Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject: Reconsidering Minor Losses by Olga Demetriou

Abstract

Reviewed by: Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject: Reconsidering Minor Losses by Olga Demetriou Elektra Kostopoulou (bio) Olga Demetriou, Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject: Reconsidering Minor Losses. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2018. Pp. 278. Cloth $95.00. Paper $32.95. On 9 September 2020, the international press reported that, amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, fires had destroyed one of the largest migrant/refugee camps in Europe, leaving nearly 13,000 people without shelter (BBC 2020; Smith 2020). The tragedy was followed by heated debates regarding displaced people, confirming yet again that arrival at an allegedly safe destination neither [End Page 241] translates automatically into security nor should be treated in isolation as a perpetual condition of exceptionality. To put it differently, the stories of non-citizens form an important aspect of the ideological, political, material, and legal construction of modern citizenship. This plausible though largely overlooked reality is central to Olga Demetriou’s brilliant new book, Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject. Throughout the book, Demetriou creates a picture. From the book’s central metaphor of “imbrications” (8–16) to the many interconnected stories that emerge through the tiles, gaps, and shadows of the overlapping arrangement, this is a particularly illuminating and intensely visual representation of displacement on the island of Cyprus. On an initial level, the book explores a specific geography through the materiality of actual space. It also suggests that displacement in general is not a straightforward synonym for objective state-lessness. Instead, argues Demetriou, it forms a “structural aspect of citizenship regimes” (3). Her analysis reveals Cyprus to be a unique and simultaneously typical reflection of postcolonial attitudes vis-à-vis displacement on a divided island shaped by prolonged conflict. Right from the outset, the book places special emphasis on the ways in which “losses,” which Demetriou divides into “major” and “minor,” are used to legitimize state sovereignty (22). To understand Demetriou’s argument, one needs to appreciate that one of Cyprus’s main particularities is the distinction between Cypriot refugees and everybody else. The former constitute “refugees in their own country” (3); the latter are those who may enjoy some rights under international law but remain excluded from any ideological or legal version of membership in a locality. Clearly, neither group is homogenous, since factors like gender, socioeconomic background, and specific origin shape manifold internal hierarchies. From the vantage point of the state, however, there remains an important distinction between the two groups, one which defines Cypriot nationalism in a very tangible way. Like Demetriou’s earlier work, this book renders a twofold service of significant importance. In fact, Demetriou’s discussion of refugeehood here is even more intriguing when approached in the light of her previous engagement with “capricious borders” (see Kostopoulou 2015). While it relies on the author’s profound empirical understanding of the locality under scrutiny, the book also engages rigorously, from a theoretical perspective, with broader research on global displacement and bio-power. Hence, it contributes novel insights that are far from limited to one particular island. Recognizing the importance of the existing literature on displacement, this book nevertheless reminds the reader that, like agency, Otherness and entrapment become manifest in surprising ways. The author’s use of the term imbrications speaks precisely to [End Page 242] her search for broader relevance: Demetriou’s analysis reveals the unexpected to be not an anomaly but a structural part of displacement. Besides, this is a book about actual neighborhoods, actual borders, and hence actual space. It is thus very fitting that it conveys theoretical insights via idioms borrowed from actual structures, through whose cracks one can fall or rise. That the book’s chapters are organized like the parts of a building is an elegant reflection of its main premise. In Chapter 2, Demetriou reminds readers that the Cypriot state’s investment in refugeehood as a foundational aspect of citizenship relies on extremely selective understandings of international law and local history. For instance, the state condemns violence by framing Turkey as the sole aggressor and/or, in a broader sense, by making reference to colonialism. Both perspectives free Greek Cypriots from any actual responsibility for the perpetuation of conflict. In the same vein...