Life in Translation: Literary Perspectives Towards a Philosophy of Migrant Citizenship

Suvanshkriti SINGH

Master's thesis

Lost in Translation: Literary Analytical Perspectives for a Feminist Philosophy of Migrant Citizenship

Abstract:

This thesis is a critical literary and political exploration of the experience of migrating from the Global South to the Global Northspecifically, Europestructured by considerations of identity, belonging, and colonialism. It is motivated by an impulse to foreground the perspective of the itinerant postcolonial body in academic conversations about the politics of migration and citizenship, a perspective that is conspicuously underrepresented in the discipline. Through literary analysis informed by the decolonial methodological orientation of interdisciplinarity and conviviality, I argue that, in the postcolonial context, there exists a mutually constitutive relationship between identity and mobility, the latter being the mode of navigating the fragmentation ubiquitous in such contexts. In these circumstances, I further show, belonging takes the form of an endlessly deferred potential that may only be apprehended through movement itself, and not as permanently fixed or fixable attachment to a territory. In my analysis, therefore, migratory movement emerges as being inherently reparative and decolonial, and the need for rethinking citizenship is rooted in its failure to enable this reparation. I also argue that a territorial model of citizenship, being rooted as it is in racial colonial logics, actively harms postcolonial (im)migrants by relegating them to a second-class status, treating them inhospitably, and obliterating their dignity and subjecthood. Therefore, I show that there is an overall need to reimagine more ethical and just forms of citizenship. To this end, my thesis builds a case for developing a philosophy of migrant citizenship on which new models may be articulated.

Abstract:

This thesis is a critical literary and political exploration of the experience of migrating from the Global South to the Global Northspecifically, Europestructured by considerations of identity, belonging, and colonialism. It is motivated by an impulse to foreground the perspective of the itinerant postcolonial body in academic conversations about the politics of migration and citizenship, a perspective that is conspicuously underrepresented in the discipline. Through literary analysis informed by the decolonial methodological orientation of interdisciplinarity and conviviality, I argue that, in the postcolonial context, there exists a mutually constitutive relationship between identity and mobility, the latter being the mode of navigating the fragmentation ubiquitous in such contexts. I use two novels, Above All, Don't Look Back by Ma?ssa Bey, and I Die by This Country by Fawzia Zouari, to show that, in the postcolonial context, belonging takes the form of an endlessly deferred potential that may only be apprehended through movement itself, and not as permanently fixed or fixable attachment to a territory. In my analysis, therefore, migratory movement emerges as being inherently reparative and decolonial, and the need for rethinking citizenship is rooted in its failure to enable this reparation. I also argue that a territorial model of citizenship, being rooted as it is in racial colonial logics, actively harms postcolonial (im)migrants by relegating them to a second-class status, treating them inhospitably, and obliterating their dignity and subjecthood. Therefore, I show that there is an overall need to reimagine more ethical and just forms of citizenship. To this end, my thesis builds a case for developing a philosophy of migrant citizenship on which new models may be articulated.

Keywords

migration, decolonisation, citizenship, belonging, identity, racism, dignity, hospitality, literary analysis, conviviality

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 24. 10. 2024

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Mgr. Elizabeth Allyn Woock, PhD.

Palacký University Olomouc

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
Euroculture / Euroculture