The Slow Refugee
Transit as Stasis, Narrative Ethics, and Level Telling Fields
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20249174 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roy Sommer (0000-0003-3948-6311, University of Wuppertal, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 59 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h12040059 |
| OpenAlex | W4383345848 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
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
Aesthetics · Art · Conversation · Empowerment · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Refugee · Social science · Sociology · Storytelling · Communication · Gender Studies · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Narrative Theory and Analysis
The Figure of the Migrant
The Slow Professor
The Handbook of Narrative Analysis
Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology
Social Acceleration
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Irregular migrants, neoliberal geographies and spatial frontiers of ‘the political’
Narratives of vicarious experience in conversation
The dark side of tellability
Dave Eggers's "What Is the What" as World Literature
On Waiting
Waiting in the asylum determination process
Stuck in the middle
Humanitarian Narrative and Posthumanist Critique
Rethinking the Public Sphere
The new mobilities paradigm for a live sociology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |