June 20

4:00 PM - 5:45 PM

0.A.03

Chunjie Zhang

Abstract: With the onset of the refugee crisis in 2015, Germany and other European union countries have entered an era of political populism and seen the resurgence of xenophobia, not merely as a sociocultural phenomenon, but as a political agenda with legal consequences.
The figure of refugee has been a crucial subject matter in the debate of political theory. Significantly, critics have endeavored to draw parallels between refugees and citizens in order to legitimize the responsibility, hospitality, and humanitarianism as an ethical and a political theorem. Yet the current political development of populism reveals an impasse of the proposition of empathetic cross-identification. The theorization of the figure of refugee as the new subject of historiography has become an elusive matter. The conservative position of political sovereignty insists on national and religious purity. The stateless people are reduced to even lesser status.

My paper will examine two contemporary German refugee novels to discuss the critique of sovereignty related to colonial history and human rights. The novels not only describe the absurdity of the immobility of refugees and asylum-seekers confined by law but also imagine new possibilities of civil engagements to confront the refugee crisis.

Disciplines: Comparative Literature
Philosophy

Substantive Tags: Ethics and Morality, Identity and Ethnicity, Immigration/Migration, Populism, Racism/Nativism

Research Networks: IASGP (International Association for the Study of German Politics), Immigration, Transnational Memory and Identity in Europe

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