ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that literature in English has variously expressed and suppressed a politics of the refugee over the last century. One tradition of writing, which has cast refugees as innocent of history and politics or has universalized them, is a largely depoliticizing force. Yet another tradition of writing, which has eschewed sentimentality, challenged national sovereignty, and represented refugees as active participants in social movements, shows that English literature is a rich archive of political thinking about refugees. The chapter briefly surveys the politics and antipolitics of refugees from World War I through the late Cold War. The focus is on two textual “cases.” Case one is Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Mediterranean” (1936/1938), which she began aboard a refugee ship fleeing the Spanish Civil War. Case two is John Berger’s first novel, A Painter of his Time (1958), about a Hungarian refugee who flees refuge itself. The chapter ends with a brief conclusion about what writing by and about refugees can tell us about the irreducible horizon of all politics: the future.
