Resisting Ireland’s Necropolitics of Asylum: Refugee Voices in Irish Literature and the Arts

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the representation of the Irish Asylum system – known as Direct Provision – by an artist and a writer who have experienced it first-hand. Vukašin Nedeljković’s art project Asylum Archive (2007 –) and Melatu Okorie’s short stories “Shackles” (2010) and “This Hostel Life” (2017) respectively engage in the visual and literary representation of unlivable life in this carceral system, both articulating a compelling critique of the necropolitical violence exerted in and through its operations. Their work foregrounds the spatial and time dimensions of detention, highlighting the vulnerability of international protection applicants whose lives are not only bounded by confinement but also deferred in indefinite waiting. Besides, this article contends that these works go far beyond critique, offering very powerful critical insights into the inmates’ affective responses to the injustices of the asylum regime, and how these can potentially open spaces of dissent and resistance.