ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the ethics of the passer-by espoused by Franz Fanon and interpreted by Achille Mbembe in his Necro-Politics, with a passing glance paid to the Byronic method of absence featured in Schubert’s “Winter Journey.” It continues with a consideration of a Jesuit approach to the refugee crisis, based on a keynote address by Aloysius Mowe SJ, erstwhile International Director of Advocacy and Communications for the Jesuit Refugee Service. The Byronic “method of absence” shows that the roots of displacement run deep in our Western cultural past. Displacement in the way it is used by Nietzsche suggests a void or vacuum which is exploited by “forces” that seek to dominate by expanding their “sphere of power”. John Dewey, the American educational theorist, believed that in school children should learn not only the explicit content of lessons but also an implicit message about the ideal organization of society. In other words, a school is really civilization in microcosm.
