Refugee Talk

Eva Rask Knudsen, Ulla Rahbek

ISBN 10: 0745344429 / ISBN 13: 9780745344423

Published by Pluto Press, GB, 2022

About this Item

'A wide-ranging, erudite and multi-faceted analyses of the fundamental problem of who gets to be counted as human' - Kate EvansRefugee Talk explores cultural responses to the ongoing refugee crisis. Looking at ethical questions and political rhetoric surrounding the refugee experience, the authors uncover the reality behind the fraught discussions taking place today.With an understanding of how to meaningfully negotiate responses through philosophy, media representations, art, activism and literature, the authors insist that a radically different approach is needed, advocating for, along with other reorientations, a new refugee vocabulary as a launching pad for interventions into polarised debates.By centring conversation as a method and ethical practice to engage in the discourses surrounding refugees, Refugee Talk is structured around dialogues with academics, activists, journalists and refugee artists and writers, creating a comprehensive humanities approach that places ethics and aesthetics at its core.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780745344423

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Refugee Talk
• Publisher: Pluto Press, GB
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745344429
• ISBN 13: 9780745344423
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 260 grams

About this title

Synopsis

An innovative approach to the refugee crisis through a focus on language use, discourse and representation

'A wide-ranging, erudite and multi-faceted analyses of the fundamental problem of who gets to be counted as human' - Kate Evans

What does it mean to be a refugee? What political questions do they raise? Through what political rhetoric is their experiences parsed? The ongoing refugee crisis has sparked all these questions and more.

Refugee Talk uses conversation as a research method and ethical practice to approach the representation of and the discourse about and by the refugee. Though refugees who cross borders are routinely registered, filed, and detained, the individual stories they carry are just as routinely overlooked or ignored. When language itself becomes another border that excludes refugees, the need for a new vocabulary that decriminalizes and re-humanizes the refugee experience asserts itself.

The authors engage theoretically with thinkers from Hannah Arendt to Paolo Freire and Kwame A. Appiah and structure the book around conversations with academics, activists, journalists, and refugee artists and writers. The result is a comprehensive humanities approach that places ethics and aesthetics at its core.

About the Author

Eva Rask Knudsen is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies at Copenhagen University, Denmark. Most recently, she is co-author with Ulla Rahbek of In Search of the Afropolitan: Encounters, Conversations, and Contemporary Diasporic African Literature.

Ulla Rahbek is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies at Copenhagen University, Denmark. Most recently, she is the author of British Multicultural Literature and Superdiversity and co-author with Eva Rask Knudsen of In Search of the Afropolitan: Encounters, Conversations, and Contemporary Diasporic African Literature.