Refugee Talk

Ulla Rahbek, Eva Rask Knudsen

Description

'A wide-ranging, erudite and multi-faceted analyses of the fundamental problem of who gets to be counted as human' - Kate Evans

Refugee Talk explores cultural responses to the ongoing refugee crisis. Looking at ethical questions and political rhetoric surrounding the refugee experience, the authors uncover the reality behind the fraught discussions taking place today.

With an understanding of how to meaningfully negotiate responses through philosophy, media representations, art, activism and literature, the authors insist that a radically different approach is needed, advocating for, along with other reorientations, a new refugee vocabulary as a launching pad for interventions into polarised debates.

By centring conversation as a method and ethical practice to engage in the discourses surrounding refugees, Refugee Talk is structured around dialogues with academics, activists, journalists and refugee artists and writers, creating a comprehensive humanities approach that places ethics and aesthetics at its core.

Acknowledgements
Framing Crisis
1. Humanity – Ontology, Location and Migration
2. Responsibility – News Media and the (Re)framing of Refugees
3. Solidarity – Storytelling as Activism
4. Recognition – Refugee Literature and Defamiliarisation
Framing Hope
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Refugees
• Minority Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Human Rights
• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Linguistics
• Emigration
• General officer
• Semantics
• Rhetoric
• General
• Migration
• Immigration
• 1948
• Hannah Arendt

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745344447
• Langue: English

Extrait

Refugee Talk
A wide-ranging, erudite and multi-faceted analyses of the fundamental problem of who gets to be counted as human in a planet under stress.
-Kate Evans, award-winning cartoonist and activist, and author of Red Rosa
In Refugee Talk , the authors tell us that they align [themselves] with what Edward Said labels amateurism - the desire to be moved [by] unquenchable interest in the larger picture, in making connections across lines and barriers . In this absorbing book, they manage to do exactly that: They combine the rigors of academic argument with Said s broad-minded, and deeply-felt, intellectual generosity, focusing on the moral, aesthetic, sociopolitical, and narrative aspects of the phenomenologies of migration. As a work of anti-reductive complexity that engages both urgently and unflinchingly with the refugee crisis, Refugee Talk is aimed not just at scholars of migration studies, philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, narrativists, and others, but at those looking to better understand the plight of refugees in terms of what the authors call a new humanism for the twenty-first century . It is indeed this humanism, urging us all to take seriously not only refugee justice, but our shared, and fragile, humanity, that is at the core of this remarkable book.
-Anna Gotlib, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
This book is built around that which is absent from most books of this kind: the voices of the refugee. Eva Rask Knudsen and Ulla Rahbek deploy a rich blend of theory and textual analysis, complemented in a distinctive way by a range of original conversations with writers, journalists, critical theorists, and refugees themselves. The book challenges those of us working in the field to rethink the existing refugee lexicon and to open up fresh debates about the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of representation. What is particularly heartening about the book is the way in which, at a time of such negativity, the authors attempt to frame their overall approach in a context of hope.
-Roger Bromley, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Nottingham
Deftly weaving theoretical analysis with conversations from journalists, activists, and exiles themselves, Refugee Talk stunningly accomplishes what responsible critique demands of us all: nuanced, ethical and material engagement with those to whom our thought is indebted.
-Sabeen Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College
In the midst of political conflicts concerning refugees, Refugee Talk steps back from the immediate fray to reflect on the ethical character of refugee talk in academic, media, activist artistic, and literary contexts. The result is a genuinely thoughtful - and engagingly conversational - work that re-orients us to the recognition of hope as a common human dynamic and to a critical humanism expressed in acknowledging the dignity of refugees. Highly recommended.
-David Owen, Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton
Refugee Talk
Propositions on Ethics and Aesthetics
Eva Rask Knudsen and Ulla Rahbek
First published 2022 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Eva Rask Knudsen and Ulla Rahbek 2022
The right of Eva Rask Knudsen and Ulla Rahbek to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4443 0 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4442 3 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4446 1 PDF
ISBN 978 0 7453 4444 7 EPUB
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements
Framing Crisis
1. Humanity - Ontology, Location and Migration
2. Responsibility - News Media and the (Re)framing of Refugees
3. Solidarity - Storytelling as Activism
4. Recognition - Refugee Literature and Defamiliarisation
Framing Hope
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
This book was written during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. As travel was restricted, we had to resort to a variety of venues and platforms to make meetings with our conversational partners possible. But we made it. Our warmest thanks go to Homi K. Bhabha, Brad Evans, Kate Evans, Simon Gikandi, Mohsin Hamid, Patrick Kingsley, Dina Nayeri, Gulwali Passarlay, and Daniel Trilling for stimulating conversations in person, on Zoom, via Voxer and email. Your generosity and interest in our project as well as your spot-on, thought-provoking contributions energised the writing process throughout.
Thank you also to Stine Lundgaard Schnor for efficiently transcribing all the conversations and for editorial assistance in getting the manuscript ready for submission - and to our engaged and enthusiastic students at Copenhagen University for their participation in our classes on refugee literature. We have learned a lot from you!
The Carlsberg Foundation awarded us a Semper Ardens monograph fellowship in 2020 and funded the open access publication. We are truly grateful for the Foundation s support which allowed us time off from teaching so that we could devote all our energy to this book.
Framing Crisis
The refugee crisis literally arrived on Europe s doorstep in 2015. In the late summer of that year, when long trails of people in flight walked along highways from south to north in search of safe haven, we were on our way back to Denmark from a conference in Germany. At a train stop close to Frankfurt, a group of Middle-Eastern men entered the crowded cabin, looked around in bewilderment and quickly made their way to other parts of the train. But one paused to point to a map on his mobile phone and ask in broken English to have the northward direction confirmed, and as he did so his ramshackle suitcase sprang open to reveal that there was nothing inside. The young man pretended to be a regular traveller but his empty luggage betrayed him. We exchanged brief glances, the suitcase was quickly closed and he moved on. This chance moment carried significance. He could not possibly register as a distant stranger - he was simply a young man in close proximity and in need of help on our home turf. Yet everything about his demeanour suggested he was unsure if he would receive it. He appeared to have lost his place in the world and for a brief instant we witnessed it and were short of a response. It was an almost wordless encounter made anxious by a tellingly empty suitcase and a story we would never hear. In retrospect, it was the moment that began this book.
Even if the term refugee crisis did not become common parlance in Europe until 2015 when a record number of 1.3 million people requested asylum within the EU - with the millions of the previous and subsequent years making it the largest population movement since World War II - it is nevertheless an overlooked fact that the European crisis is part of a much larger global crisis. Across the world, 83 million people are currently forcibly displaced and, among them, more than 26 million refugees are seeking international protection from life-threatening circumstances. The fact that 80 per cent of these refugees are hosted by the world s poorer nations puts the European crisis into perspective and begs the question why Europe, global numbers considered, has failed to respond to the local crisis in an apposite manner. The number of pending asylum applications in the EU is close to a million, with many asylum seekers confined to camps, reception or deportation centres where they are made to wait in limbo. With rejection rates ranging in some EU nations between 60 and 80 per cent, the prospects for life to begin again look bleak. Moreover, as is well known without having prompted responsible action, thousands of refugees have died on their clandestine journey to a continent whose outer borders are scrupulously patrolled to prevent them from entering. Human rights are frequently violated when unwanted asylum seekers are pushed back, now more forcefully than ever. Alexander Betts and Paul Collier observed already in 2018 that the 1951 Geneva Convention is silent on both where and with what resources refuge should be provided (2018: 47) with the result that it is politics - and more specifically power - rather than law or principle that primarily determines who takes responsibility for refugees and on what basis (47-8). This is still the case. Even if the EU officially declared in 2019 that the crisis is over, this is, in Daniel Trilling s succinct observation, merely a sign that the cameras have gone - but the suffering endures (2018b). The numbers are still grim, camp situations continue to be devastating and the prospects of resettlement are limited. The refugee crisis is still ongoing.
This book, however, is not about numbers, statistics, rejection rates and EU or state politics. Rather, it is about our variegated cultural responses to people in need of protection. It is written against the backdrop of the current refugee crisis in Europe, but it also draws more generally on experiences of being, or responding to, refugees in previous moments of crisis when this will help shed light on recurring patterns in contemporary responses. Refugee Talk acts on the call that academics refrain from engaging with the refugee crisis from an arm s length dispassionate perspective and provide instead a narrative of the crisis wherein the moral and ethical commitment to doing something lies not in the background but the forefront of the story we re