Humanities

Editorial

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8 pages, 5213 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Refugees and Representation: Introduction—The Mimesis of Diaspora

by Adam Zachary Newton

Humanities 2024, 13(2), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020056 - 22 Mar 2024

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Abstract

In keeping with the title we have chosen for this follow-up volume to the Special Issue “Ethics and Literary Practice I”, we frame our introduction and summary of the essays collected here with a brief archaeology of modern literary realism at its conjoined [...] Read more.

In keeping with the title we have chosen for this follow-up volume to the Special Issue “Ethics and Literary Practice I”, we frame our introduction and summary of the essays collected here with a brief archaeology of modern literary realism at its conjoined genesis in classical Greece and the ancient Near East; such contextualization serves as a prescient backdrop for the varied focus, across a compilation of thirteen articles, on refugees and their representation [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

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21 pages, 10493 KiB

Open AccessArticle

‘Together We Prepare a Feast, Each Person Stirring Up Memory’

by Ed Stevens, Anna Khlusova, Sarah Fine, Ammar Azzouz and Leonie Ansems de Vries

Humanities 2023, 12(5), 98; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050098 - 15 Sep 2023

Viewed by 2238

Abstract

Our story starts in April 2020, in the early stages of the UK’s first national COVID-19 lockdown. A multidisciplinary team of researchers and artists began a collaboration with Migrateful, a charity that runs cookery classes led by refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants struggling [...] Read more.

Our story starts in April 2020, in the early stages of the UK’s first national COVID-19 lockdown. A multidisciplinary team of researchers and artists began a collaboration with Migrateful, a charity that runs cookery classes led by refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants struggling to integrate and access employment. Teaching classes and sharing their cuisine and stories helps the chefs develop their confidence and sense of belonging, and food is central to the enterprise. The focus of the project was a series of interactive online cookery classes delivered by Migrateful chefs, with ongoing involvement from the researchers and artists. In this paper, we weave together the research team’s reflections on the project with commentary from the participants and artists. We outline our methods and our learning from the collaboration and explain how it inspired new ways of thinking about refugee representation, food and belonging, co-creative storytelling, and virtual engagement. We discuss the ways in which Migrateful’s model helps to support the production of counter-narratives that value, foreground, and amplify migrants’ perspectives and voices while acknowledging the tensions involved in adapting this model to the virtual space. We emphasise the power dynamics inherent in engaging and researching with marginalised people and their stories while considering whether artistic involvement and creation may help to navigate some of these challenges, and we address how the virtual environment affected the potential for collaborative storytelling, interaction, and engagement levels among participants. Together, these reflections form a ‘recipe’ for what we hope to be a more meaningful and ethical model of engagement activity that builds on this learning. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

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13 pages, 270 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Perpetual Exile: Legacies of a Disrupted Century

by Azade Seyhan

Humanities 2023, 12(5), 93; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050093 - 7 Sep 2023

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Abstract

The transnational configuration of contemporary German literature cannot be detached from its historical continuum, since such a separation would render the archive of histories of exile in and out of Germany inconsistent and incomplete. Bringing literary histories of exile in a dialogue, in [...] Read more.

The transnational configuration of contemporary German literature cannot be detached from its historical continuum, since such a separation would render the archive of histories of exile in and out of Germany inconsistent and incomplete. Bringing literary histories of exile in a dialogue, in this instance, Exilliteratur, represented by prominent German authors, who, during the Second World War, immigrated to Southern California (Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Franz Werfel, among others), as well as Anna Seghers and Stefan Zweig, who went into exile in Mexico and Brazil, respectively, and the emerging literature of contemporary transnational or so-called hyphenated German (“Bindestrich-Deutsche”) writers would enable an inclusive paradigm that communicates across communities of research. To that end, I briefly review one novel each by Anna Seghers and Lion Feuchtwanger and essays by the Iranian-German poet SAID, which exemplify the two distinctive genres of exile literature: the long-established Exilliteratur and what I elsewhere described as transnational literature of writers mostly from the non-Western world, who in the latter part of the twentieth century began immigrating to the West. While I acknowledge the different circumstances and historical imperatives that have dictated the features of the two genres, I foreground the ethical implications and the cautionary tales the respective works of Exilliteratur authors and transnational writers share. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

11 pages, 274 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Slow Refugee: Transit as Stasis, Narrative Ethics, and Level Telling Fields

by Roy Sommer

Humanities 2023, 12(4), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040059 - 5 Jul 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1447

Abstract

The slow humanities, this article argues, can make valuable contributions to the study of migration narratives. A slow take on literary representations of refugees and migrants has two distinct but related dimensions. On the one hand, the figure of the slow refugee introduced [...] Read more.

The slow humanities, this article argues, can make valuable contributions to the study of migration narratives. A slow take on literary representations of refugees and migrants has two distinct but related dimensions. On the one hand, the figure of the slow refugee introduced here challenges theories of migration which emphasize movement. On the other hand, the slow approach to literary representations of forced migration focuses on various forms of narrative empowerment. My readings of the novel What is the What (2008) by Dave Eggers and Parwana Amiri’s work My Pen Won’t Break But Borders Will: Letter to the World from Moria (2020) demonstrate how collaborative and allied forms of storytelling help restore narrative agency and authority, moving beyond the exemplary, documentary, and ambassadorial functions of vicarious storytelling. Instead of speaking on behalf of others, or even worse, for others—the default case in many conversations on migration—the literary representations of refugees discussed in this article emphasize the need to tell and share stories with others, for the benefit of everyone. In this sense, they help establish a level telling field, initiating a debate on the terms and conditions of fair conversation on forced migration. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

12 pages, 317 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exilic Roots and Paths of Marronage: Breaching Walls of Space and Memory in the Historical Poetics of Dénètem Touam Bona

by Geoffroy de Laforcade

Humanities 2023, 12(3), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12030036 - 3 May 2023

Viewed by 2342

Abstract

Afropean anthropologist, philosopher, and art curator Dénètem Touam Bona is an original “border thinker” and “crosser” of geographic and conceptual boundaries working within a tradition of Caribbean historical poetics, notably represented by Édouard Glissant. He explores ideas of “fugue” and “refuge” in light [...] Read more.

Afropean anthropologist, philosopher, and art curator Dénètem Touam Bona is an original “border thinker” and “crosser” of geographic and conceptual boundaries working within a tradition of Caribbean historical poetics, notably represented by Édouard Glissant. He explores ideas of “fugue” and “refuge” in light of the experience of maroons or escaped slaves, key actors of the simultaneous expansion of freedom and industrial-scale chattel slavery in the Americas. In “Freedom as Marronage” (2015), Neill Roberts defines freedom itself as perpetual flight, and locates its very origins in the liminal and transitional spaces of slave escape, offering a perspective on modernity that gives voice to hunted fugitives, defiant of its ecology, enclosures, and definition, and who were ultimately excised from its archive. Touam Bona’s “cosmo-poetics” excavates marronage as a mode of invention, subterfuge and utopian projection that revisits its history and representation; sacred, musical, ecological, and corporeal idioms; and alternative forms of community, while also inviting contemporary parallels with the “captives” of the global border regime, namely fugitives, nomads, refugees, and asylum seekers who perpetually evade norms, controls, and domestication. He deploys the metaphor of the liana, a long-stemmed tropical vine that climbs and twines through dense forests, weaving relation in defiance of predation, to evoke colonized and displaced peoples’ subterranean evasion of commodification, classification, control, cultural erasure, and ecological annihilation. This article frames his work within an Afro-diasporic history and transnational cultural criticism that envisions fugitivity and exilic spaces as dissonant forms of resistance to the coloniality of power, and their relevance to understanding racialization, representations of the past, and narratives of freedom and belonging across borders. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

16 pages, 338 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dancing with the Sniper: Rasha Abbas and the “Art of Survival” as an Aesthetic Strategy

by Moritz Schramm

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020029 - 16 Mar 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1727

Abstract

In the last few decades, a growing dissatisfaction with traditional approaches can be observed in migration and refugee studies. In particular, the widespread focus on the “refugee” and “migrant” as exclusive objects of study has been criticized for its underlying tendency of repeating [...] Read more.

In the last few decades, a growing dissatisfaction with traditional approaches can be observed in migration and refugee studies. In particular, the widespread focus on the “refugee” and “migrant” as exclusive objects of study has been criticized for its underlying tendency of repeating the binary polarization between migrant and non-migrant, native and foreign as well as majority and minority. This chapter considers the short stories of Syrian journalist and writer Rasha Abbas against this background. Instead of reducing her stories to the depiction of flight and exile, this chapter explores her stories as aesthetic expressions of what can be called the “art of survival”—the concept focusing on strategies of empowerment and tactics to regain autonomy. In Abbas’ prose, this “art of survival” is achieved and expressed through the blending of times and spaces as well as the aesthetic transformation of reality into surreal realms. Experiences of war, displacement, exile, and patterns of exclusion in the new homeland merge into complex pictures of the human capacity to reframe and reinvent a given reality. When viewed from this perspective, the surreal and psychedelic nature of her writing intensifies the power of aesthetic freedom, thus helping overcome traditional representations of migrants and refugees in cultural expressions and literature. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

17 pages, 5732 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Representation of Whom? Ancient Moments of Seeking Refuge and Protection

by Elena Isayev

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020023 - 7 Mar 2023

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Abstract

Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of fiction, drama and poetry; on wall paintings and vases, they cluster at protective altars and cling to statues of gods who seemingly look on. Yet the ancient [...] Read more.

Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of fiction, drama and poetry; on wall paintings and vases, they cluster at protective altars and cling to statues of gods who seemingly look on. Yet the ancient evidence does not lend itself easily to exploring attitudes to refugees or asylum seekers. Hence, the question that begins this investigation is, representation of whom? Through a focus on the Greco-Roman material of the Mediterranean region, drawing on select representations, such as the tragedies Medea and Suppliant Women, the historical failed plea of the Plataeans and pictorial imagery of supplication, the goal of the exploration below is not to shape into existence an ancient refugee or asylum seeker experience. Rather, it is to highlight the multiplicity of experiences within narratives of victimhood and the confines of such labels as refugee and asylum seeker. The absence of ancient representations of a generic figure or group of the ‘displaced’, broadly defined, precludes any exceptionalising or homogenising of people in such contexts. Remaining depictions are of named, recognisable protagonists, whose stories are known. There is no ‘mass’ of refuge seekers, to whom a single set of rules could apply across time and space. Given these diverse stories of negotiation for refuge, another aim is to illustrate the ways such experience does not come to define the entirety of who a person is or encompass the complete life and its many layers. This paper addresses the challenges of representation that are exposed by, among others, thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Liisa Malkki and Gerawork Gizaw. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

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13 pages, 298 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Refuge and Resistance: Theater with Kurds and Yezidi Survivors of ISIS

by Ellen Wendy Kaplan

Humanities 2022, 11(5), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11050111 - 2 Sep 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2164

Abstract

This essay looks at ongoing efforts to revitalize arts and culture among the Yezidi and broader Iraqi Kurdish communities. The Yezidi are survivors of the 2014 genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS, also known by its Arabic acronym Da’esh) which resulted in [...] Read more.

This essay looks at ongoing efforts to revitalize arts and culture among the Yezidi and broader Iraqi Kurdish communities. The Yezidi are survivors of the 2014 genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS, also known by its Arabic acronym Da’esh) which resulted in mass killing, captivity and expulsion from their ancestral homeland of Mt. Sinjar in northern Iraq. They are part of the Kurdish people, who have engaged in centuries of struggle to protect their cultural and political identity, establish autonomy and ensure their security in the broader Middle East. After a brief overview of the Yezidi genocide and its aftermath, we trace some theatrical efforts in the 20–21st century and look at two embryonic theater initiatives in Iraqi Kurdistan. The description of cultural projects at Springs of Hope Foundation (Shariya Camp) is followed by personal reflection and analysis of the aims, uses and challenges of Applied Theater. This ‘umbrella term’ refers to a process that uses a theatrical tool-kit in non-theater contexts. The aesthetic, ethical and political challenges inherent in this work are considered: the essay explores questions of ethical care and the implications and pitfalls of working with vulnerable and displaced populations, issues of representation, and creating spaces for healing and expression through participatory theater. Finally, we discuss a new initiative in Iraqi Kurdistan that seeks to address ethnic and political fissures through theater. The essay culminates with a consideration of belonging and re-imagining home. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

14 pages, 302 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Writing: The Question as Revolt in Kristeva and Boochani

by Michelle Boulous Walker

Humanities 2022, 11(4), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11040078 - 24 Jun 2022

Viewed by 2015

Abstract

Writing offers a privileged access to the culture of revolt, a kind of radical questioning that has the potential to unsettle illegitimate forms of authority and sense. Writing bequeaths a future and a society capable of creative thought, and this is all important [...] Read more.

Writing offers a privileged access to the culture of revolt, a kind of radical questioning that has the potential to unsettle illegitimate forms of authority and sense. Writing bequeaths a future and a society capable of creative thought, and this is all important in societies where questioning and critical thought is increasingly under threat. This work explores the importance of writing in relation to questioning and revolt in two markedly different contexts: in Julia Kristeva’s celebration of the European tradition of revolt and dissent, and in Behrouz Boochani’s literary revolt against the illegitimate incarceration of refugees in Manus Prison. If Kristeva is correct and European culture is, in part, a culture of the question and of revolt, then what does this mean for the non-European world? Boochani’s writing offers a powerful contemporary response to this question, a response that positions the suffering body as a locus of protest and resistance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

10 pages, 256 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Regarding the Image of the Pain of Others: Caravaggio, Sontag, Leogrande

by Francesco Zucconi

Humanities 2022, 11(2), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11020044 - 17 Mar 2022

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Abstract

Why were Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid (1608) and The Seven Works of Mercy (1607) requested for display at a number of humanitarian public events? And why did Caravaggio’s work inspire a series of photographic and journalistic reportages on contemporary migratory phenomena? This article surveys [...] Read more.

Why were Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid (1608) and The Seven Works of Mercy (1607) requested for display at a number of humanitarian public events? And why did Caravaggio’s work inspire a series of photographic and journalistic reportages on contemporary migratory phenomena? This article surveys the main circumstances linking Caravaggio’s pictorial corpus to the so-called European migrant crisis. After critical reflection on the social construction of the “humanitarian Caravaggio,” the focus shifts onto a book that is at the same time a journalistic investigation of migratory phenomena, a literary work, and a theoretical reflection on the ways of looking: La frontiera (2015) by Alessandro Leogrande, which concludes with a reflection on the representation of suffering in Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew (1600). By following a path that connects Caravaggio’s painting, Susan Sontag’s thought, and Leogrande’s writing, what emerges is the critical and self-critical potentiality of a comparative approach to the arts and images. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

17 pages, 1500 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Refugees and Representation: An Impossible Necessity

by Mieke Bal

Humanities 2022, 11(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11010029 - 17 Feb 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2752

Abstract

Staging a (fictional) encounter between two artworks, a work on paper by Indian artist Nalini Malani and the novel No Friend but the Mountains by Iranian-Kuridsh writer Behrouz Boochani, the text—an essay, rather than a traditional scholarly article—peruses the paradoxes of representing what [...] Read more.

Staging a (fictional) encounter between two artworks, a work on paper by Indian artist Nalini Malani and the novel No Friend but the Mountains by Iranian-Kuridsh writer Behrouz Boochani, the text—an essay, rather than a traditional scholarly article—peruses the paradoxes of representing what cannot but must be (re-)presented. Issues such as the required modesty in the face of the suffering of others, the irrepresentability of trauma and intermediality are examined through the ongoing analysis of the two artworks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

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24 pages, 3122 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“In the First Place, We Don’t Like to Be Called ‘Refugees’”: Dilemmas of Representation and Transversal Politics in the Participatory Art Project 100% FOREIGN?

by Anne Ring Petersen

Humanities 2021, 10(4), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10040126 - 7 Dec 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3371

Abstract

100% FOREIGN? (100% FREMMED?) is an art project consisting of 250 life stories of individuals who were granted asylum in Denmark between 1956 and 2019. Thus, it can be said to form a collective portrait that inserts citizens of refugee backgrounds [...] Read more.

100% FOREIGN? (100% FREMMED?) is an art project consisting of 250 life stories of individuals who were granted asylum in Denmark between 1956 and 2019. Thus, it can be said to form a collective portrait that inserts citizens of refugee backgrounds into the narrative of the nation, thereby expanding the idea of national identity and culture. 100% FOREIGN? allows us to think of participatory art as a privileged site for the exploration of intersubjective relations and the question of how to “represent” citizens with refugee experience as well as the history and practice of asylum. The conflicting aims and perceptions involved in such representations are many, as suggested by the opening sentence of Hannah Arendt’s 1943 essay “We, Refugees”: “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’”. Using 100% FOREIGN? as an analytical reference point, this article discusses some of the ethical and political implications of representing former refugees. It briefly considers recent Danish immigration and asylum policies to situate the project in its regional European context and argues that, similarly to its neighbouring countries, Denmark can be described as a “postmigrant society” (Foroutan). To frame 100% FOREIGN? theoretically, this article draws on Arendt’s essay, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s concept of speaking nearby, as well as the feminist concept of transversal politics (Meskimmon, Yuval-Davis). It is hoped that this approach will lead to a deeper understanding of what participatory art can bring to the ethical politics of representing refugee experience. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

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10 pages, 610 KiB

Open AccessCommentary

Translation in Digital Times: Omid Tofighian on Translating the Manus Prison Narratives

by Omid Tofighian

Humanities 2023, 12(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12010008 - 11 Jan 2023

Viewed by 2447

Abstract

On 12 February 2020, while on an international tour promoting Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, the translator of the book, Omid Tofighian, participated in a seminar at Utrecht University, organised by Australian academic, Anna Poletti (associate [...] Read more.

On 12 February 2020, while on an international tour promoting Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, the translator of the book, Omid Tofighian, participated in a seminar at Utrecht University, organised by Australian academic, Anna Poletti (associate professor of English language and culture, Utrecht University). Poletti is also co-editor of the journal Biography: an interdisciplinary quarterly, which published a special issue on No Friend but the Mountains in 2020 (Vol. 43, No. 4). The seminar involved Poletti, Tofighian and translation scholar, Onno Kosters (assistant professor of English literature and translation studies, Utrecht University) in conversation. Iranian–Dutch filmmaker, Arash Kamali Sarvestani, co-director with Boochani of the film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017), was in attendance, as well as the Dutch publisher, Jurgen Maas (Uitgeverij Jurgen Maas, Dutch translation based on the English translation). The event was titled ‘No Friend but the Mountains: Translation in Digital Times’. The following dialogue, ‘Translation in Digital Times: Omid Tofighian on Translating the Manus Prison Narratives’, is derived from this seminar and focuses on Tofighian’s translation of the book from Persian/Farsi into English. The topics covered also include the Dutch translation from Tofighian’s English translation, genre and anti-genre, horrific surrealism, Kurdish elements and influences, the Kurdish translation (from Tofighian’s English translation), publication of the Persian/Farsi original, translation as activism, process and technology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

9 pages, 192 KiB

Open AccessCommentary

On Representing Extreme Experiences in Writing and Translation: Omid Tofighian on Translating the Manus Prison Narratives

by Omid Tofighian

Humanities 2022, 11(6), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11060141 - 10 Nov 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1969

Abstract

On 10 June 2021, the Norwegian translator Signe Prøis (for publisher Camino Forlag) organised an event with both Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian (both by video link from New Zealand and Australia) in conversation with translation studies scholar Erlend Wichne (University of Agder, [...] Read more.

On 10 June 2021, the Norwegian translator Signe Prøis (for publisher Camino Forlag) organised an event with both Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian (both by video link from New Zealand and Australia) in conversation with translation studies scholar Erlend Wichne (University of Agder, Norway; Agder forum for translation studies). The event was titled: ‘Can I translate it? On representing extreme experiences in writing and translation’. The dialogue in this article features excerpts from the seminar with a focus on Tofighian’s translation of Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (2018) into English. The topics covered include responsibility, translation as activism, some aspects of the broader context to translating No Friend but the Mountains, the role of place, and a shared philosophical activity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

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