New Books in Political Science Lisa Min et al. eds., "Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State" (punctum books, 2024)
Feb 3, 2026
Frank Billet, a UC Berkeley cultural anthropologist/geographer studying borders and sovereignty, and Lisa Min, an anthropologist of visuality focused on North Korea, discuss redaction as a multimodal practice. They explore redaction’s origins in workshops and fieldwork, visual and poetic experiments, printing and design challenges, algorithmic constraints, ethical and safety tradeoffs in research, and how redaction creates ambiguous, generative spaces.
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Formality Meets Printing Limits
- The book intentionally experiments with visual form and printing constraints to enact redaction.
- Editors had to 'trick' printers and algorithms to realize visual redactions like white pages and a redacted cover.
An Index That Redacts
- The index itself becomes a redacted, archival device that maps different state redaction forms.
- The editors use the index as an erasure-poem-like guide through redaction types encountered in FOIA and state documents.
Redaction As Pervasive Third Space
- Redaction is pervasive: a state practice and a survival tactic deployed by citizens and researchers.
- The book reframes redaction as a generative 'third space' for new political imaginaries beyond binary politics.
