Abstract

I am told that you raised your hand against yourselfAnticipating the butcher.[…]So the future lies in darkness and the forces of rightAre weak. All this was plain to youWhen you destroyed a torturable body.-- Bertold Brecht“On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B.”Like many influential contemporary thinkers, Arjun Appadurai and Giorgio Agamben suggest that globalization invites us to rethink our relationship with the nation or “postnation” (Appadurai; Agamben). One emblematic figure crystallizes the urgency of such a challenge: the refugee (Nyers; Shemak; Bohmer; Chetail). In European urban centers--regardless of whether we speak as refugees, to refugees, or about refugees--complex transnational dialogues emerge. They ..