Abstract
Contemporary Refugee Studies points to the consolidation of a material and rhetorical ‘architecture of enmity’ between refugees and asylum-seekers on the one hand, and states and citizens on the other. The remedy to this relational impairment has commonly been the humanization of refugees and asylum-seekers in cultural texts in the hope to admit the excluded into a common circle of humanity. However, the normative representational model of humanization overemphasizes individualization of the suffering refugee and of the empathetic reader, brought together by their underlying humanity. This model, though well-intentioned, evades the structural web of relations that simultaneously connect and disconnect refugees, states, and citizens. To break out of the relational impasse of normative humanization, in this thesis I identify a spatialized optics operating in a selection of long form, Anglophone comics produced in the wake of the contemporary refugee crisis. By adopting an alternative representational device, these comics re-assemble conventionally atomized refugee image-stories into structural and relational maps of modern forced migration, thereby undermining the exclusionary imaginary underpinning the architecture of enmity.
A spatialized optics as an alternative representational device can be identified, first, in a thematic focus on spaces and infrastructures instead of being confined to the atomized refugee subject and his/her physical and psychic trauma. Second, it is evident in the deployment of the unique spatial form of comics, enabling what I refer to as a plural-relational mode of looking at spectacularized refugee crises. Thus, I discuss how instead of invoking a shared humanity between refugees and citizens by supplying personal stories of refugee suffering and survival, these comics plot the structurally entangled nature of refugees, states, and citizens. To trace the political significance of the narrative and aesthetic strategy of spatialization in these comics, I draw upon Hannah Arendt’s, Jean-Luc Nancy’s, and Jacques Rancière’s similarly spatialized political theories. I specifically use Arendt’s ‘space of appearance’, Nancy’s ‘being-with’, and Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’ for my textual analyses. By deploying spatialized and relational political theory to study contemporary refugee comics, this thesis hopes to amplify the political potency of spatialization as a representational strategy to tackle the relational crisis between refugees and global citizenry.