Cartography of a Refugee Camp in Mohammed Hanif’s Red Birds: Transformation from a Place of Subjugation into a Space of Agency
Cartography of a Refugee Camp in Mohammed Hanif’s Red Birds: Transformation from a Place of Subjugation into a Space of Agency

Summary/Abstract: The presence of war refugee camps around the world and their development into places of political resistance for identity formation, alternate governance systems and lives has been part of academic studies for quite some time now. Less attention has been paid to frame refugee camp spaces for studying the complexity of the concepts of resistance and indifference for reclamation of human identity. Despite attention to the mass movement of refugees-asylum seekers, there is a huge gap in scholarship to understand the center-controlled and marginalized refugee existence in camps because refugees are often silenced, insignificant obscure figures in the grand war discourse of reports and case studies—lives not worth saving. Furthermore, refugees’ resistance against the center’s anti-humanity beliefs, ideologies and practices calls for a reengagement with the camp space because it has become a source of material and knowledge production for the center to profile and subject all types of refugees to any physical, mental and psychological testing-experimentation whenever it develops a new weapon, therapy, theory or technology. This paper intends to cover these gaps and build its analysis of a refugee camp, through the text Red Birds (2018).

• Details
• Contents