Forcing displacement: The postcolonial interventions of refugee literature and arts

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Postcolonial Asylum, David Farrier explains why refugee experiences have been considered as a “scandal” for postcolonial studies, but also how they have become central to the field, insofar as they reflect the violence and unevenness of the current world order. If geography, political philosophy and law have analysed current “refugee crises”, the literature and arts produced by or about forcefully displaced people have remained understudied. This article affirms that postcolonial theory, precisely because of its situation at the crossroads between social sciences and humanities, offers a unique platform from where to study refugee literature and arts. It also argues that its enduring impact lies in its extraterritoriality, i.e. its capacity to interrogate dominant literary histories defined along national borders, frustrate unilingual visions of national languages and individual conceptions of authorship, and inspire seminal “turbulence” in artistic, critical, and academic practices.