Sissy Helff

Illegal Diasporas and African Refugees in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea

Taking its cue from recent studies about African diasporas and Khalid Kosers thought- provoking work on illegal diasporas, this article sets out to investigate representations of African refugees and illegal diasporas in Abdulrazak Gurnahs topical novel By the Sea (2001). By relating Kosers concept of illegal diasporas to Jacques Derridas understanding of unconditional hospitality this article considers narrative modes through which illegality and the limits of hospitality are negotiated in Gurnahs novel. Within its fictional negotiation a complex and heterogeneous picture emerges which challenges common stereotypical images of “the African refugee” in Britain and Europe by revealing national and societal inclusion and exclusion strategies. This, however, means that Kosers concept of illegal diasporas is central to an understanding of Britishness on the one hand and the fabrication of a European concept [Europagedanke ] on the other.

Memories of migration: tracing the past through movement in film

This essay offers a comparative and multidirectional study of filmic representations and memory work dealing with flight and migration by means of short video films, experimental documentaries, African feature film and Hollywood cinema. Given that all selected films are deeply concerned with the question of how we collectively recollect individual movements, the mnemonic cartographies discussed here describe contemporary routes refugees and migrants may take within Africa, from the African continent to Europe as well as those passages Holocaust survivors took when escaping the horror of fascism in continental Europe during the Third Reich. A narrative feature that connects all films suggests that remembering carries a variety of ethical implications and moral demands since it often stands in close relation with individual suffering as well as attempts to explain and vindicate collective crimes and atrocities. Movement in film hence offers a framework in which the film-maker, the actors, and the audience share experiences of visiting, revisiting, exploring, and illuminating memories of migration.

Imaginary Europes, phantoms of the past, conceptions of the future?

This special issue opens up a critical space to reflect on literary and cinematographic images of Europe, as they come alive within and without the bounds of what we, from a geopolitical and cultural perspective, regard as Europe. While most of us are aware of the European Union’s 28 member states, fewer probably know that its geopolitical reach also comprises overseas territories in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This geographical spread, which translates into different ethnicities, cultural codes and languages, to some extent explains why there can never be one but only many imaginary Europes. Moreover, the 20th century has witnessed crucial changes which have affected our perceptions of Europe: the devastation and consequent reorganization of nation states during and after the world wars; the collapse of empires; the creation and expansion of the European Union; the end of the Eastern Bloc; the Balkan ethnic conflict and the ensuing nation rebuilding. These events have inaugurated the continuous reshaping of Europe’s population through emigration, immigration and globalization. With every new generation, the imaginary Europes produced within the continent and in its diasporas proliferate. With each newly independent nation and with each shift in the balance of power, traditional constructions of Europe make way for fresh outlooks. As a consequence of European emigrants settling abroad, new memories of the ancestral home are handed down to subsequent generations. And, with each internal or external migrant seeking a European home, new anticipations of what Europe might be emerge. These factors have been explored not only in the art produced in Europe during the changes in the 20th and 21st centuries, but also at a distance, whether by artists witnessing the changing influence and shape of Europe from afar, or by those examining, in retrospect, the journey that Europe has taken to develop the multifaceted dimension it displays today. It was during a conversation in 2011, on a park bench in Istanbul, overlooking the Bosphorus, perched on the edge of the continent of Europe, that we considered the lack of attention given to the imaginary Europes produced at a distance from the continent and in its peripheries. What particularly intrigued us was that much of this cultural production happens without first-hand experience of Europe itself, but as a reaction to the cultural, economic, political and religious influences that Europe has had throughout the world. Rather than hold a mirror up to Europe, these imaginary creations present artistic portraits of the continent and its cultures, constructed across differences of power, both political and ideological, as well as ethnic affinities, cultural currency, linguistic practice and geographical locations. Arjun Appadurai (1996) has relentlessly pointed to the

In the name of the Other? Refugee theatre and the value of “illegal” life in Britain

Abstract Drawing on refugee theatre performances by companies such as ice&fire, this article explores the politics of Testimonial Refugee Theatre in Britain and how illegal life is performed in contemporary verbatim theatre productions. Within the realm of narratives of flight, political drama holds an important position as a genre, because of its ability to create intimate immediacy. In theatre halls and post-performance gatherings, audiences can feel ready to inquire about politics. The variety of theatre productions dealing with refugee issues is enormous and refugee theatre adds new dimensions to discussions concerning Britain as a post-racial society. Contemporary refugee theatre in general, and its two major subgenres Container Plays and Testimonial Refugee Plays in particular, function as dramatic buffer zones which signal post-racial dimensions while re-inscribing alienation into the cultural and social make-up of British society. The plays discussed include Kay Adshead’s The Bogus Woman, Sonja Linden’s I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda, Clare Bayley’s The Container and Sylvie Hoffmann and Aimé Kongolo’s White Goods. Influential international productions such as Théâtre du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravanserail (Odyssées) directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and Christoph Schlingensief’s container performance spectacle Big Brother, Foreigners Out! (Ausländer Raus! 2000) serve as background screens against which the arguments unfold.

Fragile balance: Imaginary Europes, transcultural aesthetics and discourses of European identity in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse

In light of recent accounts of ongoing Europeanization processes, this article scrutinizes images of Europe and Europeanization in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse in order to explore how British low-budget independent film and Hollywood mainstream cinema realize imaginary Europes on screen. The emerging imaginary Europes and cinematic perspectives on Europeanization, it is argued, illuminate disenchanted visions of a Europe in the making, emphasizing Britain’s insular sensibility, in which Europe remains alien and distant.