Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "History in the Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2017) | Viewed by 131609

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Special Issue Editors

Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK
Interests: human mobility and the constructions of place (2017); history through material remains; Lucania (2007); agency of the displaced; hospitality, asylum, refugeehood; ancient history and archaeology of pre-Imperial Italy; public and common space and architecture; inter-disciplinarity and inter-practice methodologies; ancient youth
Department of History, Rutgers University–Camden, Camden, NJ 08102, USA
Interests: age and ageing in the Roman empire; Roman youth; Cicero; Roman political and cultural history; non-elite urban identities; Roman imperialism; ancient and modern ideologies and historiography; ancient somatology; Roman villa culture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Important and urgent studies on the subject of migration have increased substantially over the last decade in response to what has been termed the ‘migration crisis’. The issue is seemingly timeless, yet, the long term historical perspective shows just how ambivalent the category of migration is. What does it mean for human mobility to become a problem—a crisis? Usually the subject is addressed from either the perspective of the host or the home community, focusing on the impact of arrival or departure. Between these two points are those who are displaced, often for periods that last more than a generation—the current UN average duration of displacement is 25 years. For this reason we have chosen to focus on the critical issue of displacement. It is here broadly construed as both the involuntary movement of peoples from a place of belonging, whether due to forms of conflict, famine, persecution, or environmental disasters, and also the suspension of movement that leaves people existing without place. The more focused heuristic lens of displacement allows for cross-historical perspectives which do not risk conflating ‘migration’ with ‘refuge’ or ‘asylum’. It also allows for a discourse of place, space and territory—the shifting entities in relation to human belonging, statehood, mobility and control. It confronts the visibility and potency of displaced agency.

For this Special Issue, we therefore welcome contributions which seek to provoke a discourse within and beyond the field of Humanities, including the disciplines of Classics and Ancient History. Our intention is to create a dynamic collection using a dialogical platform with experts in the field, while ensuring a robust scholarly discourse. Hence, we have commissioned pieces of work from practitioners as catalysts, for each contributor to reflect on and engage with in preparing the paper. A scholar who uses a different approach will then be asked to respond to a paper. Through the stimulus by catalysts and respondents, the intention is to create dialogue across practices, disciplines and temporalities: from catalyst—to paper—to response. In so doing, we hope that it provokes future work—hence manifestos—not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research and practice concerned with migration and refugeehood.

We particularly invite paper contributions which, at a theoretical and/or methodological level, aim to: remap the priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines and critically analyse their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns; and lastly, stimulate future interdisciplinary work and collaborations beyond the academy.

We invite submissions that treat the following thematic areas:

Volatile Concepts

  • How exceptional is the nature of mobility/displacement in the contemporary age?
  • When does mobility, or immobility, become part of the repertoire of virtue—a positive attribute?
  • Permanent transience and de-placement—still a ‘state of exception’?

Tangible Creations

  • Spaces of suspension: the city, the camp, detention centres and sanctuaries.
  • Materialities of displacement: objects, bodies, settlements, and traces.
  • The power, agency, innovation of those who are displaced.
  • Between hospitality and asylum—suppliant and guest.

Critical Approaches

  • Opportunities and dangers of comparative history in the context of displacement.
  • From representation to challenge: narratives of displacement in images and words.
  • Re-humanising the demography of displacement: people beyond numbers.
  • Responsibilities as scholars, and educators of the decision makers of the future.

Prof. Dr. Elena Isayev
Dr. Evan Jewell
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (33 papers)

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Editorial

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19 pages, 304 KiB  
Editorial
On Displacement and the Humanities—An Introduction
by Elena Isayev, Evan Jewell, Gerawork Teferra Gizaw and Marcia C. Schenck
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040081 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1296
Abstract
When we conceived of the volume, Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present, six years ago, important and urgent studies on the subject of migration had increased substantially over the past decade in response to what has been [...] Read more.
When we conceived of the volume, Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present, six years ago, important and urgent studies on the subject of migration had increased substantially over the past decade in response to what has been termed the ‘migration crisis’ [...] Full article

Research

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34 pages, 3121 KiB  
Article
Ancient Wandering and Permanent Temporariness
by Elena Isayev
Humanities 2021, 10(3), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10030091 - 22 Jul 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3215
Abstract
To move towards an understanding of displacement from within, and the forms of its overcoming, the following chapter brings into dialogue the ancient experience of wandering and the 21st century condition of permanent temporariness. It explores whether these are the same or different [...] Read more.
To move towards an understanding of displacement from within, and the forms of its overcoming, the following chapter brings into dialogue the ancient experience of wandering and the 21st century condition of permanent temporariness. It explores whether these are the same or different phenomena, and whether the latter is a uniquely modern experience. In particular, it is interested in the turning points that lead to the defiance of the condition and its regime. It traces modes of existence that subvert the liminal state and allow for possibilities of living beyond the present moment through returns and futures that are part of everyday practices, even if they are splintered. Such actions, it is argued, allow for the repositioning of the self in relation to the world, and thus the exposition of cracks within the status quo. The investigation confronts experiences that appear to be uniquely those of the present day—such as non-arrival and forced immobility. In its exploration it engages current responses to de-placement by those who have experience of the condition first hand. It is a dialogue between the work of such creators as the architects Petti and Hilal, the poets Qasmiyeh and Husseini, and the community builders of Dandara, with ancient discourses of the outcast that are found in Euripides’ Medea, the experience of Xenophon and such philosophers as Diogenes the Cynic. In so doing, it seeks to expose the way seemingly exceptional forms of politics and existence, instead, reveal themselves as society’s ‘systemic edge’. Full article
22 pages, 2917 KiB  
Article
Citizenship’s Insular Cases, from Ancient Greece and Rome to Puerto Rico
by Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Humanities 2019, 8(3), 134; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8030134 - 08 Aug 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 7407
Abstract
Engaging equally with ancient Greco-Roman and contemporary Euro-American paradigms of citizenship, this essay argues that experiences of civic integration are structured around figurations of island and archipelago. In elaboration of this claim, I offer a transhistorical account of how institutions and imaginaries of [...] Read more.
Engaging equally with ancient Greco-Roman and contemporary Euro-American paradigms of citizenship, this essay argues that experiences of civic integration are structured around figurations of island and archipelago. In elaboration of this claim, I offer a transhistorical account of how institutions and imaginaries of citizenship take shape around an “insular scheme” whose defining characteristic is displacement. Shuttling from Homer and Livy to Imbolo Mbue and Danez Smith, I rely on the work of postcolonial literary critics and political theorists to map those repetitive deferrals of civic status to which immigrants and refugees in particular are uniquely subject. Full article
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41 pages, 2165 KiB  
Article
(Re)moving the Masses: Colonisation as Domestic Displacement in the Roman Republic
by Evan Jewell
Humanities 2019, 8(2), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8020066 - 28 Mar 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 8425
Abstract
Metaphors move—and displace—people. This paper starts from this premise, focusing on how elites have deployed metaphors of water and waste to form a rhetorical consensus around the displacement of non-elite citizens in ancient Roman contexts, with reference to similar discourses in the contemporary [...] Read more.
Metaphors move—and displace—people. This paper starts from this premise, focusing on how elites have deployed metaphors of water and waste to form a rhetorical consensus around the displacement of non-elite citizens in ancient Roman contexts, with reference to similar discourses in the contemporary Global North and Brazil. The notion of ‘domestic displacement’—the forced movement of citizens within their own sovereign territory—elucidates how these metaphors were used by elite citizens, such as Cicero, to mark out non-elite citizens for removal from the city of Rome through colonisation programmes. In the elite discourse of the late Republican and early Augustan periods, physical proximity to and figurative equation with the refuse of the city repeatedly signals the low social and legal status of potential colonists, while a corresponding metaphor of ‘draining’ expresses the elite desire to displace these groups to colonial sites. The material outcome of these metaphors emerges in the non-elite demographic texture of Julius Caesar’s colonists, many of whom were drawn from the plebs urbana and freedmen. An elite rationale, detectable in the writings of Cicero, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and others, underpins the notion of Roman colonisation as a mechanism of displacement. On this view, the colony served to alleviate the founding city—Rome—of its surplus population, politically volatile elements, and socially marginalised citizens, and in so doing, populate the margins of its empire too. Romulus’ asylum, read anew as an Alban colony, serves as one prototype for this model of colonisation and offers a contrast to recent readings that have deployed the asylum as an ethical example for contemporary immigration and asylum seeker policy. The invocation of Romulus’ asylum in 19th century debates about the Australian penal colonies further illustrates the dangers of appropriating the asylum towards an ethics of virtue. At its core, this paper drills down into the question of Roman colonists’ volition, considering the evidence for their voluntary and involuntary movement to a colonial site and challenging the current understanding of this movement as a straightforward, series of voluntary ‘mass migrations’. In recognising the agency wielded by non-elite citizens as prospective colonists, this paper contends that Roman colonisation, when understood as a form of domestic displacement, opens up another avenue for coming to grips with the dynamics of ‘popular’ politics in the Republican period. Full article
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25 pages, 758 KiB  
Article
Dalmatians and Dacians—Forms of Belonging and Displacement in the Roman Empire
by Alfred Hirt
Humanities 2019, 8(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8010001 - 24 Dec 2018
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 7533
Abstract
Inspired by the catalyst papers, this essay traces the impact of displacement on existing and emerging identities of groups and individuals which were relocated to ‘frontier’ areas in the aftermath of conflict and conquest by Rome during the reign of emperor Trajan. The [...] Read more.
Inspired by the catalyst papers, this essay traces the impact of displacement on existing and emerging identities of groups and individuals which were relocated to ‘frontier’ areas in the aftermath of conflict and conquest by Rome during the reign of emperor Trajan. The Dacian Wars, ending in 106 CE with the conquest of Dacia by Roman armies, not only resulted in the deliberate destruction of settlements and the society of the conquered, but also the removal of young Dacian men by forced recruitment into the Roman army, some serving the emperor in the Eastern Egyptian Desert. In turn, the wealth in gold and silver of the newly established Roman province of Dacia was exploited by mining communities arriving from Dalmatia. As a result of these ‘displacements’ caused by war and the shared experience of mining in the remote mountains of Dacia or guarding roads through the desert east of the Nile, we can trace the emergence of new senses of belonging alongside the retainment of fixed group identities. Full article
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21 pages, 2061 KiB  
Article
The Agency of the Displaced? Roman Expansion, Environmental Forces, and the Occupation of Marginal Landscapes in Ancient Italy
by Elisa Perego and Rafael Scopacasa
Humanities 2018, 7(4), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040116 - 12 Nov 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5423
Abstract
This article approaches the agency of displaced people through material evidence from the distant past. It seeks to construct a narrative of displacement where the key players include human as well as non-human agents—namely, the environment into which people move, and the socio-political [...] Read more.
This article approaches the agency of displaced people through material evidence from the distant past. It seeks to construct a narrative of displacement where the key players include human as well as non-human agents—namely, the environment into which people move, and the socio-political and environmental context of displacement. Our case-study from ancient Italy involves potentially marginalized people who moved into agriculturally challenging lands in Daunia (one of the most drought-prone areas of the Mediterranean) during the Roman conquest (late fourth-early second centuries BCE). We discuss how the interplay between socio-political and environmental forces may have shaped the agency of subaltern social groups on the move, and the outcomes of this process. Ultimately, this analysis can contribute towards a framework for the archaeological study of marginality and mobility/displacement—while addressing potential limitations in evidence and methods. Full article
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16 pages, 618 KiB  
Article
Recognizing the Delians Displaced after 167/6 BCE
by Eliza Gettel
Humanities 2018, 7(4), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040091 - 20 Sep 2018
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4518
Abstract
In 167/6 BCE, the Roman senate granted a request from Athens to control the island of Delos. Subsequently, the Delians inhabiting the island were mandated to leave and an Athenian community was installed. Polybius, who records these events, tells us that the Delians [...] Read more.
In 167/6 BCE, the Roman senate granted a request from Athens to control the island of Delos. Subsequently, the Delians inhabiting the island were mandated to leave and an Athenian community was installed. Polybius, who records these events, tells us that the Delians left and resettled in Achaea in the Peloponnese. Scholars have tended to focus on Rome’s motivations for siding with the Athenians rather than on what happened to the Delians. Furthermore, translations have tended to use the broad terminology of ‘migration’ to describe the Delians’ movement. Comparatively, this contribution suggests that modern categories connected to ‘displacement’ can help us recover aspects of the Delians’ experience. Particularly, a shift to the vocabulary of ‘displacement’ highlights the creative agency of the Delians in holding the Athenians accountable for their expulsion and in seeking recognition from Rome of their integration into the Achaean state. The application of these modern categories necessitates reflection on differences in the political, institutional landscapes that have shaped the experience of displacement in the ancient Hellenistic and modern contexts, as well as on variations in experience amongst the Delians. Ultimately, recognizing what these individuals experienced within the evolving third-party arbitration system of the ancient world leads us to think about the indirect violence of expanding political institutions in ‘globalising’ worlds, both ancient and modern. Full article
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14 pages, 313 KiB  
Article
It’s in the Water: Byzantine Borderlands and the Village War
by Jason Moralee
Humanities 2018, 7(3), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7030086 - 27 Aug 2018
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4026
Abstract
This essay examines Byzantine military manuals created between the sixth to the tenth centuries for what they can reveal about Byzantine imperial attitudes toward the landscapes of war and those who inhabit them. Of foremost concern in these sources is the maintenance of [...] Read more.
This essay examines Byzantine military manuals created between the sixth to the tenth centuries for what they can reveal about Byzantine imperial attitudes toward the landscapes of war and those who inhabit them. Of foremost concern in these sources is the maintenance of ‘security’ (Greek: asphaleia) by commanders with the necessary quality of ‘experience’ (Greek: peira). Experience meant knowing how to best exploit the land, including the villages under Byzantine authority, in the prosecution of war. Exploitation in the name of security involved destroying villages, using villages and their inhabitants in ambushes, poisoning and seizing crops, evacuating villages, and using villages for the billeting of, at times undisciplined, soldiers. Villages were thus central to a Byzantine military strategy that is identified here as the ‘village war,’ a strategy that is analogous to security strategies evident in more recent conflicts. Through the juxtaposition of premodern and modern modalities of war, this essay intends to be a pointed reminder that the village war has deep roots in imperialist thought, and that the consequences of the village war profoundly reshape the lives of those caught up in its midst, particularly the peasantry. Full article
19 pages, 3135 KiB  
Article
Citizenship as Barrier and Opportunity for Ancient Greek and Modern Refugees
by Benjamin Gray
Humanities 2018, 7(3), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7030072 - 19 Jul 2018
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 6682
Abstract
Some dominant traditions in Refugee Studies have stressed the barrier which state citizenship presents to the displaced. Some have condemned citizenship altogether as a mechanism and ideology for excluding the weak (G. Agamben). Others have seen citizenship as an acute problem for displaced [...] Read more.
Some dominant traditions in Refugee Studies have stressed the barrier which state citizenship presents to the displaced. Some have condemned citizenship altogether as a mechanism and ideology for excluding the weak (G. Agamben). Others have seen citizenship as an acute problem for displaced people in conditions, like those of the modern world, where the habitable world is comprehensively settled by states capable of defending their territory and organised in accordance with interstate norms, which leaves very limited space for the foundation of new communities with their own meaningful citizenship (H. Arendt). This paper engages with these prominent approaches, but also with more recent arguments that, when handled and adapted in the right way, the practices and ideology of citizenship also present opportunities for the displaced to form their own meaningful communities, exercise collective agency, and secure rights. It is argued that the evidence from ancient Greece shows that ancient Greek citizenship, an early forerunner of modern models of citizenship, could be imaginatively harnessed and adapted by displaced people and groups, in order to form effective and sometimes innovative political communities in exile, even after opportunities to found new city-states from scratch became quite rare (after c. 500 BC). Some relevant displaced groups experimented with more open and cosmopolitan styles of civic interaction and ideology in their improvised quasi-civic communities. The different kinds of ancient Greek informal ‘polis-in-exile’ can bring a new perspective on the wider debates and initiatives concerning refugee political agency and organisation in the ‘provocations’ in this special issue. Full article
16 pages, 1243 KiB  
Article
Sharing Histories: Teaching and Learning from Displaced Youth in Greece
by Lisa Trentin
Humanities 2018, 7(2), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7020053 - 25 May 2018
Viewed by 4940
Abstract
This paper reflects upon my experiences teaching and learning from displaced youth in Greece over a period of eight months in 2017. Following a brief examination of the current challenges in accessing formal education, I examine non-formal education initiatives, summarizing my work with [...] Read more.
This paper reflects upon my experiences teaching and learning from displaced youth in Greece over a period of eight months in 2017. Following a brief examination of the current challenges in accessing formal education, I examine non-formal education initiatives, summarizing my work with two NGOs in Athens and Chios where I taught lessons in English on ancient Greek art, archaeology, history, and literature. In offering these lessons, my hope was to do more than simply improve students’ language skills or deposit information: I wanted to examine the past to reflect upon the present, exploring themes of migration, forced displacement, and human belonging. Moreover, I wanted to engage students in meaningful connection, to the past and to the present, to one and to others, as a means of building community in and beyond the classroom, at a time when many were feeling alienated and isolated. This paper, therefore, outlines the transformational, liberating learning that took place, citing ancient evidence of displacement and unpacking modern responses by those currently displaced. Full article
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11 pages, 263 KiB  
Article
Learning from Past Displacements?1 The History of Migrations between Historical Specificity, Presentism and Fractured Continuities
by Susanne Lachenicht
Humanities 2018, 7(2), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7020036 - 13 Apr 2018
Viewed by 7949
15 pages, 633 KiB  
Article
Reading Derrida in Tehran: Between an Open Door and an Empty Sofreh
by Elisabeth Yarbakhsh
Humanities 2018, 7(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7010021 - 02 Mar 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5290
Abstract
We can only begin to grasp hospitality as we enact it and yet, in the moment of enactment, hospitality eludes us. In this paper I look at the enactment of hospitality in the relationship between Iranian citizen-hosts and Afghan refugee-guests in the Islamic [...] Read more.
We can only begin to grasp hospitality as we enact it and yet, in the moment of enactment, hospitality eludes us. In this paper I look at the enactment of hospitality in the relationship between Iranian citizen-hosts and Afghan refugee-guests in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in order to reflect more broadly on questions of Derridean hospitality. Moving between the theoretical and the ethnographic, I forcefully bring to bear on a situation of protracted refugee displacement, a notion of hospitality that has, to a large extent, remained abstract and unanchored. The scalar shifts between the domestic and the national (so integral to Derrida’s theorising of the hospitable), are here reproduced in an examination of Iranian hospitality that simultaneously considers the juridical framework of asylum in the Islamic Republic and the domestic or homely expression of welcome, that occurs in the ushering of the guest over the threshold and the sharing of food around the sofreh. Full article

Other

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5 pages, 244 KiB  
Comment
Comment on Moralee (2018). It’s in the Water: Byzantine Borderlands and the Village War. Humanities 7: 86
by Christine Robins, Zêdan Xelef, Emad Bashar and Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040080 - 14 Aug 2023
Viewed by 563
Abstract
This response to Jason Moralees’ article comes from members and associates of the Êzidi (Yazidi) team working on Sinjar Lives/Shingal Lives, a community-driven oral history project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. They are all survivors of the Êzidi [...] Read more.
This response to Jason Moralees’ article comes from members and associates of the Êzidi (Yazidi) team working on Sinjar Lives/Shingal Lives, a community-driven oral history project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. They are all survivors of the Êzidi genocide committed by ISIS in 2014. They explore Moralee’s themes of securitisation, imperialism and violence—especially the ‘village war’, its roots in imperialist thought and its consequences—from the perspective of those who call the village home. Beyond securitisation, they discuss borders both geographical and socio-cultural and the contemporary political significance of the elusive victim voice. Full article
10 pages, 222 KiB  
Comment
Non-Return and Non-Arrival in Aboriginal Australia. Comment on Isayev (2021). Ancient Wandering and Permanent Temporariness. Humanities 10: 91
by Paul Magee and Paul Collis
Humanities 2022, 11(4), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11040086 - 12 Jul 2022
Viewed by 1014
Abstract
This dialogue constitutes an engagement with Elena Isayev’s article, “Ancient Wandering and Permanent Temporariness”. It focusses on concepts Elena has marshalled for the analysis of ancient and contemporary experiences of displacement (“non-return”, “non-arrival”, “permanent temporariness”) within what are largely international political frameworks. The [...] Read more.
This dialogue constitutes an engagement with Elena Isayev’s article, “Ancient Wandering and Permanent Temporariness”. It focusses on concepts Elena has marshalled for the analysis of ancient and contemporary experiences of displacement (“non-return”, “non-arrival”, “permanent temporariness”) within what are largely international political frameworks. The point of our response is to see what happens when we apply these concepts to Aboriginal people’s experiences of displacement within the Australian nation—a country that did not even count the indigenous as citizens until 1967. Some striking parallels emerge, in relation to how a people can be forced to live in a temporary state, their lives “made in between”. Our response took the form of a conversation and was recorded on 6 December 2021. We choose to speak and transcribe these thoughts, rather than write them, as a way to maintain the dialogic mode (a.k.a. “yarning”) in which Aboriginal intellectual work has flourished for millennia now. Towards the end of the exchange Paul Collis suggests that not only Aboriginal people, but the land itself, suffers from a kind of “permanent temporariness”. Full article
7 pages, 236 KiB  
Comment
Response to Padilla Peralta, Dan-el. Citizenship’s Insular Cases, from Ancient Greece and Rome to Puerto Rico. Humanities 2019, 8, 134
by Lorrin Thomas
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 140; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040140 - 25 Nov 2020
Viewed by 1836
Abstract
Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s exquisite exploration of citizenship and displacement across two millennia draws on sources from ancient Greece and Rome as well as modern empires, including the U.S., and proposes two creative heuristic devices—the “insular scheme” and “radical inclusion”—that enable us to better [...] Read more.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s exquisite exploration of citizenship and displacement across two millennia draws on sources from ancient Greece and Rome as well as modern empires, including the U.S., and proposes two creative heuristic devices—the “insular scheme” and “radical inclusion”—that enable us to better understand both the marginalizing experience and the animating possibilities of immigrant citizenship. In my response to his piece, I assess the relevance of these ideas to the history of Puerto Ricans in relation to the United States. Puerto Ricans, caught in the “insular scheme” of U.S. citizenship since American citizenship was imposed on them in 1917, are the most obvious exemplars of “differentiated citizens” in the nation and have struggled in multiple ways with the question of inclusion as citizens. I examine the ways that Puerto Ricans have used the language of recognition as a way to explain the aspiration of equitable citizenship, a vision of belonging in the nation that sounds much like Padilla Peralta’s “radical inclusion.” Full article
7 pages, 229 KiB  
Comment
Response to Hirt, Alfred. Dalmatians and Dacians—Forms of Belonging and Displacement in the Roman Empire. Humanities, 2019, 8, 1
by Hilde Caroli Casavola
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040139 - 24 Nov 2020
Viewed by 1592
Abstract
Taking a cue from Hirt’s paper, this contribution is mainly focused on contemporary juridical debate on the movement of people, and the legal status of foreigners in the Nation-State and the implications in terms of legal guarantees, of the conceptualization of the principle [...] Read more.
Taking a cue from Hirt’s paper, this contribution is mainly focused on contemporary juridical debate on the movement of people, and the legal status of foreigners in the Nation-State and the implications in terms of legal guarantees, of the conceptualization of the principle of dignity in historical perspective. The distinction between labor migration and forced migration gained importance through the centuries and played a significant role in the gradual emergence of the regulation of mobility and population flows in the Western countries. Geo-territorial circumstances (as remoteness, physical isolation due to mountains or deserts, and harsh weather conditions) have always been, and still are, strategic drivers of amalgamation of different social groups and solution of potential conflicts. In turn, the administrative procedures and practices and the concrete circumstances produced by public authorities affecting the settlement of migrants, foreigners and ethnic groups deserve particular consideration in the light of the principle of human dignity and its relationship with the concept of identity. Full article
6 pages, 197 KiB  
Comment
Big Powers, Small Islands, Real Displaced People. Response to Gettel, Eliza. Recognizing the Delians Displaced after 167/6 BCE. Humanities 2018, 7, 91
by Irial Glynn
Humanities 2020, 9(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030060 - 09 Jul 2020
Viewed by 2331
Abstract
Eliza Gettel’s paper on the displacement of the Delians in the second century BCE does an excellent job of examining an ancient case study of displacement through the lens of contemporary conceptions of displacement and asylum. In this paper, I try, as a [...] Read more.
Eliza Gettel’s paper on the displacement of the Delians in the second century BCE does an excellent job of examining an ancient case study of displacement through the lens of contemporary conceptions of displacement and asylum. In this paper, I try, as a modern historian of asylum, to reflect on the applicability of modern classifications to a case study over 2000 years old. First, I discuss the compatibility of the ancient with the modern. Subsequently, I engage much more deliberately with the arguments Gettel presents in her paper. Finally, I introduce a contemporary case study involving the displacement of people from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean that I argue shares some similarities with that of the Delians, with both cases highlighting the often-neglected agency of the displaced. Full article
5 pages, 153 KiB  
Creative
Time
by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh
Humanities 2020, 9(2), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9020053 - 21 Jun 2020
Viewed by 1621
Abstract
This time sequence opens with a soliloquy, or more precisely, a submission to time, in the form of personal lamentations, and is followed by irregular stanzas spanning unidentified episodes of journeying, the intention to do so, or total stasis. Throughout, time is continuously [...] Read more.
This time sequence opens with a soliloquy, or more precisely, a submission to time, in the form of personal lamentations, and is followed by irregular stanzas spanning unidentified episodes of journeying, the intention to do so, or total stasis. Throughout, time is continuously prodded by the intimate journey within one’s own time, by its linguistic and haptic promise, through the name and naming, the names passed on from parents to their child. In this sense, the poem queries the inward pact signed in journeying, between the son on the one hand, and the father and mother on the other, constituting the announcement of history through intersecting times of refugeeness, but equally in the context of humanity and inhumanity as a whole. As time is incessantly probed in this poem, so is journeying within it. In particular, time, as it branches out onto subjective (and non-subjective) times, is conveyed initially through the journeying from I/We to They in the poem, ushering in competing pronouns in an attempt to blur time itself and those inside and outside it. The premise of this poem, or body of poems, is not in any way to locate time with precision, physically or historically, but to repeat a question which seldom finds a place and time; that is, “where is time” to witness the future? Full article
10 pages, 287 KiB  
Comment
Historicizing Migration and Displacement: Learning from the Early Roman Empire in the Time of the Nation-State. Response to Lachenicht, Susanne. Learning from Past Displacements? The History of Migrations between Historical Specificity, Presentism and Fractured Continuities. Humanities 2018, 7, 36
by George Baroud
Humanities 2020, 9(2), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9020036 - 29 Apr 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2864
Abstract
My response to Susanne Lachenicht’s thought-provoking article is a brief attempt to take up her call to write histories that lead not to absolute certainties but to more understanding of the complexities of the past. I focus on documentation, border control, and citizenship [...] Read more.
My response to Susanne Lachenicht’s thought-provoking article is a brief attempt to take up her call to write histories that lead not to absolute certainties but to more understanding of the complexities of the past. I focus on documentation, border control, and citizenship in the Early Roman Empire to illustrate some of the radically different ways these were conceptualized and practiced in a premodern multiethnic empire like Rome than in a contemporary nation-state today. Passports, for example, and border control as we know it, did not exist, and migration was not tied to citizenship status. But the account I offer is deliberately tentative and full of qualifications to emphasize the real methodological challenges the study of this subject poses on account of fragmentary literary and material records and the numerous difficulties of interpreting these. I conclude by pointing out both the benefits and the limitations of framing history as a discipline from which one can learn. On the one hand, understanding how seemingly universal categories such as ‘citizen’ and ‘migrant’ are dynamic and constructed rather than static and natural can nuance public debates in nation-states which receive high numbers of migrants (like Germany, Lachenicht’s starting point) by countering ahistorical narratives of a monolithic and sedentary identity. On the other hand, knowledge of the past does not necessarily lead to moral edification. Full article
5 pages, 204 KiB  
Comment
Response to Jewell, Evan. (Re)moving the Masses: Colonisation as Domestic Displacement in the Roman Republic. Humanities 2019, 8, 66
by Peter Gatrell
Humanities 2019, 8(4), 171; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8040171 - 24 Oct 2019
Viewed by 2079
Abstract
This response engages with Evan Jewell’s article on ‘Colonisation as Domestic Displacement in the Roman Republic’. It supports his argument about the relationship between the conduct of politics in the ancient world and the use of aquatic metaphors to target specific groups for [...] Read more.
This response engages with Evan Jewell’s article on ‘Colonisation as Domestic Displacement in the Roman Republic’. It supports his argument about the relationship between the conduct of politics in the ancient world and the use of aquatic metaphors to target specific groups for displacement, adding that similar relationships unfolded in more recent times. His emphasis on ‘domestic displacement’ also resonates with twentieth-century projects that displaced people in large numbers in pursuit of what has come to be called ‘development’. Full article
6 pages, 235 KiB  
Comment
Anthropocene Shiftings: Response to Perego, E. and Scopacasa, R. The Agency of the Displaced? Roman Expansion, Environmental Forces, and the Occupation of Marginal Landscapes in Ancient Italy. Humanities 2018, 7, 116
by Carol Farbotko
Humanities 2019, 8(4), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8040158 - 10 Oct 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2578
Abstract
In this response to Elisa Perego and Rafael Scopacasa’s article, I reflect on connections across time and space from an Anthropocenic perspective that is, by urgent necessity, open to the unexpected. In Ancient Italy, and contemporary Tuvalu and Brazil, it is possible to [...] Read more.
In this response to Elisa Perego and Rafael Scopacasa’s article, I reflect on connections across time and space from an Anthropocenic perspective that is, by urgent necessity, open to the unexpected. In Ancient Italy, and contemporary Tuvalu and Brazil, it is possible to find similarly unexpected ends being achieved among populations that move, whose lives are lived on ground that cannot be assumed to be inert: earth has agency, and over time, it shifts, or is flooded, or buries things. When non-elites are moving into marginal places where life is tough, where earthly agency cannot be ignored, such people are also finding themselves at the centre of major turning points in history. Mobility and survival in marginal places can offer a way to live a less colonized life. Full article
4 pages, 180 KiB  
Comment
On Well-Being, Activism and Ethical Practice: Response to Trentin, Lisa. Sharing Histories: Teaching and Learning from Displaced Youth in Greece. Humanities 2018, 7, 53
by Zena Kamash
Humanities 2019, 8(3), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8030149 - 10 Sep 2019
Viewed by 2089
Abstract
In this response to Lisa Trentin’s article, I explore themes that bring together research and activism, through engagement with the past, and the ethics that concerns such endeavours. I demonstrate the overlaps with my own work into well-being and heritage and suggest that [...] Read more.
In this response to Lisa Trentin’s article, I explore themes that bring together research and activism, through engagement with the past, and the ethics that concerns such endeavours. I demonstrate the overlaps with my own work into well-being and heritage and suggest that broadening out work to include mixed groups may increase the effects of reciprocity noted by Lisa Trentin. I argue that research, as well as teaching, which takes on the decolonizing principles that Lisa Trentin espouses, especially that which includes disenfranchised communities, needs to be done equitably and in ways that are ethical, compassionate and respectful. Full article
3 pages, 167 KiB  
Comment
Response to Yarbakhsh Elisabeth. Reading Derrida in Tehran: Between an Open Door and an Empty Sofreh. Humanities, 2018, 7, 21
by Demetra Kasimis
Humanities 2019, 8(3), 140; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8030140 - 15 Aug 2019
Viewed by 2250
Abstract
This critical engagement with Elisabeth Yarbaksh’s essay asks what Iran might be gaining from sustaining its particular form of (un-)hospitality. It considers whether Iranian dynamics of hospitality might be working to meet the specific political interests of the post-revolutionary “republic” and concludes with [...] Read more.
This critical engagement with Elisabeth Yarbaksh’s essay asks what Iran might be gaining from sustaining its particular form of (un-)hospitality. It considers whether Iranian dynamics of hospitality might be working to meet the specific political interests of the post-revolutionary “republic” and concludes with a comparison to classical Athenian migration (metoikia) politics. Full article
8 pages, 231 KiB  
Comment
From Exclusion to Inhabitation: Response to Gray, Benjamin. Citizenship as Barrier and Opportunity for Ancient Greek and Modern Refugees. Humanities, 2018, 7, 72
by Camillo Boano
Humanities 2019, 8(3), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8030125 - 16 Jul 2019
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3470
Abstract
Spaces of refuge represent the paradoxical encounters between a series of governmental forces, disciplinary knowledge, aesthetic regimes and spatial conditions that tend to arrest, fix in time and space forms of lives. Considering the fact that camps are meant to be the materialisation [...] Read more.
Spaces of refuge represent the paradoxical encounters between a series of governmental forces, disciplinary knowledge, aesthetic regimes and spatial conditions that tend to arrest, fix in time and space forms of lives. Considering the fact that camps are meant to be the materialisation of a temporal status, spatial and political, the proposition posed by Benjamin Gray’s Citizenship as Barrier and Opportunity for Ancient Greek and Modern Refugees, to look at “citizenship-in-exile” practices in ancient Greece and their forms of “improvised quasi-civic communities”, is welcome as it is refreshing. This short response engages with Gray’s text, addressing two different but interconnected points: in one respect, I hope to rescue Agamben’s work from its linear reading by commenting on the depoliticization of the camp and the critique of its exceptionalism; and, in another, I wish to provoke reflection around the universalising claim of hospitality and full assimilation, by introducing the disruptive terminology of inhabitation. This critical insertion aims to redefine an ethical relationship with the space, as a space of and for life, that Agamben sees as the basis for a new ethics, reversing its status as a productive and active force where the camp, in its paradigmatic reading, and the form of life it generates, helps to think beside the exceptional and move to inhabit such indistinctions. Full article
1 pages, 180 KiB  
Erratum
Erratum: Moralee, Jason. It’s in the Water: Byzantine Borderlands and the Village War. Humanities 2018, 7, 86
by Jason Moralee
Humanities 2019, 8(3), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8030121 - 05 Jul 2019
Viewed by 1892
Abstract
The author would like to make the following changes to the published paper (Moralee 2018): [...] Full article
2273 KiB  
Creative
A Narrative of Resistance: A Brief History of the Dandara Community, Brazil
by Beatriz Ribeiro, Fernando Oelze and Orlando Soares Lopes
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030070 - 05 Sep 2017
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4694
Abstract
This paper presents a brief report on the history of the Dandara Occupation, in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Through a general panorama of the strategies and resistance of the residents and movements involved; this paper shows the importance of the occupied [...] Read more.
This paper presents a brief report on the history of the Dandara Occupation, in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Through a general panorama of the strategies and resistance of the residents and movements involved; this paper shows the importance of the occupied territory in the struggle for the right to housing in the city. Through the narratives of the residents, references and photographic remnants of the initial years of the occupation, a temporal line is developed to the present day that reveals the challenges and opportunities for the people of Dandara in the making of their community. Full article
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988 KiB  
Creative
Private Citizenship: Real Estate Practice in Palestine
by Athar Mufreh
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030068 - 31 Aug 2017
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 3301
Abstract
What is the function of the new towns and real estate developments in Palestine?[...] Full article
2085 KiB  
Creative
Refugee Heritage. Part III Justification for Inscription
by Alessandro Petti
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030066 - 29 Aug 2017
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4181
Abstract
In order to inscribe a site in the World Heritage list, the property should have outstanding universal values, defined as “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future [...] Read more.
In order to inscribe a site in the World Heritage list, the property should have outstanding universal values, defined as “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.[...] Full article
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780 KiB  
Creative
On the Slab, Our Architecture under Construction
by Ligia Nobre and Anderson Kazuo Nakano
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030062 - 17 Aug 2017
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3790
Abstract
The 1950s and 60s was marked by the developmentalism, industrialization, and modernization of peripheral capitalism of Brazil and by the demographic explosion and unprecedented urban expansion in the country. Throughout these decades, São Paulo became the political, cultural, and economic epicenter of Brazil, [...] Read more.
The 1950s and 60s was marked by the developmentalism, industrialization, and modernization of peripheral capitalism of Brazil and by the demographic explosion and unprecedented urban expansion in the country. Throughout these decades, São Paulo became the political, cultural, and economic epicenter of Brazil, Full article
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1608 KiB  
Creative
Uncovering Culture and Identity in Refugee Camps
by Ayham Dalal
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030061 - 16 Aug 2017
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 5879
Abstract
Refugee camps, especially in their emergency phases, are places where everything seems to be similar, repetitive, and modular. This impression is not only due to the unified shelter unit that is usually distributed by UNHCR1 (traditionally a tent, and recently caravans, prefabs, and [...] Read more.
Refugee camps, especially in their emergency phases, are places where everything seems to be similar, repetitive, and modular. This impression is not only due to the unified shelter unit that is usually distributed by UNHCR1 (traditionally a tent, and recently caravans, prefabs, and developed T-Shelters), but is also due to the camps’ ordered layout and hierarchical plan (Figures 1–3).[...] Full article
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4405 KiB  
Creative
‘Space of Refuge’: Negotiating Space with Refugees Inside the Palestinian Camp
by Samar Maqusi
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030060 - 16 Aug 2017
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5388
Abstract
‘Space of Refuge’ is a spatial installation directly addressing issues of inhabitation within Palestinian refugee camps in different host countries. It does so by illustrating the various modes of spatial production and subsequent evolution of Palestinian refugee camps, with particular focus upon unofficial [...] Read more.
‘Space of Refuge’ is a spatial installation directly addressing issues of inhabitation within Palestinian refugee camps in different host countries. It does so by illustrating the various modes of spatial production and subsequent evolution of Palestinian refugee camps, with particular focus upon unofficial acts of “spatial violation” that have emerged because of the increasingly protracted nature of the refugee situation. Full article
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2630 KiB  
Creative
Collaborations on the Edge
by Katharina Rohde
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030059 - 07 Aug 2017
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 3644
Abstract
Since 2005 I have been working with mobile communities in the cities of Berlin, Germany and Johannesburg, South Africa.[...] Full article
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2168 KiB  
Creative
Quantum Notes on Classic Places
by Diego Segatto
Humanities 2017, 6(3), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030054 - 31 Jul 2017
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3349
Abstract
I would like to sing about an unstable, yet constant force that stresses and pushes imagination. It makes cultural and social transformations a process to experience in person. [...] Full article
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