Time, Sovereignty, and Refugee Writing

Abstract

AbstractThe birth of the modern refugee is nearly always told as a story of territory, in which the changing character of the European nation-state radicalized processes of exclusion. Yet changes to the nation-state in the twentieth century transformed not only how territory was inhabited but also how time was inhabited and experienced. The powers of national sovereignty thus operate not only through lines on maps or militarized borders but also through policing the borders of the past, present, and future. In this essay, then, I offer a broad reframing of modern refugee writing, focusing on the ways that it has emerged with and challenged national sovereignty's power over time rather than over territory. To do so, I examine a recurring figure: a refugee, real or imagined, who refuses to progress forward into citizenship, taking up a posture in time that is queer, backward, and antiteleological.