The Gallente Federation was built upon the political cornerstones of promises and hope. Promises of equality, liberty and justice; and hope that the Federation can fulfill these lofty goals. It cannot fulfill these goals, and the proof lies in the Intaki. Most outside and even inside the Federation are unaware of any details of Intaki other than broad and inaccurate assumptions. These assumptions, combined with a Gallente ethnocentric state apparatus, create a complicated system of repression for the Intaki residents of the Gallente Federation.
Born in the Federation, I was subject to the auspices of the Gallente educational system: my classes were part of a Gallente curriculum, taught in Gallente, and filled with Gallente students and teachers. As I was raised in this educational environment, there was little reason for me to believe I was anything but a citizen with the same rights and privileges afforded by the promises and hope of the Federation. But as I grew from child to adult, a subtle understanding of an actual, subliminal Intaki identity began to challenge those promises, and more damagingly, that hope.
The Federation is a double-edged sword: built on the seemingly mutual but actually contradictory ideologies of civic and ethnic nationalism. An Intaki is fundamentally a citizen of the Federation and as such they can find an identity in the civic state of the Federation. Such an identity might supersede traditional definitions of race and ethnicity were it the only form of nationalism present in the Federation. However, it is not merely the Federation, it is the Gallente Federation. Many times I have been referred to as a Gallente simply because of the common Intaki association with the Federation. In such cases, a citizen finding civic national identity in the Federation is also labeled with the mark of the ethnic national identity of the Gallente. We are considered a “bloodline” of the Gallente ethnicity and I believe an appropriate name for this process is bloodlining. This labeling or bloodlining, though absolutely false, is not uncommon and each day the dual civic and ethnic identity of the Gallente Federation integrates more of those Intaki within its borders.
Through the duality of citizenship within the Federation, an Intaki can be simultaneously a Gallente and a Federalist. Externally, and inclusively, an Intaki is labeled a member of the Gallente Federation thus affirming civic and ethnic nationalistic identities. However, exclusively and internally, the Intaki are “othered” in the very fact that they are not actual Gallente. Inside the Federation the Intaki are not Gallente, and are consistently reminded of this fact, through inevitable differentiation and, in some unfortunate cases, discrimination. This othering is echoed in the exile of Intaki by the Federation as well as our continuing popular connotation as criminals. The simultaneous dualism and dichotomy of civic and ethnic identities have conflated any overt or apparent sense of Intaki ethnic identity. It is in this process that the Gallente state apparatus can distort, obscure and marginalize a sustained and representative Intaki identity in favor of a plastic and controlled imposition of civic ethnicity.
Effectively, the Intaki are both alienated and sustained within the Gallente Federation thereby confusing personal understandings of identity and conflating any sort of unified national identity. Intaki citizens of the Federation are simultaneously bloodlined, that is they are treated as inclusive members of another ethnicity; as well as othered, excluded by that very ethnicity at an internal level. This is a state of identity loss and restitution where the Intaki, at least those born in the Federation, are always-already in a condition where a false identity is preserved and real identity is consumed. The erosion of true Intaki identity is inevitable—though probably realistically impossible—as long as that identity is subsumed under the Gallente Federation and as such much be addressed immediately. Intaki identity is eroded through a system of identification within the Gallente Federation as well as the internal alienation caused by a trace Intaki nationalism. Only escape from this system will end this process. If Intaki civic and ethnic nationalism is restored then the conditions for true, representative Intaki identity emerge.
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Reprinted with author’s permission.