Refugees and Representation: An Impossible Necessity

Mieke Bal

doi:10.3390/h11010029

Abstract

Staging a (fictional) encounter between two artworks, a work on paper by Indian artist Nalini Malani and the novel No Friend but the Mountains by Iranian-Kuridsh writer Behrouz Boochani, the text—an essay, rather than a traditional scholarly article—peruses the paradoxes of representing what cannot but must be (re-)presented. Issues such as the required modesty in the face of the suffering of others, the irrepresentability of trauma and intermediality are examined through the ongoing analysis of the two artworks.

Highlights

Nalini Malani and the novel No Friend but the Mountains by Iranian-Kuridsh writer Behrouz Boochani, the text—an essay, rather than a traditional scholarly article—peruses the paradoxes of representing what cannot but must bepresented
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Mitchell has brilliantly analysed the visual–political collaboration (Mitchell 2021): “we look up at the sky the colour of intense anxiety”

Summary

Introduction

Nalini Malani and the novel No Friend but the Mountains by Iranian-Kuridsh writer Behrouz Boochani, the text—an essay, rather than a traditional scholarly article—peruses the paradoxes of representing what cannot but must be (re-)presented. Instead of shedding them and escaping into the rationality that supposedly guides intellectual work, I will be trying (essaying) to do something that I know can only fail: making two artworks speak with each other in connection to the five concerns mentioned, even though they could not be more different.

Results

Conclusion