ABSTRACT
Finally, Chapter 5, “Labanotation—Writing and/on/of refugee bodies,” connects refugee studies to body culture using embodiment, while adapting “motif writing” as an alternative approach to “close readings” of visual images. In particular, it investigates two instances of writing on clothing: the message “I DON’T REALLY CARE, DO U?” on the Zara jacket that First Lady Melania Trump wore to visit a children’s detention center in McAllen, Texas, and the words “Being Human” on the back of the tee-shirt of an African immigrant’s waiting on the deck of a patrol boat in the harbor of Malta’s capital city, Valletta. The chapter considers the problems of writing on the corporeal, writing about the corporeal, and symbol-based systems of recording movement.
