Sayed Qasem Zamani, The Convergence of Human and Citizenship Rights in the Globalization Era, 10 MOD. APPLIED SCI. 94 (2016). 241. See Blitz & Lynch, supra note 226; see also GIORGIO AGAMBEN, HOMO SACER: SOVEREIGN POWER AND BARE LIFE (1998). Giorgio Agamben furthered Arendt's arguments in his conceptualization of bare life's inexistence before the law.