Reconfiguring the Refugee Self Refugee Life Narratives as Spaces of Appearance

Abstract

Identity is one of the defining features of the human condition. It determines how we see ourselves and are defined by others who engage with us. The refugee condition is characterised by the loss rupture of both personal and social identity. This is effected through biographical ruptures, as well as through the homogenizing, dehumanising and appropriating tendencies of the political, legal, sociological and humanitarian narratives that associate the refugee with negative identities. The thesis explores how refugee life narratives through the memories and perspectives of the refugee become alternate spaces of appearance that enable the refugee to assert their unique refugee identity and thus be seen and heard in public. newlineHannah Arendt s concept of space of appearance forms the theoretical framework for the thesis. She argues for these spaces as shared political spaces that enable individuals to be visible to each other as unique distinct individuals and not as mere members of a common species. To Arendt, these spaces are necessary to resist the totalitarian impulses of xenophobic governments and safeguard the plurality of the human condition. newlineDrawing on Eakin s notion that even if identities erode, we remain selves of some kind as long as consciousness remains (Eakin 2008), the thesis deploys the concept of the narrative self in the works of philosophers like Daniel Dennett, Antonio Damasio, Paul John Eakin, Paul Ricoeur and Hubert Hermans to study how refugee life narratives reconfigure the refugee self and thus become alternate spaces of appearance for the unique identity of the refugee that has been excised from view. newlineIt reads five refugee life narratives- Ayya s Accounts: a ledger of Modern Hope - by Anand Pandian and MV Mariappan, New Songs of the Survivors by Yvonne Vaz newlineEsdani , Vanni- a Family s struggle through the Sri Lankan Civil War by Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock, The Boat People by Sharon Bala and We Measure the Earth with our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama to illustrate the same.