Hospitality in Contemporary Narratives of Forced Displacement
Keira Moulding
S2160587MA Literary Studies: Literature in Society Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
29th March 2019
Supervisor: Dr. Bram K. Ieven Second reader: Dr. Esther Op de Beek
Current prevalent representations of displacement are ubiquitous and often deeply shocking. Previous studies of refugee representation have focused on the polarisation of pro/anti-refugee narratives and highlighted patterns in their depiction at opposite poles (in humanitarian and media/political discourses). However, new methods and mediums for representation indicate the evolution of a third discourse which this thesis identifies. At once material, ethical, political and representational, the current crisis of forced migration demands response beyond the reach of governments, intergovernmental and humanitarian organisations. In looking to narrative to enhance our understanding of the contemporary ‘crisis’, cultural representations find new ways of responding to displacement and hosting— without which the debate cannot be advanced. This paper testifies to one strand of cultural engagement with forced migration by focusing on four narratives published since 2015. Reading across genres from fiction to life-stories to journalistic literature and theatre, this thesis examines new discursive approaches to refugee representation in Patrick Kingsley’s The New Odyssey, collaborative refugee writing projects, Voices from the ‘Jungle’ and Shatila Stories, and Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy’s play The Jungle.
Acknowledgements ………. 5 Introduction: Narratives of Displacement ……….. 6 -15 Chapter I: The Figure of the Refugee in Dominant Discourse ……….. 16 - 30 Chapter II: Place for the Displaced: Hospitable Representations ………. 31 - 46 Chapter III: Going Behind the Headlines in The New Odyssey ………. 47 - 67 Chapter IV: Reclaiming Narratives: Voices from the ‘Jungle’ & Shatila Stories ….. 68 - 90 Chapter V: Refugees, Theatre & Performance: The Jungle & Good Chance ….. 91 - 109 Conclusion: Fostering Hope & Understanding ………... 110 - 118 Works Cited ………. 119 - 132
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Bram Ieven, my thesis supervisor, for his pragmatic guidance, patient explanations and useful critiques of this thesis. I would
also like to thank Dr. Esther Op de Beek as my second reader.
My grateful thanks are also extended to Mr. Gordon Browning for his generous contribution toward my MA programme.
Narratives of Displacement
Current prevalent representations of displacement are ubiquitous and often deeply shocking. Newspapers print images of refugees in bleak camps or traipsing across borders. Headlines and politicians tell of ‘waves’ of people moving toward Europe and social media disseminates videos of crisis and flight. Previous studies of refugee representation have focused on the polarisation of pro/anti-refugee narratives and highlighted patterns in their depiction at opposite poles (in humanitarian and media/political discourses). However, critiques of both these dominant discourses have had impact. New methods and mediums for representation indicate the evolution of a third discourse which this thesis identifies. 1 While mainstream representations have, in some cases, galvanised acts of solidarity, there is a more complex, multifaceted story (and stories) not told through these fleeting depictions of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. It’s a story not just about the experiences of those displaced but about the host societies receiving or rejecting them as well as the societies they are forced to leave. At once material, ethical, political and representational, the current crisis of forced migration demands response beyond the reach of governments, intergovernmental and humanitarian
I refer to narrative - both in reference to single, specific narratives and to general, overarching
1
narratives - throughout this thesis in line with David Herman’s The Cambridge Companion to Narrative as the representation of a course of events, and/or introduction of a conflict and/or conveyance of what it’s like (real or imagined) to live through that disruption (279). The three overarching mainstream narratives I refer to are media, political and humanitarian. My use of the term discourse, however, refers outside its narratological use to its general definition as a specific written or spoken debate or discussion; the two mainstream discourses I refer to are media/political and humanitarian.
organisations. In looking to narrative to enhance our understanding of the contemporary ‘crisis’, cultural representations find new ways of responding to displacement and hosting— without which the debate cannot be advanced.
The refugee today is caught in a web of imposed stereotypes and expectations: bogus, illegal, grateful, worthy, suffering, victim. In dominant discourses, the figure of the refugee is exists within a tripartite structure: passive suffering victim, faceless threat to security, or - more recently - idealised ‘super-refugee’. A Western or Euro-centric focalisation in the media and in political rhetoric, that perpetuates a sense of ‘crisis’ for host nations, has contributed to the rise of populist discourse throughout Europe and the fortifying of its borders in an era of hostility towards the ‘other’. In the ‘necropolitical’ context of migration today, 2 representation informs, and is informed by, public and political unrest over the issue. Humanitarian narratives have been upheld as the antidote to media and 3 political representations of refugees and migrants as a threatening mass. However, 4 as Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh has argued, the humanitarian narrative is similarly problematic in that it imposes an exclusionary hierarchy of hospitality
For more on the media and political rhetoric around the ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015 see: Michał
2
Krzyżanowski, Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruth Wodak. “The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, vol. 16 no. 1-2, pp. 1-14, 2018, DOI: 10.1080/15562948.2017.1353189.
Achille Mbembe uses the term ‘necropolitics’ to describe the use of social and political power to
3
control death (as opposed to Foucault’s ‘biopolitics’ being the control over lives), and explore the hierarchy of the value of lives along racial lines. More significantly here, necropower also includes imposing social or civil death by forcing certain bodies to remain in a precarious condition of life, for example in slavery, apartheid or colonisation.
For example by UNHCR in their ‘Life Stories’ campaign and in the campaigns of other NGOs.
(“Representations”). Similarly, Leonie Harsch contends that the telling of ‘refugee stories’ by humanitarian organisations can exclude those that don’t fit popular tropes that come with the label ‘refugee’ (“Giving”). To describe the implications of the legal context of asylum seeking, I borrow Alison Jeffers’ concept of “bureaucratic performance” in which asylum seekers must ‘perform’ a conventional refugee identity in order to prove legitimacy (16). Within this framework, ’unworthy’ migrants are examined against ‘worthy’ refugees who fit a prescribed narrative that stipulates certain characteristics, meaning that ‘worthy’ groups become hyper-visible while others are marginalised. In meeting such expectations storytelling becomes a critical element of the asylum-seeking process. At the same time, the urge to narrativise experiences of displacement can be seen in the plethora of literature, journalism, film and theatre on the topic. Narrative theorist, Peter Brooks, considers “narrative [as] one of the principle ways that we organize our experience of the world” (ix). Narrative, then, is integral to the way that refugees are perceived and received in a host society, and to the way that refugees understand their situation. In an era of unprecedented change and mass displacement, an increased need to narrativise experience is unsurprising. 5
The growing prominence of the migration issue following a dramatic increase in the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has provoked debate at all
David Harvey has written extensively on the postmodern condition and cultural change since the
5
1970’s; for more on the relation between the rise of postmodernist cultural forms and 'time-space compression’ see David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Social
levels of global society. At the ‘peak’ of the crisis in the summer of 2015, the 6 visibility of the vast numbers dying in the Mediterranean brought the actions of European governments under scrutiny and prompted cultural practitioners to respond. Most notably, the image of toddler Alan Kurdi’s body on a beach in 7 8 Turkey marked a turning point in public opinion and the representation of refugees. As mainstream representations of the displaced became increasingly dehumanised (using faceless photographs, graphs and maps), counter-arguments turned to personalised storytelling. Humanising refugees by recounting individual ‘refugee stories’ of treacherous journeys and unimaginable violence, is key to such an approach. As Fiddian-Qasmiyeh notes, “[such techniques] are perceived as essential ways to enhance public understanding, compassion and sympathy” (“Representations”). In a climate where ‘migrant’ has become a dirty word, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh questions the productivity and ethics of interrogating the humanitarian narrative (“Representations”). In recognising the potential implications of such interrogation, this thesis does not seek to dismiss mainstream humanitarian representations, but rather suggests that they are misleadingly incomplete.
A number now reaching 68.5 million according to UNHCR.
6
According to UNHCR data, 1,036,179 people arrived across the Mediterranean sea in 2015, 3,771 of
7
whom died. Source: data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean.
Such as Banksy’s image showing floating bodies forming the EU flag, Anders Lustgarten’s 2015 play
8
Lampedusa, or Ai Wei Wei’s multiple art and film projects that portray aspects of the ‘refugee crisis’,
Addressing such omissions, this paper testifies to one strand of cultural engagement with forced migration by focusing on contemporary narratives published since 2015. Reading across genres from fiction to life-stories to journalistic literature and theatre, this thesis examines new discursive approaches to refugee representation. Examining fiction as well as non-fiction identifies common tropes, while also engaging with ethical, political and aesthetic challenges posed by representing displacement. Such questions address how far the experiences of refugees are communicable to non-refugee audiences, how their stories can be told ethically, and who has the right to do so. Eluding to the notion of a ‘single story’, these narratives interrogate the argument from several sides using innovative strategies for storytelling integrated with practical responses. Their alternative 9 approaches to the ‘story’ of the ‘refugee crisis’ disrupt, counter and contest dominant understanding, and provide critical and creative insights that mainstream narratives lack. Given the topicality of the subject, one of the questions that this thesis addresses is how literary representations of displacement intersect with, respond to, and inform public and political debate. Cultural representations can bridge the gap in dialogue by opening minds and fostering mutual understanding. I argue that it is these discursive spaces for understanding that are essential to effecting change. Through these collaborative and innovative approaches to writing narratives of
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “danger of the single story” (elucidated in a 2009 TED Talk) warns
9
that hearing only a single story about another person or country or culture risks critical misunderstanding.
displacement, refugees are able to speak on their own terms and exercise agency over their representation.
Examining varying discourses of displacement reveals underlying hypocrisy and anxiety diagnosed by Agnes Woolley as such: “Oscillating between invisibility and overexposure in the public sphere, forced migrants have an ambivalent relationship to the aesthetic forms that seek to represent them” (2). As texts that deal with the representation of disenfranchised groups, the varied forms examined here seek to readdress this “ambivalent relationship” and redefine the hierarchies within it. Moving from non-fictional to fictional representation, the following chapters consider four refugee advocacy narratives. Since each writer or writers situates their work in different geographical locations and generic conventions, each faces different barriers to the problem of representing displacement. Going behind the headlines, Patrick Kingsley’s The New Odyssey (2016) prompts questions about boundaries between participation and observation in Chapter III. Chapter IV considers two approaches to empowering refugee voices through collaborative literature in Voices from the ‘Jungle’ (2017) and Shatila Stories (2018). Finally, Chapter V examines the role of theatrical performance about refugees in Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy’s The Jungle (2017), alongside the corresponding role of performance for and by refugees under their initiative Good Chance Theatre. While each text represents a different discursive context - framed by mainstream journalism, humanitarian ‘life stories’ or bureaucratic performance - they ‘speak to’ one another not only in their subject matter but in the ways they interweave. Kingsley, for example, lends his
contextual research to the programme for The Jungle, stories from The Jungle parallel 10 episodes in The New Odyssey, and the Voices’ writers talk about their positive experiences of Good Chance theatre. Ultimately, the play, short-story collection, novella and journalistic analysis examined below attempt to tell the complicated stories of forced displacement beyond exclusionary frameworks and established discourses.
Defining Terms
While the texts included here seek to transcend exclusionary hierarchies, they deal with the experiences of (economic) migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, hosts, citizens and some who fit several descriptors at once. In a context where the words used to describe people are critical, my choice of terms requires some explanation. 11 In addition, usage of terms has evolved over time as certain words acquire negative connotations. As I will explore further in this thesis, attempts to delineate between refugees and migrants risks colluding with exclusionary hierarchies that pit one group against the other, as Duarte et al. explain:
An increasingly restrictive notion of what constitutes a refugee has been used by authorities in order to reduce the number of those entitled to assistance. Those who do not fit the restrictive definition are labeled ‘illegal immigrants’ or
Although this is undoubtedly also a marketing ploy.
10
For more on the use of terms see: “UNHCR viewpoint: ‘Refugee’ or ‘migrant’ – Which is right?”
11
UNHCR, 11 July 2016,
‘economic migrants’. Whereas the term ‘refugee’ denotes a vulnerable individual who is forced from his or her home, the term ‘migrant’ often implies that the individual has voluntarily left his or her home. Because their movement is voluntary, migrants do not seem to generate a duty to aid on behalf of receiving states, unlike refugees. 246
What many observers fail to recognise is that while the term ‘migrant’ has become pejorative, by definition it refers to anyone “who moves from one place to another, in order to find work or better living conditions” including Westerners who relocate, as millions do every year (Kelsey). In the context of this thesis, which considers 12 irregular or forced migrations - usually of those who are illicitly crossing borders - I use the descriptors ‘refugees’, ‘migrants’ or ‘(forcibly) displaced people’, following the cue of the text under examination given that the authors have had direct contact with those they describe. However, the authors’ usage is not always consistent; Kingsley, for example, reasons that while “[i]n the short term, it makes sense to use language that highlights their right to protection … In the medium-to-long term … I’d prefer to see the word ‘migrant’ reclaimed and returned to its proper, neutral usage” (263). Alternately, Shatila Stories uses ‘refugees’ since the vast majority of the camp’s population come from Syria or Palestine (although Palestinians have been delineated from other refugees under the UNRWA remit), or avoid such terminology
For comprehensive data on global migration trends. See: www.iom.int/global-migration-trends.
altogether. Acknowledging that the reason for linguistic differentiation is 13 ultimately to delineate between those who have the right to move and those who do not, I try to avoid unnecessary separation between ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’. Apart from the fact that ‘migrant’ in its purest sense simply means someone moving, my contention is that anyone exposing themselves to the dangers of illicit journeys are compelled to do so.
The temporal frame for this thesis is marked by the so-termed ‘refugee crisis’ that came to general European public attention in 2015 when vast numbers started to arrive on European shores. While several studies have argued that the ‘crisis’ has been predominantly manufactured - or at least exacerbated - in the interests of various powers, the term is helpful to indicate the contemporary period to which I refer throughout this thesis. Kingsley observes that, following a spike in coverage 14 in August 2015, “the migration crisis is … redefined … as the refugee crisis, and anyone who queries the change is seen as unsympathetic to the plight of its protagonists” (263). More recently, the debate over phrasing has resurfaced in Britain following the small spike in the number of people crossing the Channel in boats
For more on the hierarchies and tensions caused by the delineation between Palestinian and other
13
refugees in refugee camps in Lebanon see: Elena Fiddian Qasmiyeh, “Repressentations of Displacement from the Middle East and North Africa.” Public Culture, Sept. 2016. DOI: 10.1215/08992363-3511586.
On crisis and the European Union see: Chantal Mouffe, “An Antagonistic Approach to the Future of
14
Europe.” New Literary History, vol. 43, no. 4, Autumn 2012, pp. 629-640, DOI: 10.1353/ nlh.2012.0038. On the construction of crisis in relation to the ‘other’ see: Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies.” Social
Text, vol. 22, no. 2, Summer 2004, pp. 117-139.
On the use of crisis discourse in postcolonial asylum see: David Farrier, "Introduction: Before the Law." Postcolonial Asylum. Seeking Sanctuary before the Law. Liverpool: Oxford University Press, 2011. 1-23.
since December. The term’s usage in political rhetoric, and the European democratic crisis it evokes, complicates its use here as a temporal marker. Recognising this, my use of ‘refugee crisis’ includes not just conventional refugees but the large numbers of people who are forced to migrate for reasons including poverty, destitution or simply the want of a better life; people who would not necessarily fit the terms of the UN convention. In line with Duarte et al., I refer to the ‘refugee crisis’ as such:
The global refugee crisis … must be understood broadly as the forceful displacement of large numbers of human beings from their homes – sometimes due to war, civil war, ethnic or religious persecution by dictatorial regimes … or simply poverty and destitution – combined with a regime of border controls that creates numerous barriers for their escape. This last point is crucial. It is not merely that people are fleeing their countries in large numbers, it is also that countries make it increasingly more difficult for them to reach safety or aid, and to be recognized as refugees entitled to aid once they do make it to a safe area. 246
As Duarte et al. note, “the mass exodus of people from countries in the Global South is nothing new”; the novelty of the present ‘crisis’ lies not in global migration patterns but in the implosion of the European political system and the changing media landscape that responds to it (245).
The Figure of the Refugee in Dominant Discourses Between Demonisation and Idealisation
This chapter examines the evolution and transformation of dominant discourses around displacement since the millennium. Using Sara Ahmed’s theory of an “affective economy” of fear and pity, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s concept of hierarchies of inclusion, and Sarah Bracke’s understanding of resilience, this chapter will trace representations of refugees within media/political and humanitarian discourses. These dominant discourses have evolved in response to a division of public opinion into pro/anti-migration. This division has resulted in the emergence of presiding narratives that cast the refugee as villain, victim or hero.
The past two decades has seen representations of forced migration proliferate, resulting in a heightened public awareness of the issue. Changing patterns in 15 representation have seen the demonisation of the ‘other’, the establishment of a villain-victim dichotomy and the emergence of the ‘super-refugee’ figure. As Terence Wright has argued, since the millennium the advent of “dramatic social and cultural changes” - such as the ‘Arab Spring’ and World Trade Centre attacks - has had a profound influence on representations of forced migration (461). In addition, as
Terence Wright examines the changing patterns in representations of forced migration in the media, 15
as well as the role of citizen and refugee journalists, between 2000 and 2012 in “The Media and Representations of Refugees and Other Forced Migrants” in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced
Wright points out, “a number of campaigns have been launched, with the aim of heightening public awareness and drawing attention to media representations of refugees” (461). Such heightened awareness of demonising representations has contributed to the subsequent rise of the humanitarian narrative.
More recently, the narrative has shifted yet again towards a new phase in the portrayal of refugees’ experiences. Harsch identifies an increasing trend in humanitarian discourse towards an individualised, optimistic approach: “in the discourse of UNHCR, the image of the resilient, self-reliant refugee has replaced the image of the helpless victim”. Harsch argues that such representations “reinforc[e] the dualism in which the humanitarian refugee figure seems to be caught” by excluding those who do not fit the master narratives of victimhood or resilience. The UNHCR Emergency Handbook advises that “[s]tories and images that focus on an individual are almost always more engaging and memorable than general stories or images of a crowd”. The contrast drawn between these two modes of representation - specific and general - reveals a difficult tension between overexposure (of individual faces) and effacement (in a homogenous crowd) in representations of displacement.
Despite distinct definitions in the eyes of the law, in dominant discourses, the terms ‘refugee’, ‘migrant’ and ‘asylum seeker’ are used variably and interchangeably. The figure of the refugee has become entangled with other displaced figures, amassing into one homogenous group in a context of fluctuating
legal definitions. The internationally accepted framework of the 1951 UN 16 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees specifies a person who:
owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. (1951, 1967)
According to legal definitions, people who experience external displacement may be labelled, at one time or another, all three of these terms as they are forced to migrate from their own country, seek asylum elsewhere, and are then granted that asylum to officially gain refugee status according to the UN Convention. In addition, Woolley points out that, increasingly, “[UN] signatory nations … circumvent its stipulations by adhering to the letter rather than the [post-war] spirit of its rule” (10). In the context of fluctuating notions of who has the right to refugee status, it is easy to see how terms have become confused and conflated.
While it is important to recognise that there are nuanced and manifold reasons for which an individual may migrate, attempts to categorise risk endorsing
The African Union, for example, has a much broader definition of ‘refugee’ which includes those
16
subjected to “occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order” (African Union, 1969, 2).
the legislative and legal frameworks that hierarchise human lives. Legal stipulations confine asylum seekers and refugees to a strict framework that relies on the narrative of individual testimonies to prove themselves ‘worthy’ of protection. For Jeffers, “refugees who have crossed several borders … to claim asylum are forced to play the role of ‘Convention refugees’”, in the process becoming “conventional refugees” who conform to cultural expectations (17).
In considering the effects of both voicelessness and overrepresentation, this chapter charts the evolution of three refugee ‘characters’ portrayed in dominant discourses and pinpoints some of the central issues with their portrayal. First, this chapter considers the demonisation of refugees in mainstream media/political discourse. It then examines the patterns and shifts in humanitarian narratives that idealise refugees and are lauded as the antidote to negative representations.
Refugee as Villain
In globalised societies that increasingly turn inward to claim a national ‘identity’, anxiety over immigration remains at the centre of public discourse and policy making — an anxiety that continues to be reflected in crisis-inducing press 17 coverage, hostile migration policies and threats to close borders. Crisis rhetoric has given rise to right-wing nativist sentiment across Europe and in the US with
Doreen Massey discusses the recent turn to reactionary insularity in the face of globalisation and
17
immigration policy at the heart of their discourse. Cas Mudde identifies nativism 18 as the “prime ideological feature” of what he calls “the populist radical right”, explaining that “the main consequence of the ‘rise of populism’ is a battery of policies that restrict the rights of ‘alien others’ - most notably immigrants, Muslims and refugees”.
Most recently, the approach of a ‘migrant caravan’ from Central America to the Mexico-US border helped secure Trump’s success in the US midterm elections. 19 The BBC reports that “just days before the midterms, [Trump] told voters at a rally that ‘if you don't want America to be overrun by masses of illegal aliens and giant caravans, you'd better vote Republican’”, explicitly politicising and polarising the issue (“Migrant Caravan”). Key to anti-immigration rhetoric is the construction of the refugee or migrant as a threat to security, borders, jobs and so-called ‘Western’ values. The ‘intruder’ or ‘other’ becomes the villain against whom the nation-state 20 must be defended— sometimes literally. As anthropologist Ghassan Hage has 21 argued, the sense of futurity associated with crisis means that there is always the
For more on the rise of nativism see “Nationalism, Nativism, and the Revolt Against Globalization.”
18
Council for European Studies special feature, Feb. 2018; and The Guardian’s inquiry “The new
populism”, Nov. 2018, www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-new-populism.
Trump has been accused of exploiting the ‘migrant caravan’ for political purposes in the run-up to
19
the midterm elections (in November 2018). Despite prolific tweeting on the ‘migrant caravan’ in the weeks before the elections, Trump has since tweeted only a few times on the issue. Twitter: @realDonaldTrump
The very notion of commonly held values being ‘Western’ infers that those same human values of
20
‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ are not held elsewhere (in the East), as Fatima Bhutto has argued: play.acast.com/s/thehighlowshow/anauthorspecialwithfatimabhuttoonradicalism-whatthe westdoesn-tunderstandaboutisis . Accessed 14 Mar. 2019.
The BBC reports that Trump deployed 6,000 troops to the US Southern Border with Mexico to
21
perceived need to defend against the threat of the imagined ‘other’ who is yet to materialise (455).
The UK press has been a particular source of refugee vilification over the past two decades. The scale of the problem was recognised by UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein who noted that, “in 2003 the Daily Express ran 22 negative front page stories about asylum seekers and refugees in a single 31-day period”, testifying to an excessive and unbalanced representation in the press (OHCHR). A 22 2004 study assessing media and political images of refugees and asylum seekers, reports that over a three-week period, “The most commonly occurring terms [after ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’] used in the headlines are ‘arrested’, ‘jailed’, ‘guilty’” (ICAR 35).23
Through the semantics of journalistic coverage, the terms used to describe forced migrants have become tainted. Al-Hussein notes that in the majority of UK tabloid newspapers, “migrants have been linked to … almost every conceivable crime and misdemeanour imaginable … Many of these stories have been grossly distorted and some have been outright fabrications” (OHCHR). Such representations bear a heavy influence on public opinion and have widespread appeal. A 2016 global opinion poll conducted by Ipsos showed that 61% of adults interviewed think refugees are “terrorists pretending to be refugees who will enter my country to cause
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
22
It is not hard to find examples of such representations in the UK tabloid press, particularly since the
23
early 2000s following the election of the Labour Party in 1997 and the “New Labour” era policies under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
violence and destruction”. Accounting for the ease with which one figure is conflated with another, Ahmed explains “how hate ‘slides’ sideways between figures” such as the refugee and the terrorist through the “rippling effect of emotions” (120).
As such, words and stories about refugees - especially those spoken from a political platform - can implicitly and explicitly impose stereotypes that shape negative attitudes. Take as an example, then Prime Minister David Cameron’s description in 2015 of migrants as a “swarm” attempting to “break into Britain” (qtd. in Elgot). Cameron’s use of the phrase “break into” aligns the figure of the migrant with that of the burglar, thereby imposing the identity of criminal on those yet to arrive. So-called ‘migrant-bashing’ in the tabloid press reached new extremes in 2015 with migrants being called“a plague of feral humans” in the Sun newspaper (OHCHR). Following the article’s publication, the High Commissioner for Human 24 Rights, condemned the “vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the UK tabloid press” (OHCHR). His statement “urged the U.K. … to curb incitement to hatred” in media publications which, “are being allowed to feed a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicization of migrants” (OHCHR). It is this cycle that allows “signs” (here the migrant or refugee) to accumulate affective value, as demonstrated by Trump’s influential anti-migrant rhetoric (Ahmed 120). In Ahmed’s affective economy, “Some signs … increase in affective value as an effect of the movement between signs: the more they circulate, the more affective they become” (120). “Sticky” words characterise migrants as intruders who threaten
The Sun previously (until March 2018) had the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK.
security and seek to take advantage of the state; the use of such terms in the press and by politicians, adds to the sense of crisis evoked in relation to migrants (Ahmed 120). In the creation of a crisis, the ‘norm’ comes under threat from the demonised ‘other’ who is scapegoated for society’s problems.25
Refugee as Victim
In response to the increasing demonisation of refugees and migrants in mainstream media and political discourses, a counter-narrative emerged that attempted to ‘re-humanise’ the ‘other’ and evoke public sympathy. The influence of the photograph of toddler Alan Kurdi’s body, that went viral in 2015, has been widely examined across academic disciplines. The diffusion of the toddler’s image 26 across the media, in film, theatre, art and online, marked a significant shift in the narrative as the image became emblematic of the ‘migrant crisis’. As Kingsley 27 writes, “Alan's corpse is on the front page of dozens if not hundreds of European newspapers the next day, including that of the Sun, whose columnist Katie Hopkins had only a few months before described migrants as cockroaches” (262). The image 28 unlocked emotion towards refugees and sparked outcry across Europe; leaders
Parts of this section have been modified from my paper written for course module Crisis, Literature
25
and the Contemporary at Leiden University in Spring 2018. I have used similar theory, built on research
and expanded the scope and depth of analysis.
Sohlberg et al., 2018; Kirkwood, 2017; Mortensen, 2017; Prøitz, 2018.
26
The photograph of Alan Kurdi by Turkish photo-journalist Nilüfer Demir was named by TIME
27
magazine as one of the 100 most influential images of all time: 100photos.time.com/photos/nilufer-demir-alan-kurdi. Accessed 19 Mar. 2019.
Kingsley refers to the same article by Katie Hopkins that provoked the UN High Commissioner’s
28
seemed shocked into considering more humane policies, and even the most hostile media outlets appeared to display compassion. The volte-face of public and 29 political opinion, and media representation, highlights a fundamental flaw in humanitarian representation. The narrative shift induced by the image of Alan brings to light a hierarchy that sympathises exclusively with the vulnerable, passive, innocent and voiceless. The imposition of such hierarchies has led academics to draw critical attention to the inherent dangers of marginalisation in humanitarian narratives. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh contends that “representations [of ‘worthy’ refugees] 30 are permeated by hierarchical processes of inclusion and exclusion, including on the basis of gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion”. 31
For Wright, there is a gendered hierarchy of representation in which “video footage to illustrate asylum seekers in the UK is of men, while with ‘overseas’ migrants from disaster, women and children are usually shown” (464). Indeed, the Voices’ editors acknowledge the importance of focusing on male camp residents’ stories “in a situation where male refugees … were becoming objects of media, political and popular distrust and fear, depicted as benefits cheats, criminals and terrorists” (12). The underlying message of this imbalance is that men reaching
Notably, The Sun newspaper which launched an donations appeal “for Aylan” (Alan) and had
29
previously been condemned by the UN for the “vilification” of migrants in its publications— specifically by columnist Katie Hopkins as referenced above.
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016; Agnes Woolley, 2014 ; Lyndsey Stonebridge, 2018; Barbara
Harrell-30
Bond, 2002.
Fiddian Qasmiyeh’s project Refugee Hosts aims to disrupt mainstream humanitarian narratives:
31
Europe pose a threat, while women and children in conflict zones are depicted as passive suffering victims.32
Wright suggests that the villain/victim dichotomy also has a geographical frame that depends on distance from the Western reader: “Few refugee news stories make the connection between ‘there’ and ‘here’: sympathetic coverage of those in far-off lands … appears in stark contrast to the media treatment of those seeking asylum in the West” (461). As the ‘crisis’ comes closer to home, empathy turns to hostility as the far-off victim morphs into the villain on ‘our’ streets. Wright’s point is telling of how the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe is a media construction, or is at least manipulated to provoke desired reactions of fear or pity from a Western audience. In representing only violence, suffering and destruction, humanitarian narratives fail to account for everyday experiences of displacement that connect ‘there’ with ‘here’.
By imposing traits of victimhood, mainstream humanitarian narratives entrench divisions and impose hierarchical relationships between host and guest (us/them) and between ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ refugees. In such hierarchies the host is constituted as saviour and the refugee as passive victim, further entrenching and engendering (imperial) power dynamics. These power dynamics fail to acknowledge a basic human equality between ‘saviour’ and ‘saved’. Ultimately, in humanitarian narratives sympathy for the ‘other’ is restricted to those who fit a specific trope of victimhood.
For more on visual representations of refugees see Terence Wright, “Moving images: The media
32
Displaying qualities of innocence and passivity places the observer at a distance by imagining the victim as an unfortunate, distant collective, their story of suffering a confirmation of the observer's superiority. Yet, the majority of refugees cannot fit such a limited narrative. Writing for Refugee Hosts, Sarah El Sheikh argues that “it defies common sense to assume that a person who went through such a journey [fleeing persecution] has not had their innocence dented”. While the victimisation of refugees can evoke compassion and mobilise humanitarian responses, it fails to acknowledge that seeking refuge is a right, and providing refuge an obligation. Such rhetoric permits host nations to appear benevolent and constitutes the refugee as eternally and unequivocally grateful. Originally emerging as a counter-narrative to demonising representations, humanitarian narratives have merged into problematic discourses.
Refugee as Hero
As Fiddian-Qasmiyeh has argued, hierarchical processes of inclusion and exclusion deem some ‘others’ worthy of aid and extol traits that idealise ‘good’ refugees and mitigate the hosts’ burden. The shift in humanitarian narratives towards individual ‘success’ stories of resilience and optimism heralds a new phase in the representation of refugees. However, this representation also subscribes to a master narrative. Harsch identifies a tendency in humanitarian narratives to follow a set structure in the telling of ‘refugee stories’ that culminates in the successful rebuilding of their lives. She distinguishes four phases in narratives of displacement,
as explained by UNHCR’s Chief of Content Production: “the refugee’s life before displacement, the decision to leave, the challenges faced in the new place, and finally the refugee’s plans and hopes for the future” (Harsch). The focus of such narratives, however, is often on flight and post-displacement. In one example ‘story’ from UNHCR’s Innovation Service, just one paragraph of a 2,000 word article mentions life before displacement, instead urging refugee narratives to “end with a success” (“Refugees”). While acknowledging success in the face of adversity is important, these should not be the only stories that are told.
Restrictive narratives of displacement affirm that the label ‘refugee’ consumes former identity, leaving those displaced devoid of individual, everyday human experiences. Novelist, Dina Nayeri, an Iranian refugee to the US, recalls how “no one [in the US] ever asked what our house in Iran looked like … what books we read, what music we loved”. The expectation for refugees to give up former identity is reflected in the lack of narratives that depict normality before displacement, meaning that few people realise that conflict zones once existed as functioning societies. 33 Hassan Akkad (an ironically self-titled “professional refugee”) elucidates this point: “I have only been a refugee for six months [but] before that, for 27 years, I was someone, something different”. Arguing against a politics of gratitude, Nayeri 34 points out that, “[happy] memories … would imply the unthinkable: that Iran was as
Akkad (speaking at Frontline) goes on to explain how people constantly questioned why he had a
33
mobile phone or social media accounts. Attesting to his point, the search term “what was Syria like before the war?” turns up around 130 million results on Google, while “why do refugees have mobile phones?” shows almost 7 million results.
The Frontline panel included journalists (including Kingsley), academics and NGO representatives.
beautiful, as fun, as energising and romantic, as Oklahoma or Montana” thereby undermining power structures between benevolent host and thankful guest. Conditional hospitality implicit in sugar-coated ‘success’ narratives suggests that a debt is owed; Nayeri summarises that “[as] refugees, we owed [our hosts] our previous identity. We had to lay it at their door like an offering, and gleefully deny it to earn our place in this new country”.
It is this implicit pressure for refugees to live up to certain standards in order to be welcomed that risks imposing impossible expectations that exclude the most vulnerable. The story in 2018 of the Malian migrant who literally scaled a building before earning acceptance, made global headlines, almost all of which emphasised that he was a migrant: “France grants honorary citizenship to hero ‘Spider-Man’ migrant who scaled Paris building to save four-year old” (Samuel). Explicitly 35 likening the man to a Western superhero, headlines like The Telegraph’s set an untold precedent for those seeking inclusion, and glorify refugees who live up to western standards and demonstrate “required values” (Samuel).
Bracke has examined one such value through the concept of resilience as understood in ‘crisis’. She identifies a “subject of subaltern resilience” with the capacity to “bounce-back” stronger than before: “crucial to these skills is the capacity of losing … almost everything - losing one's belongings, as well as one's place and sense of belonging … - and building up everything all over again (Bracke 60; 63).
Mamoudou Gassama successfully scaled a building to save a four-year old boy hanging from a
35
Such capacity for resilience, Bracke argues, has become part of the “moral code” for the “‘good subjects’ of neoliberal times”, a code which constitutes the ‘good refugee’ as fortified by the crises they face (62).
While demonising narratives frame refugees as criminal and exploitative, the portrayal of the ‘super-refugee’ in humanitarian narratives emphasises resilience, resourcefulness, and the ability to contribute positively to society. Such representations suggest that ‘others’ must earn their rights to protection from persecution, or repay the chance given for a better life. They constitute refugees as already less-than their native hosts, and posit the success of the ‘ideal’ refugee as a unique and surprising paradigm. Holding up society’s paradigm of the ‘super-refugee’ suggests that mediocrity is a privilege reserved for the host, and that citizenship is granted based on character not rights. As with the narrative of victimhood, the idealisation of refugees imposes unspoken conditions on hospitality: only those who display their eternal gratitude by ‘giving back’ to the host society are accepted.
Between Overrepresentation and Obscurity
The opposing refugee figures that this chapter identifies illuminate the contradictions inherent in representations of displacement; as Woolley suggests, in dominant discourses, “representations cloud as much as they clarify” (3). The stereotypes imposed in dominant discourses provide a basis from which to consider hierarchies of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ others, and the power imbalances that exist
between hosts and guests. Such hierarchies, I suggest, render some disenfranchised groups excessively visible, while others are purposefully obscured. However, dominant discourses are crucially lacking the voices which they seek to represent; with limited access to self-representation, displaced people are at the mercy of media, political and humanitarian master narratives. By disrupting established representations that demonise or idealise refugees, the following chapters uncover and examine alternative ways of understanding, experiencing, observing, and responding to displacement.
A Place for the Displaced: Hospitable Representation
The dominant discourses identified in the previous chapter highlight the contentious and problematic nature of representing displacement. As we have seen, such difficulties arise in representational practices that deprive disenfranchised groups of a free voice in the public domain, and subsequently of the capacity to contest the stereotypes imposed in prevalent representations. Thus far, I have examined media, political and humanitarian representations of refugees within dominant discourses. The following chapters examine literary representations that are largely absent from these discourses. I argue that these alternative ways of representing and re-presenting offer hospitable spaces of solidarity in which to explore the varied facets of displacement.
Previous studies within postcolonial, feminist and ethnic-minority forms of literary criticism have identified a ‘crisis of representation’ when it comes to, what Shameem Black calls, “envisioning alterity” (1). As texts that call attention to their 36 own representational dilemmas in their engagement with alterity, the varied narratives considered here conform to Black’s notion of ‘representational ethics’ as the “workings of an ethos of responsibility towards one’s subject of inquiry, a responsibility opposed to hegemonic domination and representational violence” (3). All of the texts discussed have been assembled in direct response to the
Black (2010); Spivak (2013); Satya Mohanty (1997).
“representational violence” prevalent in dominant discourses, and with the specific aim of giving voice to their subjects (Black 3). However, as Black suggests, “envisioning social differences require[s] attention to [the authors’] own social privileges”— an issue that is approached with varying degrees of self-consciousness by the non-refugee authors and editors of these texts (11). I argue that this self-consciousness, and a recognition of refugees’ oscillation between stereotype and invisibility, allows a different story to be told— one that neither demonises nor idealises refugees. In their varying engagement with social activism, all of the texts discussed below are invested in Black’s idea of an “ethos of responsibility” and the capacity to enact change beyond their pages (3). In this way, these self-reflective texts mediate between disenfranchised subjects and the socio-political context in which they are perceived, finding a representational place for the displaced.
Literary Activism: representation, re-presentation and self-representation
Thinking about texts as political mediators recalls Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s distinction between two ways of representing: aesthetic and political. While the former indicates re-presentation or “portrayal” as in art, the latter is a form of substitution as in “speaking for” others in political representation (Harasym). Arguing that the “shifting play between the two kinds of representation” is essential to literary representations of subalternity, Spivak considers the extent to which it is possible to “speak for” a politically disenfranchised group while also ‘re-presenting’ them within aesthetic forms (Harasym). She explains: “Unless the complicity
between these two things is kept in mind, there can be a great deal of political harm” (Harasym). These nuanced senses of representation come together in the narratives analysed here as they demonstrate how literature engages with public and political discourses.
In these texts, storytelling is not only a process of re-presentation, but also a practice of mediation and advocacy in Spivak’s sense of ‘speaking for’ disenfranchised groups. Representation as a form of ‘speaking for’ presses consideration of the roles of literary narrative as interpreter, translator or advocate. Acts of mediation required in the facilitation of self-representation elucidate the practical barriers that deprive disenfranchised groups of a voice in the public sphere. Most notably, all of the texts considered here have explicitly featured language translation, and make reference to the translation processes involved in research and writing.
The need for translation into English as a ‘host’ language indicates the diversity of the refugees and hosts represented in these stories. Voices features authors from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and Syria, while the meeting scenes in The Jungle figure translation as an important inclusive act. Jacques Derrida’s conceptualisation of the imposition of language as “the first violence” toward the foreigner evokes the innate power imbalance between translator and source (“Principal” 7). Translation indicates a will to “suspend this violence”, yet, the fact that the co-writers of Shatila Stories have yet to read their
finished novella because it needs to be translated back into Arabic, highlights the inherent risks of ‘speaking for’, or being spoken for, through translation.
If these narratives attempt to provide hospitable spaces for understanding and knowing experiences of displacement (even if they necessarily involve hostilities), to what extent do they help to remove the barriers that prevent access to self-representation? Voices and Shatila Stories both came into being through initiatives designed to increase refugee access to education and facilitate refugee writing. Opening up access in Voices, the authors’ storytelling was facilitated via phone and social media, transcription and photography: “This range of storytelling paths fitted the diverse and often difficult conditions in which authors created their stories” (7). On the other hand, the Shatila Stories course imposed certain conditions by requiring a minimum level of commitment and ability from its authors. However, the introduction claims that access to the programme was inclusive: “some [participants] had never completed their formal schooling and quite a few had never read a novel in their lives” (Shatila). The diversity of the group of authors certainly demonstrates more inclusivity than traditional publishing practice, not least by transferring the initial process to Shatila camp.
Thinking about the physical environments in which these texts are produced highlights the inequalities that underpin global migrations; while the Shatila Stories’ editors are able to travel to Lebanon for the workshop, their writers are unable to leave the camp. Similarly, the Voices’ editors travel to Calais, as participants risk their
lives to do the same crossing in reverse, while Kingsley, in Egypt, “dropped everything and flew [to Italy] to join [Hashem]” who had made the same journey in a boat (328). Doreen Massey has discussed such a connection between power and mobility. On what she calls “the power geometry of time-space compression” she writes that “different social groups, and different individuals, are placed in very distinct ways in relation to these flows and interconnections. This point concerns not merely the issue of who moves and who doesn’t … it is also about power in relation to the flows and the movement” (Massey 148). Thus, according to Massey, power is 37 determined by control over movement; Kingsley and the editors are in a position of control in relation to their movement, whereas - despite doing a lot of physical moving - refugees experience movement in an entirely different way.
For refugee authors, then, the difficulties faced are practical as well as empirical. In their introductions, the editors of Voices and Shatila Stories reference the difficult conditions in which the refugee authors write, contrasting “[having] to line up to use the one [computer] … constant power cuts made any typing painfully slow” with imagined “ideal writing situations, invoking quiet rooms, proper tables, cups of coffee” (Shatila; Voices 8). For Woolley, the material barriers to self-representation for forced migrants are almost insurmountable:
the availability of the creative mechanics … - such as representation in local governments and communities, or access to cultural means of
‘Time-space compression’ is a term coined by geographer David Harvey in The Condition of
37
Postmodernity (1989). Harvey's idea was rooted in what Karl Marx's once called “the annihilation of
presentation - is limited, not only because they are liable to be deported at a moment’s notice, but also because increasingly prevalent practices of detention and dispersal across refugee-receiving countries delimit the kind of everyday social interactions needed to cultivate such affiliations. (18)
Attesting to Woolley’s point, it is potent that some of the Voices’ authors adopted pseudonyms because the “stories contain material that could jeopardise authors’ safety, or their asylum claims” (11). The Shatila Stories’ authors faced equally turbulent situations that made writing difficult: “the writers dealt with many challenges: mainly illnesses due to the atrocious hygiene in the overcrowded camp, but also the sudden deaths of family members” (Introduction). The production of the stories in these contexts highlights the importance of enabling access to “creative mechanics” through (potentially compromised) acts of hospitality (Woolley 11).
Fiction and Reality
Woolley goes on to suggest that “fictional discourses … are uniquely positioned both to ask questions of representation and to consider how representations extend into, and act upon, the public sphere” (21). Yet, fictional discourses remain peripheral to dominant forms (such as journalism and documentaries) that depend on truth telling. It is only recently that migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have appeared as central characters in literary fiction, reflecting an anxiety over a perceived need for ‘authenticity’ in narratives of displacement. As Woolley has observed, the extremes of displacement pose a
significant “imaginative challenge” for those detached from the experience; a challenge reflected in the language used to describe forced migration experiences as ‘unimaginable’ (19).
Jacques Rancière has identified a hierarchy in the distribution of genres between the “freedom of fiction” and “the reality of the news” (qtd. in Celik 134). “The luxury of playing with words and images” is reserved for citizens of the Global North while the documentary, “in the dominant regime of representation”, is assigned to those of the Global South: “they can only offer the bodies of their victims to the gaze of news cameras or to the compassionate gaze at their suffering” as evidenced by the ubiquity of Alan Kurdi’s image in the media (qtd. in Celik 134). While, in the case of refugees, the “freedom of fiction” and “the reality of the news” are not always mutually exclusive, it is clear that ‘factual’ representation continues to be the dominant framework through which displacement is viewed (ibid). “The luxury of playing with words and images” denied to those without the freedom or power to narrate is further denied because the fundamentals of depicting reality have not yet been met. The narratives explored here go some way to subverting Rancière’s hierarchy by making space for different forms of representation in the intersectional nature of their aims and the hybrid genres they employ. They also grant the “freedom of fiction” to voices that are otherwise restricted by the call for ‘authenticity’ in humanitarian campaigns and in asylum narratives that depend on a “well-founded fear of persecution” (qtd. in Celik 134; UN). While some of the texts
discussed have - by their very nature as testimonial or journalistic - an appeal to truth, the ‘truth’ they explore is neither coherent nor verified.
Reliance on the “gaze of news cameras” means that dominant representation generally focuses on the negative, and is - as Ella Shohat contends - “overcharged with allegorical significance”, hence single representations tar the whole group (qtd. in Celik 134; 170). Kingsley highlights the impact that such associations can have:
In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, there were many calls … to pull up the drawbridge, and turn our backs on refugees. In America, thirty-one governors say they will now refuse to house Syrians in their states for security reasons. In Europe, an opinion poll suggests that 88 percent of Czechs believe that refugees pose as big a threat to Europe as Isis. (289-90)38
In line with Ahmed, Kingsley illustrates how “hate ‘slides’ sideways between figures” through “sticky attachments” (120). In confronting assumptions made in 39 alarmist rhetoric Kingsley seeks to ‘unstick’ attachments that band together refugees, terrorists and criminals.
Ipek A. Celik warns that, in order to effectively alter perceptions of alterity, “It is essential that structural change (from realist to popular genres) be accompanied by
The Paris attacks of November 2015 in which two of the nine assailants were thought to have
38
arrived in Greece (in a boat of refugees) a month earlier.
Several of the refugees Kingsley speaks to report experiencing hostility in the local German
39
community after the wave of sexual assaults that occurred across Germany on New Year’s Eve 2015-16. Reports accused young men of “north African appearance” of the assaults and were used to justify alarmist rhetoric.
a change in characterization” that depicts “Others as fictional characters with more elusive desires” (134). By going beyond the stereotypes deployed in mainstream narratives of displacement, these texts enable the experience of affects that surpass fear and pity. Rather than seeking to homogenise refugee experience into a ‘factual’ narrative that entrenches geopolitical inequalities, literary narratives accommodate “differences of opinion” and stories that “disagree with each another” (Voices 12).
To return to Woolley’s observation, fictional - and more widely, cultural - discourses not only ask questions of representation, but also self-consciously draw attention to the difficulties and possibilities that arise when representing displacement beyond ‘factual’ frameworks. Shohat maintains that representations should be constantly questioned “not only in terms of who represents but also in terms of who is being represented for what purpose” (173). This questioning is particularly essential when the representations concern those who have limited access to self-representation.
Narrating Ethical Representations
While the texts examined here facilitate certain access to self-representation, they also all involve external input. To varying degrees, each of these editors, authors or playwrights engage with the ethics and politics of representation— through an awareness of the framework through which refugees have been perceived, and by acknowledging the obstacles faced in facilitating different
representational strategies. References in prologues, notes and interviews to the motivations behind these writing projects and theatre initiatives show an awareness of the power imbalances, hierarchies and stereotypes within and against which they represent. The Voices' editors acknowledge that “these stories are also not the same stories that the authors would have written for a different audience” while Kingsley writes that he was often faced with “moral quandar[ies]” posed by trying to strike a balance between observer and participant (12; 329). Thinking about this balance questions the extent to which distanced observation is privileged; as a journalist, Kingsley is able to passively observe and analyse, while Hashem - through whom Kingsley seeks an emic focalisation - makes an “accurate record” of his journey through note-taking (328). Kingsley’s research methods evoke the ethnographic nature of creative collaboration with refugees. The composition of this thesis thus reflects the varying modes of ethnographic observation in these texts; starting with Kingsley’s passive participant-observation in Chapter III, moving to ‘observant-participation’ by refugee writers in Chapter IV, through to active participant-observation with Murphy and Robertson in Chapter V.
Evoking the strengths and difficulties of ethnographic study, Woolley summarises the challenge for artists of striking a balance between “the obstacles and the opportunities” that arise in processes of representation: “an awareness of representation’s potential complicity in the oppression of marginalized subjects is balanced against the hospitable dimensions of the imaginative act” (20). Here, the
“imaginative act” lies not only in fictional storytelling but in imagining different ways of representing those displaced, and re-imagining pre-scripted identities (ibid). Hashem, protagonist of The New Odyssey, maintains that these alternative narrative spaces offer “the chance to speak freely - to use this [previously denied] right”, echoing Spivak’s notion of an ‘ethical responsibility’ to make discursive space for the ‘other’ to exist (326). 40
The precarious balance between oppression and hospitality that Woolley observes speaks to Spivak’s examination of the challenges posed by representations of subalternity. Spivak’s concern with the representational system of “keeping the subaltern in the place of difference” by speaking for them, asks whether representations of subalternity in-fact collude with conventional mechanisms of oppression, producing the subaltern as a passive object who is spoken for (de Kock 46). Posing refugees as subaltern subjects risks inflicting another ‘role’ (following those discussed in Chapter I) — that of Spivak’s ‘native informant’ who is censured through the requirement to answer only for their experiences under the label ‘refugee’. For Spivak, the native informant is “foreclosed” since, in her construction as the primitive or irrational ‘other’ to the “European” human norm”, Western discourse makes it impossible for her to really speak and be heard (Critique 6). For refugees, while supposedly being given space to speak about displacement through
See The Spivak Reader edited by Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean for extensive publications and
40
the native informant construct, they are in fact deposed of real agency to tell their own stories.
Spivak notes that, in its traditional ethnographic sense, the native informant is always “denied autobiography”; the native informant is not an individual human being, but instead is reduced to a ‘refugee’ whose experiences are a source of knowledge filtered through an ethnocentric gaze (Critique 6). The native informant, then, has only “limited access to being-human” in its full complexity of desires, rights and values, since that complexity cannot be encompassed in the restrictive (perceived) position of ‘the native’ or, in this case, ‘the refugee’ (Critique 30). As I have argued in Chapter I, simplistic stereotypes delimit notions of who or what a refugee is. It is the complexity of being fully human that these authors explore by reclaiming “autobiography”— a process that allows them to move beyond the position of refugee/native informant and become concrete, complex human beings who speak for themselves instead of being framed as abstract refugees (Critique 6).
Nevertheless, narratives about the ‘refugee crisis’ are inevitably founded on representing displacement and are marketed as ways of knowing and understanding refugees’ experiences as refugees: “if you want to fully understand what refugees are being forced to endure… read this book” (Voices cover, my emphasis); “[Kingsley’s] book helps us understand …” (New Odyssey cover, my emphasis). An emphasis on offering understanding foregrounds claims of authenticity and reliability. Spivak however, warns against trusting the representational as authentic, claiming that it
