Asylum seeker life narratives
Rodaan Al Galidi and Mana Neyestani
MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School of Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Marga Wind 10183388 M.J.M. Rensen Y. Rodríguez Pérez June, 2016
Table of contents
Introduction ……….. 2
1. The autobiographical genre ……….. 6
1.1 Autobiography as a source of research ….……… 6
1.2 Different types of autobiography ..……… 9
1.3 The Autobiographical Pact ...……… 13
2. Authority, irony and audience .……….……… 17
2.1 Authority and authenticity……… 17
2.2 Irony ……….……… 22
2.3 Audience and addressee ...……… 25
3. Identity ...……… 28
3.1 Construct or inherent .……… 28
3.2 National identity and othering ..………. 36
3.3 Multiple identity ……… 41 3.4 Passport ..……… 45 4. Waiting situation ……….……….. 51 4.1 Procedures .……… 51 4.2 Waiting ..……… 60 4.3 Integration ………….……… 67 Conclusion ………. 74 Bibliography ……….. 77
Introduction
Asylum seekers that are coming to Europe: it is a very current topic in the news. Because of what is happening in the Middle-East at this moment, there are a lot of people that come to Europe to demand asylum and to start a new life. Everyone seems to have an opinion about this matter, not everyone welcomes the asylum seekers wholeheartedly in Europe. In France as well as in the Netherlands, there is a lot of resistance towards the building of refugee centres. The opinions of the “native people” are the voices that are often heard in public debates, but the voices of the asylum seekers themselves seem almost absent. In this thesis, we will address the perspective of the asylum seeker.
Also in the scientific literature these voices are often absent. There are many scholars that have written about asylum seekers, but they often look at the procedures regarding the asylum seekers and the conditions in the host country during the asylum demand, such as Nando Sigona, who has written about integration in the European Union.1 According to him, there
should be more emphasis on integration of asylum seekers in order to achieve better
conditions for them.2 A comparison between different European countries has also been made
before, by Roland Bank.3 His main conclusion is that there are several differences between the
European countries regarding the reception situation of asylum seekers. An explanation of this is the fact that the countries do not want the asylum seekers, and they try to adopt less
favourable conditions than the other countries in order to keep the asylum seekers away from the country.4 About the waiting situation of the asylum seekers exist several texts, mostly in
the case of the Netherlands. Authors that have written about this matter are Laban, Komproe, Germaat and de Jong.5 They have found, for instance, that long waiting procedures can result
in bad physical health.6
All of these scholars study the whole group of asylum seekers in a specific country. There is little attention for the personal interpretation of the situation and experiences of the asylum seekers themselves in these studies. This is the reason why we will look at two life narratives
1 N. Sigona, “Refugee Integration(s): Policy and Practice in the European Union”, Refugee Survey Quarterly 24(4) (2005): 115-122
2 Ibid., 119-120
3 R. Bank, “Reception Conditions for Asylum Seekers in Europe: An Analysis of Provisions in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and the United Kingdom”, Nordic Journal of International Law 69 (2000): 257-288 4 Ibd., 286-288
5 C.J. Laban, I.H. Komproe, H.B.P.E. Gernaat en J.T.V.M. de Jong, “The impact of a long asylum procedure on quality of life, disability and physical health in Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands”, Soc Psychiatry
Psychiatr Epidemiol 43 (2008): 507-515
of asylum seekers in this thesis. About ‘life narrative’ has been written a lot, for example by Smith and Watson in Reading Autobiography7. A definition given by them is ‘a moving
target, a set of shifting self-referential practices that, in engaging in the past, reflect on identity in the present.’8 This definition will be used in this thesis. In the book of Smith and
Watson, we find a lot of information about the type of source of the autobiography as well, which is closely related to ‘life narrative’. In chapter 7, ‘A Tool Kit’9, we find several
concepts related to autobiography, which will be guiding in this thesis. A concept related to autobiography is the ‘Autobiographical Pact’, which means that there is an imaginative contract between the author and the reader, which implies that the autobiography is truthful. Philippe Lejeune has written about this, in The Genetic Study of Autobiographical Texts.10
Gillian Whitlock has already written about life narrative in combination with culture, migration and asylum seekers. In her book Soft Weapons11, Whitlock analyses different forms
of life narratives from the Middle East and Central Asia, and compares these narratives to texts written by authors in the West about this region, which seem to be more popular in the West. In the book, she argues that reading life narratives that originate from the Middle East and Central Asia, could decrease the gap between the Western and Oriental cultures. In
Letters from Nauru12, an article about letters of refugees in Australia, she emphasizes the
importance of life narratives as a source of research. According to this article, we find
important information in life narratives, such as ‘subjective perceptions’13, that we do not find
in a usual historical source.
What we will do in this thesis is analyse the life narratives of two asylum seekers, one from France, Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique (2015)14 of Mana Neyestani, and one
from the Netherlands, Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg (2016)15 of Rodaan Al Galidi. Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique is a life narrative in the form of images with text, an
autographic. It is the story of an Iranian refugee, who demands asylum in France. In the book we find what an asylum seeker has to go through in order to demand asylum in France. Hoe ik 7 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001)
8 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 1
9 Ibid., 165-179
10 P. Lejeune, “The Genetic Study of Autobiographical Texts”, Biography 14.1 (1991): 1-11
11 G. Whitlock, Soft Weapons: Autobiography in transit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010) 12 G. Whitlock, “Letters from Nauru”, Life Writing 5.2 (2008): 203-217
13 G. Whitlock, “Letters from Nauru”, Life Writing 5.2 (2008): 214
14 M. Neyestani, Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, (Issy-les-Moulineaux and Bussy-Saint-Georges: Arte Éditions and Editions çà et là, 2015)
talent voor het leven kreeg is the story of an Iraquian refugee who demands asylum in the
Netherlands. The life narrative represents the story of the asylum seeker in the Netherlands, based on Al Galidi’s personal experiences as well as on the experiences of other refugees, just like Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique.
In both books, we find a representation of the period during the asylum demand of two different host countries, France and the Netherlands, represented in a different way. Although the books are different, there seem to be resemblances in the representation of the period of the asylum demand. Both books are also both relatively new: Petit manuel du parfait réfugié
politique appeared in 2015 and Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg in 2015, so there do not
exist studies about them yet. How Al Galidi and Neyestani describe their experience as asylum seekers in respectively Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait
réfugié politique? In order to answer this central questions, we will have a closer look at the
genre that we are analysing, we will analyse the form of the life narratives, we will look at the concept of identity and we will address the waiting situation.
The first chapter about the autobiographical genre, will address the autobiography as a source of sociological and literary research. Furthermore, the chapter will address concepts such as the ‘autobiographical pact’, and the type of autobiographies that exist, such as a fictional autobiography, but also autographics. What sort of analysis is the autobiography used for? What kind of information can we expect to find while using an autobiography as a source? What kind of other sources can be linked to autobiography and how can the two life narratives Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique be defined? These questions will be answered in this chapter.
The second chapter will address the form and tone of the life narratives. We will explore in what way the form and meaning of the books can be compared, and in what way they differ from each other. The concept of authority and authenticity will be addressed, the irony that is clearly present in the narratives will be analysed, and, finally, we will look at the audience the narratives have been written for.
The third chapter will explicate the concept of identity. In which way is the concept of identity represented in Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié
politique? In order to answer this question, we will look at the way the passport is represented
in the life narratives. We will also use different theories of identity, about the inherent or constructed identity, about national identity but also at the process of othering and the multiplicity of an individual’s identity, which will be applied to Hoe ik talent voor het leven
The fourth chapter will look at the waiting situation of the asylum seeker as it is represented in Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié
politique. The time during which someone is called an ‘asylum seeker’, the time before
obtaining of a residence permit, will be analysed. How do the authors describe the waiting situation? In order to answer this questions, we will look at how the procedures of the two different countries are described, thereafter the social circumstances during the waiting period will be analysed, and the chapter will be finished by the analysis of the concept of integration, as it is represented in the two life narratives.
1. The autobiographical genre
An autobiography is a special type of source of research. By using autobiography as a source, we can expect something else than by using texts of scholars. In order to analyse the two life narratives Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg of Al Galidi and Petit manuel du parfait refugié
politique of Neyestani, which seem to have some characteristics of an autobiography, it is
necessary to have a closer look at the genre of ‘autobiography’. First, we will look at the type of source of the autobiographical genre and the functions of the autobiography. What sort of research is the autobiography used for? What kind of information can we expect to find while using an autobiography as a source? Thereafter, we will determine which type of life narrative we will actually analyse as primary sources, by having a closer look at the types of
autobiography. Finally, we will look at the concept of the ‘Autobiographical Pact’ and relate it to the two works under scrutiny here.
1.1 Autobiography as a genre and a source of research
Autobiography is a term that comes from the Greek ‘auto’, which means ‘self’ and ‘bios’, which means ‘life’. The combination gives ‘autobiography’ the meaning of ‘self-life
writing’16, or a biography written about the ‘self’. Other terms that are used as a synonym of
autobiography are ‘self-biography’ and ‘memoirs’. The last term was mostly used until the twentieth century.17 This brings us to the autobiography’s relation to terms such as ‘life
writing’ and ‘life narrative’, which bear a lot of resemblance to the term ‘autobiography’, but do not have exactly the same meaning. According to Smith and Watson, life writing contains writing that is about the ‘life’ of an individual. Biography is an example of this. Life narrative is narrower as a term, it refers to the ‘self’. Autobiography can be seen as a particular form of life narrative.18
The autobiographical genre is a relatively modern genre, which appeared during the Enlightenment period. Before the Enlightenment, certain forms of life narrative existed, but the forms and content were slightly different from the form and content autobiography has today. During the Enlightenment, the ‘self’ became of high importance, as shows the following citation from Smith and Watson: ‘notions of self-interest, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge informed the figure of the “Enlightened individual” described by philosophers 16 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 1
17 Ibid., 2 18 Ibid., 3
and social and political theorists’.19 The life narratives that were written before the
Enlightenment did not have the self at the centre like the autobiographies that appeared during or after the eighteenth century. Other subjects were at the centre of the narrative, such as religion or the description of a journey. The autobiography of Rousseau20, The Confessions
(1783), is often seen as the first autobiography in the genre that we know nowadays, but other critics are of the opinion that Augustine was the first person to write in an autobiographical way21. The word ‘autobiography’ appeared for the first time in the 18th century, and was
invented by a linguist that wanted to give a name to the different narratives about the ‘self’ and the author’s own experiences. ‘The Autobiography’ of Thomas Shepard was the first work to be named after the genre, although it was not Shepard himself that named the book this way, but an editor many years later.22
As the ‘self’ was in the centre of the life narrative in the eighteenth century, a related phenomenon appeared: the phenomenon of ‘self-creation’ or ‘self-making’ through life narrative. This is another important aspect of the modern autobiography.23 The self is subject
of self-examination, in the narrative an identity is shaped. It may be obvious that this is not an objective, but a subjective way of writing. According to Smith and Watson, this is due to the fact that ‘the writer becomes, in the act of writing, both the observing subject and the object of investigation, remembrance, and contemplation.’24 We find this same idea of ‘creation of the
self’ in publications of Philippe Lejeune: ‘a work of creation of the self through language - both on a psychological and an aesthetic level’25. Given the fact that autobiography is a
subjective source, it is subject to a lot of criticism, from for example scholars in the field of history, sociology or psychology.
This criticism can be further explained. The autobiography can be subject to several types of research, such as literary research, sociological research or historical research. Mostly in the case of historical and sociological research, autobiography is often not seen as a
subjective source. This is often the case when a subject other than the literary form and meaning of the autobiography is studied, but when the autobiography has to function as a source for a question linked to a certain historical time or a problem in the society. This is explained by Jeremy Popkin: ‘Autobiographies, or so the romantic image of the genre would
19 Ibid., 2
20 J. J. Rousseau, The Confessions (New York: The Pocket Library, translation from Confessions, 1783)
21 C.Berryman, “Critical mirrors: theories of autobiography”, Mosaic (Winnipeg) 32.1 (1999) 22 Ibid.
23 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 97-98 24 Ibid., 1
have it, are flamboyant assertions of individuality and subjectivity, whereas serious scholarly endeavour, at least in the social and natural sciences, is often collective, and its results are supposed to be unaffected by researchers’ private interests and emotions.’26 The subjective
truth is not necessarily the same as the factual history, because in an autobiography the perceptions of a person are crucial to the story, which are not easily verifiable by someone else.27 So when autobiography is used as, for example, a historical source, it can be difficult to
make a distinction between the facts and the own, subjective interpretations that the
autobiography contains. However, this criticism is often subject of reproach as well, as some critics are of the opinion that the subjective interpretation of history is of high importance too. This is because of the fact that autobiography and life narrative are always an historically situated form of self-representation, and therefore influenced by history.28
However, there are also several reasons that support the use of autobiography as a source of research in the field of, for instance, history and sociology. We find examples of such reasoning in the work of Maynes, Pierce and Laslett, who are sociologists, who mainly look at oral life stories and the way they are represented. A first reason that is given by them in favour of the use of the autobiography as a source for sociological research is the fact that autobiography reveals more about the relationship between the individual and the social.29
This is an insight in people’s life that is often not provided by a usual historical text. The same counts for the insight in emotions, motivations and imaginations that can be found in a source such as an autobiography or a life narrative, but not in a regular scientific work.30 Another
interesting advantage of autobiography is that it can give a platform to ‘marginalized
voices’.31 This means that minorities that are not heard in society, can have a voice by writing
an autobiography. Examples of such groups are feminists and people that are gay.32 We could
add the group of refugees to these examples.
Gillian Whitlock did research about refugees and life narrative, as we have seen in the introduction. In, for example, her article ‘Letters from Nauru’, she analyses letters of Afghan refugees that have fled to Australia. In her conclusion, she emphasizes the importance of life narrative as a source, next to historical sources:
26 J. D. Popkin, “Is Autobiography Anti-academic and Uneconomical? Some Thoughts on Academic Autobiography”, History of Political Economy 39.1 (2007):30
27 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 7
28 M. J. Maynes, J. L. Pierce, B. Laslett, Telling Stories. The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences
and History (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008), 10
29 Ibid., 3 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 6 32 Ibid., 6-7
‘Letters, perhaps more than any other artifact reminds us of the uniqueness of life narrative: the difference between life narrative and other forms of historical record is the performance of rhetorical acts: the justification of subjective perceptions, disputing alternative accounts, conveying cultural information with subjective force, an active and persuasive engagement with the witness. In the letter, these rhetorical elements of assertion, justification, judgement and interrogation assume an intimate and personal force that produce powerful affects of shame, complicity and responsibility.’33
This is the reason why the two narratives Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel
du parfait refugié politique are being used as a source for this thesis. This bottom-up, instead
of top-down, perspective, will enable us to shed another light on the issue of refugees, and will provide us with information that is not available through the regular scientific work. 1.2 Different types of autobiographies
In the book of Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, several types of autobiographies are distinguished. It is difficult to say whether Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit
manuel du parfait réfugié politique can be defined as ‘real’ autobiographies, as defined by
Smith and Watson, but they seem to have some characteristics of different types of
autobiographies. Such a category as an ‘asylum seeker life narrative’ does not exist, which makes it difficult to say exactly which type of life narrative they are, as they have
characteristics of more than one. We will now look at the different types of autobiography, such as ‘autofiction’ and ‘trauma narrative’, and determine which characteristics of these types can be identified in the narratives that we are analysing. Both narratives have
characteristics of more than one type of autobiography, as will be explained. It will guide us to interpret the information that is given by the narrative in the right way and to know better the sources that are used in the analysis.
We will first have a look at Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, which is written in the first person. The first interesting aspect of the book is that the author, Al Galidi, does not specify whether all of the given information is fictional or non-fictional. This becomes clear in the preface of the book: ‘Dit boek is fictie voor iemand die het niet kan geloven, maar non-fictie voor iemand die ervoor open staat. Of nee, laat dit boek non-non-fictie zijn, zodat de wereld
waarin ik jarenlang heb moeten verblijven, verandert van fictie in non-fictie.’34 This citation
makes clear that the interpretation of the story of the author, that we find in the narrative, depends on the interpretation, expectations and wishes of the reader. This is an interesting fact, because it adds another layer to the ‘subjectivity’ of autobiography that depends, according to Mayne, Pierce and Laslett, on the fact that autobiography is an interpretation of the author. In this case, we see that, according to the author himself, it is the reader that decides whether the story is subjective or not, and therefor fiction or non-fiction. The author even addresses implicitly the concept of subjectivity, and explains that he changed the name of the main character, because this main character could be the writer, without being the main character of the book.35 From this and the fact that the writer changed the name of the main
character, we can conclude that we cannot be sure whether the life narrative is fiction or non-fiction. For this reason, we could say that the life narrative has some characteristics of the autobiographical genre ‘autofiction’36. As the writer wants to give a voice to himself, but also
to the whole community of refugees that he has been a part of, we could also say that the narrative has some characteristics of an ‘autography’37. Autography means that there is an
interaction between the ‘I’ and the community. The ‘I’ represents the community at the same time, we find a lot of dialogues throughout the book. The community is clearly present in the life narrative in this dialogue form but also purely through the eyes of Semmier, as he
describes the members of the community. We read a story that is his story, but the story of a lot of other people as well: ‘Misschien zal mij gevraagd worden of dit mijn verhaal is. Dan zeg ik: nee. Maar als mij gevraagd wordt: Is dit ook jouw verhaal? zeg ik volmondig: ja.’38
The ‘ethnic life narrative’ is another type of a life narrative that is mentioned by Smith and Watson. In Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, the theme of ethnicity plays an important role. It could be argued that the narrative has also some characteristics of an ‘ethnic life narrative’. The definition of an ethnic life narrative is, according to Smith and Watson, ‘A mode of autobiographical narrative, emergent in ethnic communities within or across nations, that negotiates ethnic identification around multiple pasts and “multiple, provisional axes of organization” (Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, “Immigrant Autobiography,” 160).39 In Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, we see a constant emphasis on the different ethnicities. We also see a
clear interaction between the different ethnicities, including the Dutch one. There is also a 34 R.Al Galidi, Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, 8
35 Ibid., 8
36 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 186 37 Ibid., 186-187
38 R. Al Galidi, Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, 8
clear process of identity shaping by the interaction of these various ethnicities. The theme of identity will be further developed in the third chapter.
In the preface, Al Galidi states that he does not like to talk about his experiences as an asylum seeker, and that he did not talk about it at all for a long time: ‘Dit verhaal zat me dwars. Erover schrijven lukte nooit goed, zelfs er openhartig over spreken vond ik moeilijk. Ook jaren later kon ik het er niet echt over hebben. Ik wilde verder. Ik begon het onderwerp te mijden, om niet meegesleurd te worden door herinneringen.’40 He lets us know as well, that he
needed to talk or write about the story in order to continue his life and make a new start. This is one of the reasons why he decided to write his story, in different parts to a friend on a monthly basis: ‘Hij voelde misschien dat ik dit verhaal kwijt moest om mijn leven opnieuw te beginnen.’41 Because of this fact, the narrative seems to have some characteristics as well of
the ‘trauma narrative’, that is defined by Smith and Watson as ‘A mode of speaking the unspeakable’42, and that could function as a relief, which helps the author to finally talk about
his story and to be able to move on afterwards. This is what we see in the preface of Hoe ik
talent voor het leven kreeg.
We will now specify the characteristics of Petit manuel du parfait refugié politique. Contrary to Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, it has not been written in the first person, but in the imperative. The first sentence of the book illustrates this: ‘Si vous cherchez à avoir des problèmes dans un tel pays, il n’est pas nécessaire d’avoir un fusil…’43
We can conclude from the preface that the story is not completely the same as the story of the author, Mana Neyestani. Neyestani lets us know from the start that the book has been inspired by his own story as a refugee, but also by the stories of other people, that he has interviewed, and by information that has been gathered for him: ‘Ce livre est essentiellement inspiré de mon histoire, ainsi que de celles de personnes de mon entourage que j’ai
interviewées pour mon Petit manuel. Je remercie Kianoush Ramezani, Shahrokh Heidari et Mani Khoshravesh pour avoir partagé leurs expériences avec moi, et Shahnaz Ojaghi, pour avoir rassemblé des informations complémentaires.’44 This makes it hard to define which part
of the book has been lived by Neyestani, and which part is based on the stories of other people. It can be compared to Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg. For both works counts: it
40 R. Al Galidi, Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, 7 41 Ibid., 8
42 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 206 43 M. Neyestani, Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, 8
tells the story of a group of people, the refugees, that is at the same time the story of the writer himself. For this reason, the life narrative Petit manuel du parfait refugié politique, just like
Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, has some characteristics of ‘autofiction’45, as the whole
stories is based on the story of the writer as on the story of others that have been in the same situation.
We have seen that ethnicity plays an important role in Hoe ik talent voor het leven
kreeg. This is also the case in Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique. However, the
difference between the ‘refugee’ and the French ethnicity is emphasized, which is slightly different from Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, in which the different identities of the refugees are highlighted as well. Parts of Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique could be interpreted as containing characteristics of an ‘ethnic life narrative’46.
The title gives us information about the type of the life narrative as well. It is called ‘Petit manuel’, which means ‘small handbook’. The narrative explains us how to deal with certain difficult situations, based on the authors own experiences. This could be interpreted as a ‘self-help narrative’47. According to Smith and Watson, this type of autobiography is often
used to describe autobiographies written by people that have been addicted to drugs or alcohol, but a handbook can also be seen as a form of self-help. However, the form may resemble to that of the self-help narrative, but the main aim of the book is completely
different. The goal of this narrative is not to help, but to teach people more about the situation you are in as a refugee. The objective of the Petit manuel is not to be a literal handbook for new refugees.
We have seen that both Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait
réfugié politique have characteristics of ‘autofiction’ and the ‘ethnic life narrative’.
Furthermore, Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg has some characteristics of a ‘traume narrative’ and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique some of the ‘self-help narrative’. However, as already has been mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph, it is difficult to say whether the narratives could really be defined as being an autobiography, or one type of an autobiography. It are rather complex life narratives that employ different strategies and styles and interweave several voices in the story.
1.3 The Autobiographical Pact
45 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 186 46 Ibid., 194
As we have seen in the last paragraph, both life narratives have some characteristics of a fictional autobiography, as both narratives state to represent the story of a group of people, and both authors of the narratives let us, as a reader, decide whether we believe the story or not. The type of ‘autofiction’ is very interesting regarding the definition of ‘autobiography’, because the concept of ‘fiction’ seems opposite to the genre. This is directly related to the concept of the ‘autobiographical pact’, which is often seen as a requirement for the genre. What is this autobiographical pact exactly? Does it change the way of interpreting Hoe ik
talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique?
As we have seen, an autobiography is the ‘self-narrative’ of a person about his life. This implies that the reader may expect that the story is truthful. This is called the
Autobiographical Pact, which consists of a ‘contract’ between the author and the reader; the reader trusts the author and his narratives and expects it to be true. We find a definition of this ‘Autobiographical Pact’ in an article of Braz, about the fiction in the work of Dunstan
Ramsay. He bases his definition of Philippe Lejeune: ‘autobiography is a narrative in which ‘the author, the narrator, and the protagonist must be identical’ (5). That is, the unwritten yet real contract or pact between the autobiographer and the reader is that there can be no discrepancy between the name of the subject of a text and ‘the name of the author on the cover’ (14).’48
It is interesting to see that this ‘Autobiographical Pact’ does not only imply that the narrative is true, but also that the name of the author has to be the same as the name of the main character. This is obviously not the case in Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, as the main character’s name is Semmier, and not Rodaan, the first name of Al Galidi. In Petit
manuel du parfait réfugié politique, it is hard to find the name of the main character but it is
mentioned once in an image of the passport.49 The name that is used is ‘Cafard’, which is not
the same as Neyestani’s own name. This implies that both life narratives could not be seen as autobiographies. Furthermore, the definition of Lejeune implies that it is not possible to have an autobiographical narrative that represents the story of more than one person, as ‘the author, the narrator, and the protagonist must be identical’.
However, not all critics support the idea of the ‘Autobiographical Pact’, which supposes that when a narrative is fiction, it cannot be strictly termed an autobiography. We find a first example of this in the work of Braz, who is of the opinion that it are not the verifiable facts and name of the author that are crucial to an autobiography, but the ‘subject’s
48 A. Braz, “The Fictional Autobiographical Pact: Dunstan Ramsay’s Poetic Autobiography of Magnus Eisengrim”, University of Toronto Quarterly 78.4 (2009): 1001
idea of his or her life’. Braz has written about the book Phantasmata of Dunstan Ramsay, of which he explains why he is of the opinion that it could be seen as an autobiography, even though not all the events in Phantasma are ‘true’:
‘Combined with Magnus’ acceptance of Phantasmata as spiritually truthful, this seems to constitute the text’s fictional autobiographical pact. If an imaginative life narrative captures the subject’s idea of his or her life, and if it conveys what both writers and readers imagine such a life to be like, then it is a true autobiography.’50
In the article of Braz, this implies that an autobiography could have more than one author, which would not be possible according to the definition of Lejeune, but we could also apply this idea to the life narratives that we are analysing: it may be the story of a group that is told, but that does not mean that it is not the true story of the author. We could even state that the story is even more truthful, as it represents the ‘true story’ of more than one person. The story is in fact confirmed by more than one person, as it is the story of more than one person. If there are more people that confirm the story, it could be more likely for the story to be true.
A second example of a person who states that fiction could be seen as autobiography, is Connie Anderson. By analysing the work Ecriture ou la vie of Semprun, which is fictional, she comes to the conclusion that fiction could be even crucial to the truthfulness of a story, because it makes the image of what has happened in the life of the author even more alive. This makes it clearer to the reader, and transmits what has happened in the best possible way. This makes the image of the essence of the story true, so the story can still be seen as
autobiography:
‘Represented thought leads us to take subjective perception as established fact, until events force us to see otherwise. It gives us a fuller sense of the experience as it was lived. Without it, we would probably not be struck with the full force of the narrator’s former childhood innocence surging back into his mind (even though it does not ultimately prevail in the circumstance), nor by the undying faith and will to survive of the concentration camp survivor murmuring the Kaddish to himself. This narrative
50 A. Braz, “The Fictional Autobiographical Pact: Dunstan Ramsay’s Poetic Autobiography of Magnus Eisengrim”, University of Toronto Quarterly 78.4 (2009): 1005
technique, ‘‘artifice’’ par excellence, conveys the transparent density of Semprun’s experience most effectively.’51
This could also be applied to the narratives that we are analysing. The fictional part that is added to the story, is the story of other people. It remains unclear which part is fictional in the end, but we have seen in the previous paragraph that the narratives have been based on these stories as well as on the stories of the author himself. This combination of stories could be seen as the fictional part of the narratives. At the same time, this makes the story of the author much richer, and makes the story of a refugee that has come to France or to the Netherlands, much clearer, as it is not only the limited story of the author on which the narrative is based. This is the true story of the author, but the true story of any other refugee at the same time, as show us the prefaces of both books.
This could make us wonder if the narratives might be considered as ‘fictional
autobiographies’, as the essence of the story is the story of the author, while being the story of another person at the same time. As it is difficult to exactly define the genre of the two books, we will continue to use the term ‘life narrative’.
Conclusion
In this first chapter, we have seen that the autobiography is a special type of source. It is often criticised, because of its subjectivity, when it is used as a source for historical or sociological research. However, using an autobiography as the source of a study in these study fields has also advantages: it can offer perspectives that scientific, academic texts cannot, such as the perspective of the ‘marginalized voice’. Because of these other perspectives, autobiographies are being used as a source for this thesis. We have also seen that there exist a lot of types of the autobiographical genre. We have analysed of which of these types the life narratives that we are analysing have characteristics. We have seen that both life narratives have some characteristics of ‘autofiction’ and of the ‘ethnic life narrative’. This means that the narratives are comparable to each other for the biggest part. However, there are some small differences between the types of the two works, as Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg has some
characteristics of a ‘trauma narrative’ and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique of a ‘self-help narrative’. It is hard to say whether the life narratives could really be defined as
51 C. Anderson, “Artifice and Autobiographical Pact in Semprun’s Ecriture ou la vie”, Neophilologus 90 (2006) : 571
autobiographies or as a certain type of an autobiography. We have finished this chapter with a paragraph about the Autobiographical Pact. We have seen that even ‘autofiction’, as
mentioned by Smith and Watson, is often not seen as a clear example of an autobiography, because of the fictional ‘contract’ between the author and the reader, which implies that the author writes the truth. We have also seen, that there are scholars that are of the opinion that autofiction is a true example of an autobiography.
2. Authority, irony and audience
In this chapter, we will analyse the formal aspects of the two life narratives Hoe ik talent voor
het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique. We will look at the narrative
style and structure of the books. First, we will look at the concepts of ‘authority’ and
‘authenticity’, which will tell us more about the narrator. Thereafter, we will look at the irony that is present in both books. The last concepts we will look at are ‘audience’ and ‘addressee’, which will teach us more about the implied reader. This will help us to answer the question: In what way are the life narratives comparable if we look at their form and meaning, and what are the main differences?
2.1 Authority and authenticity
Authority and authenticity are concepts that are related to the ‘right of telling the story’, according to Smith and Watson.52 This is an interesting concept, in relation to the two life
narratives, because as we have seen in the previous chapter, the narrators of both books claim to represent the story of a large group, and not just the story of a single person. Because of this fact, the authority and authenticity of both books can be linked to a second concept mentioned by Smith and Watson: the concept of relationality. This means the ‘others that inhabit the text’.53 As we have seen in the previous chapter, the preface of both books shows
us that the story that is told by the narrator, could be seen as the story of the author himself, but as the story of every person that has been in the same situation as well.
In Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, we constantly hear the voices of other characters, as the chapters are often written in dialogue form. A significant number of chapters tell the story of another person and often start with the name of that person, which emphasizes his or her importance. In chapter 63 we find a part of the story of Jelena:
‘Jelena leek moe en verdrietig. Ik dacht dat Maarten haar weggestuurd had uit zijn huis en dat ze niet anders kon dan terugkeren van het leven in Nederland naar het AZC, van een huis met één ander persoon naar een gebouw met meer dan vijfhonderd mensen.’54
52 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 173-174 53 Ibid., 177
In chapter 64 we find the story of Hatim:
‘Hatim, die uit Koeweit kwam, was blind, maar hij wist meer dan Said over de gebeurtenissen in het AZC. Nooit ontmoette ik iemand met scherpere ogen.’55
Chapter 65 is about Talib, and starts with his name as well:
‘Over Talib heb ik nog weinig verteld, maar hij was belangrijk voor mij. Hij had een lelijk gezicht vol littekens. Zijn huid vertoonede sporen van puistjes, maar ook van brandwonden en martelingen.’56
It seems like the author wants to tell the story of every person he has met in the refugee centre, but he feels he cannot because he has to bring the book to an end:
‘Nu vertel ik dan over mijn laatste jaar in het AZC. Niet omdat ik er aankwam of omdat het verhaal er aankwam, maar omdat ik er wil aankomen. Ik had niet gedacht zo veel verhalen te vertellen, maar de honderden mensen die ik n het AZC heb ontmoet, leken me te zeggen dat ik hun verhalen moest doorvertellen. En vele asielzoekers roepen nog in mijn hoofd om ook hun stem te laten horen.’57
The fact that the story is the story of a group of people, and not of a single person, makes the story more a universal story than a ‘regular’ autobiography or life narrative. The ‘right of telling the story’ could be interpreted as an ‘urge’, a responsibility of the author, in the case of
Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg. The stories that have been selected by the author to tell in
the book, seem all to have a tragic aspect. Talib, for example, has been tortured and still has scarfs on his face, as shows the citation about him. Jelena seems to end up in prostitution. It seems like Al Galidi chooses to tell the stories of people who are not able to tell their story by themselves. It is also very striking that Semmier speaks Dutch very well, but we do not find a story of someone in the book that speaks Dutch as well as he does. Al Galidi himself, the author of the book, is fluent in Dutch like the main character, otherwise he would not have been able to write the book. This confirms the idea that the author feels the urge to tell the story of people that cannot tell the story by themselves, the ‘marginalized voices’.
55 Ibid., 390 56 Ibid., 399 57 Ibid., 459
The fact that Al Galidi and Neyestani are capable of speaking and writing Dutch and French, the languages in which the books are written, means that they have agency58: they are
capable of acting, which means writing in this case. The other characters in the books do not have agency, they cannot write and tell their story, for example because they do not speak and write Dutch or French. For both books count that the fact that it is also their own story, gives the author authority. The stories are authentic. This authenticity is emphasized by the
prefaces, which show that the authors have experienced the stories by himself, this gives them authority.
The representation of the group might be the same in Petit manuel du parfait réfugié
politique as in Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, as shows the preface. The form, however, is
slightly different. The life narrative is a combination of images and text. For this reason, we could call the narrative an ‘autographic’. We find a clear definition of an autographic an the article of Gillian Whitlock and Anna Poletti:
‘Autographics, n. Áwtográffiks. 2007: Life narrative fabricated in and through drawing and design using various technologies, modes, and materials. A practice of reading the signs, symbols and techniques of visual arts in life narrative. See also autobiography, biography, testimony, autobiographics, comics, self-portrait, avatar. . .’59
As Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique is clearly a drawn life narrative, which is in accordance with this definition, we could state that this is an autographic. Whitlock and Poletti show us in their article that it is a relatively new term, and that there are several forms of autographics, such as comics, but also social media like Flickr and MySpace and graffiti could be seen as a form of it, according to them. The fact that Petit manuel du parfait réfugié
politique is mainly drawn, with small texts as commentary and some text balloons, means that
there are some differences in the representation of the story. The images have to tell almost the whole story, which means that they have to be clear. In order to be clear, they are often exaggerated and strong. This makes the life narrative very confronting: if a story is written, you create your own image of it in your mind as a reader. Even though the text can be very detailed, the image remains abstract and in the head of the reader. With a life narrative in image form, this is not the case. We see the in this case often provocative image, in front of
58 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 176
us. It cannot be nuanced in our heads. Because of the use of caricatures, the irony60 that is
used in the narrative, is even more obvious. The fact that Neyestani is capable of using such characterising caricatures of the French people and French society, is proof of a very profound cultural knowledge of France and good integration.
This last remark counts for Al Galidi as well, but with text: the fact that he is capable of describing the Dutch society in such a detailed way, and the fact that he is capable of ‘playing’ with this through for instance the use of irony, shows the way he integration in the Dutch society. As both authors have this knowledge about the culture of the host country, but also about their own culture and country, it could almost be seen as a form of ‘mediating’ between the people of the two countries, as a form of ‘writing back’61.
Throughout the life narrative Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, we do not find any dialogue. We only see the story of the main character represented in the book. We find some text balloons with voices of other people, but they have always the function of illustrating what is already said by the main narrator, and they are not, like in Hoe ik talent voor het leven
kreeg, of the same value as the story of the narrator. The title of the book, Petit manuel, which
means small handbook, explains why. The book is a literal ‘handbook’ in which the main character serves as an illustration on what to do in the different situations.
The title of ‘handbook’ is not a unique or original, it is also in a similar context by Kapllani, the author of A Short Border Handbook, also in a context of migration. The name of ‘handbook’ implies that someone needs instruction. However, in this case it is probably used in an ironical way.62
The title is not the only thing the life narratives of Neyestani and Kapllani have in common: the form is comparable as well, also to the book of Al Galidi. Like Hoe ik talent
voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, Kapplani’s A Short Border Handbook (2006)63 is based on his own story, but on the stories of other people at the same
time: ‘Part autobiography part fiction, Kapllani’s first book is a hybrid of his own story and the stories of others, especially of women migrants who told him of their own border
60 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2010) 239 61 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 176
62 M. Jaggi, “A Short Border Handbook, By Gazmend Kapllani trans Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife”, Independent (5-06-2009), accessed June 2, 2016, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-short-border-handbook-by-gazmend-kapllani-trans-anne-marie-stanton-ife-1696906.html
experiences.’64 Also his work My name is Europe (2010)65 includes the stories of other
people.66 For example, the chapters are named after the person of whom the story is. This
bears a lot of resemblance to Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, in which the chapter starts with the name of the person whose story is told. Moreover, we find the same representation of ‘marginalized voices’ in Kapllani’s work:
‘The most he can hope for is that they will understand, first him, and then all those who cannot speak, who don’t know to speak, who don’t have the courage to speak and who bury their narratives deep inside themselves instead. You cannot understand a migrant if you haven’t heard his story first.’67
The ‘autobiographical ‘I’’68, also mentioned by Smith and Watson, is a last concept
that is related to authority and authenticity that we will analyse. The autobiographical ‘I’ involves the narrator, and the narrated I. The narrator is the person that is speaking, the narrated ‘I’ is the character at the time the story takes place.69
If we look at Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, we see that there is no difference between the narrated ‘I’ and the narrator. The story is not written in the first person, what makes it hard to say if there is actually a narrated ‘I’. The person in the pictures implies that there is a narrated I, as he is guiding us through the story, while he is living the story at the same time. The narrator and the narrated ‘I’ seem to be the same person at the same moment in time. They are immigrants, they observe their host country and they give instructions about this new world in an often ironical way. Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, is different in this respect. The narrating ‘I’ is not the same as the narrated ‘I’. The narrator is looking back at a period of time, in which the narrated ‘I’ plays a role. The narrated ‘I’ is an immigrant that gets to know a new culture, the narrator already knows a lot about this culture. The tone is, like in Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, often ironic.
64 K. Georganta, “The unbearable similarity of the other: The multiple identities of Gazmend Kapllani’s migrant narratives”, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture 3:2 (2012): 191
65 G. Kapllani, My Name is Europe (Athens: Livaris, 2010) 66 K. Georganta, “The unbearable similarity of the other”, 192 67 G. Kapllani, A Short Border Handbook, 5
68 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 167-168 69 Ibid.
2.2 Irony
If we look at the definition of ‘irony’, we find that it means ‘semantic inversion’70, or ‘saying
one thing and meaning another’71. This means that something that is said or written, does not
have its literal meaning, but a second meaning, that is often the opposite of its literal meaning. As we already have said in the last paragraph, the title of ‘handbook’ is an example of this. The narrative of Neyestani is not meant at all to be a handbook: the meaning of the narrative is not to guide asylum seekers through the French system and procedures, but to make a point about the French system, and to show this to the audience. Irony is used in both books
throughout, as a narrative strategy, it is often present. Which function does it have in the narratives?
Irony has more than one functionin Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit
manuel du parfait réfugié politique. For example, we find situations in which it is meant to
add humour to the narrative72 which makes it more enjoyable and more accessible sometimes.
In both narratives we find several ‘heavy’ situations that are made lighter by irony, and funnier. An example of a situation in which the use of irony adds humor to the text in Hoe ik
talent voor het leven kreeg is the following:
‘Will ging weer bellen en liet Brad bij mij staan, maar kwam niet terug om Brad te zeggen waarom hij moest komen of wie hij had gebeld. Ik wist het ook niet. Will moest een sterk hoofd hebben, want hij was op hetzelfde moment met duizend
verschillende dingen bezig. Brad ging weer weg en ik rustte wat in mijn tent, omdat ik over een uurtje opgehangen zou worden.’73
In this situation, Semmier helps Will, a producer, with his movie. He plays several roles in it, and as it is a war movie, he has to play someone that has to be hung. The following example, from Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, is an example that makes a heavy situation, a difficult waiting situation, lighter:
70 L. Anolli, R. Ciceri, M.G. Infantino, “Behind Dark Glasses : Irony as a Strategy for Indirect Communication”, Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs 128:1 (2002): 77
71 L. Hutcheon, “The Complex Functions of Irony”, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 16:2 (1992): 219
72 H.L. Colston, “Salting a wound or sugaring a pill: The pragmatic functions of ironic criticism”, Discourse
Processes 23:1 (1997): 26
Neyestani, p.65
However, there exist more functions of irony. According to Anolli, Ciceri and Infantino, irony changes the person that has the responsibility of the meaning of the text, which is something that is difficult to pronounce, from the author to the reader. As they explain: Irony ‘leaves to the addressee the responsibility for choosing a certain path of sense among different options. In this manner, the ironist holds an inviolable and unreachable position, because he or she can always switch from the communicative meaning (the real sense of the utterance, i.e., the actual intention) to the literal meaning (of surface), and vice versa.’74 We find exactly the same idea in an article of Hutcheon: ‘It is said that irony allows
"a speaker to address remarks to a recipient which the latter will understand quite well, be known to understand, know that he is known to understand; and yet neither participant will be able to hold the other responsible for what has been understood" (Goffman 515). Irony, then, can be seen as a deliberate evasion of responsibility.’75
74 L. Anolli, R. Ciceri, M.G. Infantino, “Behind Dark Glasses”, 90 75 L. Hutcheon, “The Complex Functions of Irony”, 224
This is a very interesting interpretation of irony regarding Hoe ik talent voor het leven
kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique. Both books deal with situations that are
sometimes hard to believe for people from France and the Netherlands. We see a lot of situations in both books that are critical about the host countries France and the Netherlands. We see this critical attitude towards for example the asylum procedure, but also towards the people that are already living in the Netherlands, and their opinion and attitude towards the asylum seekers. The author could have the feeling to be on slippery ground. If something is not said by the author, but nevertheless understood by the reader, the meaning of the text becomes the responsibility of the reader, because it is the reader that interprets a text in a certain way, as well as that of the author. It is the reader that understands certain things in a certain way, even though it has not been written this way. The two following examples will illustrate this idea. The first example is a situation in which three asylum seekers finally have the right to see a dentist, because they have been in pain for several days because of a painful tooth. The dentist is in a hurry, which results even in the fact that the wrong tooth is pulled out of the mouth of one of the asylum seekers:
‘Ik vroeg de tandarts toen hij bezig was waarom hij zo’n haast had. Hij vertelde me dat er in Nederland niet genoeg tandartsen waren en dat de Nederlanders zelf
maandenlang op een wachtlijst stonden als ze naar een andere stad verhuisden. Dat verbaasde me, want Nederland was maar zo’n klein landje. Als een Nederlandse tandarts drie mensen kon helpen in twintig minuten, zouden honderd tandartsen genoeg moeten zijn voor de hele bevolking.’76
In this citation from Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, Semmier says that he is very suprised about the fact that there are not enough dentists in the Netherlands. He says that the dentists are so fast, that a hundred dentists should be sufficient for the whole population. But the true meaning is actually a completely different one: Semmier implies that dentists are using their position in order to make money. This negative message about the Netherlands is not said anywhere in a literal way. In this way, the interpretation becomes the readers own
responsibility. The author cannot be blamed for the negative interpretation. The same can be said about the following image:
Neyestani, p. 39
The literal meaning of the image is that an asylum seeker should learn French before deciding to leave the home country, because the procedures in France require this. This is no direct criticism, but a neutral and objective message that the author cannot be blamed for, even though the irony might be very obvious. The actual message, however, is a more negative one. The author implies that it is ridiculous that the procedures are mostly in French. By not saying it, this negative interpretation becomes the responsibility of the reader, which allows the author to write freely without the risk of being blamed for it.
2.3 Audience and addressee
We will now shortly address the aspect of the ‘audience and addressee’.77 This aspect
addresses the question ‘to what kind of audience have the narratives been written?’. We have seen in the paragraph about authority and authenticity that the narratives are not only the stories of the authors, but the stories of a whole group.
This implies an audience: if a story of a group has to be told, it has to be told to the people that do not know it yet. If the story has to be interpreted in a certain way, you need people with enough (cultural) knowledge to interpret the story in the right way, and to
acknowledge the negative aspects of the asylum procedures in their own countries. In the case
of Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, this seem to be the people that are living in the Netherlands, in the case of Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique the French people.
In an interview with Al Galidi, he says that he also adapted to the audience. He changed his way of writing, because a Dutch audience likes short and clear stories, according to him. In Iraq he wrote in a more abundant way:
‘Er zijn vier sleutels naar de Nederlandse lezer: herkenbaarheid, geen overdrijving, geen eigen mening en vooral: houd het kort. Dat laatste is echt het belangrijkste voor een Nederlandse lezer. Dit boek is eigenlijk nog te dik, maar ik had met gemak 1500 pagina’s kunnen schrijven.’78
An interesting guiding question of Smith and Watson, regarding the question why the life narrative has been written, is ‘What kind of reader does the text ask you to be?’79. We find
the answer in the preface of both books.
‘J’étais entrée en France à l’invitation de la ville de Paris, qui m’a pris en charge, …, De ce fait, j’ai eu beaucoup moins de paperasserie à remplir que la plupart des
réfugiés. Mais j’ai vécu certaines choses, comme tout demandeur d’asile : les longues queues, des situations humiliantes dans les salles d’attente, des attitudes strictes et hautaines, une bureaucratie éprouvante, des décisions retardées du fait de négligences, des horaires de bureau imprécis ou des fermetures intempestives, et bon nombre d’autres choses encore. Voilà ce que j’ai en commun avec tout individu ayant dû quitter son pays pour fuis des problèmes comme la guerre ou des régimes totalitaires et chercher refuge en France.’80
In this quote from the preface of Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique, Neyestani tells us that every refugee has to go through a lot of difficulties when he demands asylum in France. In the book he wants to show these difficulties. By reading the story, people from France might understand the refugees better, and learn more about everything they have or had to go through. This implies that Neyestani wants the reader to be an open, reasonable and moreover understanding person.
78 T. Jaeger, “Ik heb van Nederlanders geleerd: Houd het kort”, NRC.nl (15-01-2016),
http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/2016/01/15/ik-heb-van-nederlanders-geleerd-houd-het-kort-1576355, 26-06-2016 79 Ibid.
We find almost the same idea in Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg: ‘Ik heb mijn best gedaan om Semmier een zo duidelijk mogelijk beeld van die onbekende wereld te laten tonen.’81 This implies an understanding, open reader, who by reading the life narrative, will
learn more about the situation of asylum seekers in the Netherlands, unknown to people that are not a part of the group of refugees.
Conlusion
In this chapter, we have looked at the concepts ‘authority and authenticity’, ‘irony’ and ‘audience’. We have seen that both life narratives represent the stories of a group, and not just of one person. We have also seen that this is not a phenomenon specific to these two books, as there exist other life narratives, like for example Kapllani’s A Short Border Handbook, that are comparable to Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié
politique at this point. Another observation made in this chapter is that in both life narratives,
irony is present. A possible function of the irony in the narratives is that the responsibility of the message becomes the responsibility of the reader instead of that of the author. This could be the case for both narratives, as it is used in a comparable way. A last thing we have seen is that the audience of both books is comparable: both life narratives have been written for people that are not a part of the group of refugees. The main aim of the narratives is probably to create more understanding of the situation that asylum seekers live in and the problems and difficulties they have to deal with.
3. Identity
In this chapter, we will have a closer look at the identity of the narrators in Hoe ik talent voor
het leven kreeg and Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique. According to Smith and
Watson, there are several models of identity, which we can find in life narratives.82 In order to
analyse the identity of the main character in both works, we will first have a look at the different concepts of identity that are relevant here. We will also analyse the identities that the authors represent in the books, and the conflict between the different identities83. In which
way is the concept of identity represented in Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg and Petit
manuel du parfait réfugié politique?
We will start in the first paragraph by defining the existing definitions and models of identity. It is not easy to give one definition of identity, as it is a very complicated concept. It is, however, indisputable that it has changed over time. From the 1960’s on, ‘identity began to mean more than just ‘sameness’, and to signify a ‘positively valued socio-psychological construct’, consisting of ‘allegiance to people, group, and often place and past.’84 Sameness,
in this definition, means ‘the sameness of a person or a thing at all times or in all
circumstances.’85 This definition shows us that the identity of a person was seen as something
that did not change over time. This idea developed into the idea that identity is changeable over time, and that it is constructed by many factors, such as the society that an individual lives in. This shows us three interesting things: the concept of identity has become more important than it was in the past (before the 1960’s) as the definition of the concept has been further developed, identity is often seen as a ‘construct’, and not as something that is inherent to the self; and finally, there is an emphasis on group identity. The concepts of ‘construct’ and ‘group identity’ are of importance to this thesis, and will be further developed.
3.1 Construct or inherent
The ‘constructed identity’ is a very complicated concept, because there a different things that influence it. The political construct, that will be explained in this paragraph, is the most known form of a ‘constructed identity’, but there are more examples in the two books of a
82 S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography (2001), 168 83 Ibid., 168-169
84 M.J. Wintle, The Image of Europe. Visualizing Europe in Cartography and Iconography throughout the
Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009), 3
85 R. Langbaum, The Mysteries of Identity: A Theme in Modern Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 25
constructed identity. Examples of such constructed identities are constructed stories by the asylum seekers themselves, but also the fact that Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg starts with a situation in which his passports is of high importance, can also be seen as an example of a ‘constructed identity’. This will be further developed in the last paragraph. We will first look at the theories that are related to this concept.
There are two theories concerning this concept: the essentialist theory and the constructivist theory. Essentialists argue that identity is an essential part of a person, of a ‘self’. They argue that it is mostly genetically transferred. Nature plays an important part in this process. Climate could be an influence as well: for example the sun is often seen as a factor that changes the ‘temperament’ of people. Another theory is the constructivist theory. This theory is opposed to the essentialist theory. As implied by the name, constructivists thought that identity is not inherited, but constructed. It is the result of nurture, more than nature.86 One’s identity can be influenced and formed during people’s lives, which is opposed
to the idea that people are born with a certain identity. It is often seen as a political process. An example of such a political process can be found in Michael Billig’s Banal Nationalism87,
a book that explains the political process of identity construction through ‘flagging the nation’. According to Billig, this consists of constant reminding of the nation, for instance by showing a nation’s flag at the television, or using words such as ‘the American’, in order to create the feeling that ‘the country’ is a natural thing instead of a construct. However, as the study shows, this is a political construct. Collective identities are highly influenced by culture, which is a construct itself, much more than by nature, such as the genes that a person
possesses. At this moment, the most accepted idea is that identity is constructed.88 An
example of a person that is in favour of the constructed theory at the level of the national identity is Benedict Anderson. He calls nations ‘communities’, which refer to the national constructed identity, ‘imagined communities’.89
If we look Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, we definitely see characteristics of constructed identities. Sometimes this identity is formed by a group, like the identity that exists in the centre of asylum seekers. Al Galidi calls the centre even his ‘country’, which makes him forget his home country Iraq, and the country that he lives in at this moment, the Netherlands: ‘Van het AZC.’ ‘Ik bedoel uit welk land.’ ‘Het AZC. Mijn land is één groot 86 M.J. Wintle, Culture and Identity in Europe, Aldershot: Avebury (1996), 116
87 M. Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: SAGE Publications, 1995) 88 M.J. Wintle, The Image of Europe, 3-4
89 B. Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London: Verso Rev. (2006)
AZC met miljoenen asielzoekers erin.’90 It may be obvious that this ‘national identity’, if we
can even call it that way, is not inherent to the ‘self’. It is a place that has been constructed by the Dutch government, that has become the world of Semmier in the book, and that he almost identifies with as a country. Moreover, this ‘country’ has its own ‘language’, the ‘asylum seeker language’:
‘Bijvoorbeeld: contact hebben met Nederlanders buiten het AZC bleek onmogelijk voor de asielzoekers, omdat ze de taal zelden genoeg spraken om contact te leggen. Daarom leren de asielzoekers de Nederlanders hun eigen taal: ‘het Asielzoekers’. Wat dat voor taal is? Het klinkt als een paar woorden Nederlands met een paar woorden Engels, die worden samengeraapt en door de grammatica van de moedertaal van de asielzoeker gehusseld.’91
Identity is not only a group construct, which was illustrated by the last example, but also something that can be constructed by a person himself. For example, the characters in the book change their identity all the time in order to obtain a Dutch passport, or to merit some privileges at the refugee centre. It remains unclear which part of the identity is invented, and which part of the person’s identity is real, and in which way they continue to co-exist. A first example of this is Nabiel, a person that tells everybody he has a constant headache due to the bad circumstances and punishments in his home country, which is a lie, at the start. We could say that he fakes a part of who he is and of what made him who he is. The most interesting part of this example is that after a certain period of time, Nabiel really has a headache. In a certain way, he believes his own lie, and created himself a part of his identity:
‘Soms gooide hij, terwijl wij het konden zien, de paracetamol in de prullenbak, maar als er een Nederlander bij was, pakte hij een flesje water uit zijn binnenzak, drukte een tabletje uit de verpakking en nam een paracetamolletje in. Na een paar maanden begon Nabiel echt hoofdpijn te krijgen, en begon hij de paracetamol ook te slikken als er geen Nederlander bij was.’92
The story and the identity that Nabiel starts to believe in, is that he has really been hit on his head in Irak:
90 R. Al Galidi, Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg, 364 91 Ibid., 215
