This work collects and studies apparati of distinction (names, signs, fences, roads) in wildland-urban interfaces to think about how they interpellate subjects as welcome or unwelcome and contribute to place-making. This research is part of an ongoing line of inquiry into subjecthood and spatialisation. Departing from an understanding of "enclosure" as an agent reproducing state ideology, these works try and draw a connection between the process of naming and the different ways of enclosing a space. According to U.S. state mandates, land is legally an object, without intent and/or polity or rights. Though definitively different from human subjects, looking at land as something that undergoes a type of subjecthood (property) which produces its legibility, can reiterate the power of naming. This legibility is then used to determine how a space is produced. The apriority of subjecthood is equatable to the existence of "land" as bordered, objectified property. But what possibilities emerge within spatializations of ambiguity and temporariness? "Sites of Exception" is an attempt to spatialize states of exception in order to study the multiple actors that contribute to the order of lawlessness, of a space, to an extent, abandoned by law. I used "site" to refer to a physical place in the world, and a moment in time.

The problem of "natural rights", according to Arendt in Origins of Totalitarianism is that they do not "spring from the nature of man" (via birth) but instead come into being through recognition of subjecthood by a state. This paradox between a politics of life (existence) and a politics of living (desiring subject) marginalizes those who aren't recognized as political bodies thus destabilizing laws of equality and reverting rights to privileges. This contradiction between political subjects and objects (those stripped of or without rights) defines the political action, ethical debate, ethos, and rhetoric that perpetuate global crises and hegemonic positionalities.