Leaving Lethe for the Bardo: Staging the Disembodied Voices and Silent Bodies of Lampedusa Migrants in the Underworld of Europe

Abstract

This article looks at tropes used to represent European-bound migration, notably the experience of “Lampedusa” migrants who drown or are rescued in the Mediterranean. It considers how the same evocative tropes can be instrumentalized for varying reasons and with very different consequences. Attention is focused on evocative tropes that remain easy to manipulate, notably the image of the orange life-jacketed African refugee as the “zombie refugee” or the “living dead”. We examine how the trope of the Mediterranean as a cemetery is constructed and mobilized in the performing arts (theatre, contemporary ballet) and the larger consequences of adopting such an image. Specifically, we interrogate how symbolizing this maritime space as a cemetery transforms the figure of the migrant in the public imagination and ask whether alternatives, either real, or potential exist that might possible reshape the public’s vision of the figure of the migrant.