At the Feast of Asylum

Abstract

“[Man] is the being who has to grasp his being” (Levinas 2000, 25). But what or who do refugees, or placeless people, grasp? When within what is now deemed normality, their bodies lie bare and afloat only to announce their coming but never their presence. From afar, they might think of time, a place, and above all gods, not knowing whether it is time for them to ascend, descend, or stay still. In the end, they never arrive.For clarity’s sake, I talk on behalf of no one, let alone myself, my brothers-in-asylum, and my only mother. Here, a stone’s throw away, languages, or murmurs, are a mere coincidence and so are faces (more or less). They meet (or even contest one another) to claim the body, the body that is “a swelling” (Nancy 2013, 29).In these fragments, asylum, refugeeness, nonarrival, my mother, her cracked heels in particular, death, time, and the body march together, notwithstanding with heavy feet, toward one thing: the shadow of the place.