How Is the Figure of the Refugee Represented in Abdulrazak Gurnahs by the Sea free essay sample

Taking its cue from Jacques Derrida’s work On Hospitality, in which he discusses the aporia associated with unconditional hospitality, the essay will examine this encounter in Derriddean terms of an encounter between ‘guest’ and ‘host’. With all this said, the essay will align this notion of hospitality, as it is conceptualised by Derrida, in dialogue with the notion of what it means to be a political refugee, grounding these two ideas in a sense of the political climate of the novel at Gurnah’s time of writing. By showing how post-colonial issues intersect with those of asylum, the essay will ultimately aim to show how the novel depicts the possibility of (re)constructing a home in a foreign land. The implication of Omar’s meeting with Ken Edelman is twofold. Not only can it be read in terms of Derrida’s understanding of the provision of hospitality and sovereignty (whereby the legal status of the refugee is negotiated), as we shall see later: it also lends a darker edge to the novel’s navigation of cultural borders. Gurnah hints at the xenophobia and racism which is implicit within the discourse of the British asylum system. On one hand, Edelman professes sympathy for Omar: as he tells him, he is familiar with the ‘hardships of being alien and poor’, being himself descended from Romanian migrants. However, he identifies a crucial difference between his parents, who are of European descent, and Omar, who, being of East African origin is ‘not part of the family’. As the ‘bawab of Europe’, Edelman is a personification of the British asylum system: the gatekeeper of a land which is intent on keeping its borders sealed. Omar’s non-European ancestry means that he does ot ‘belong’ inside the demarcated, imaginary borders which separate those entitled to legal citizenship from those not. Indeed, despite his family background, Edelman sees no wrong in discriminating between Europeans and non-Europeans. ‘You don’t belong here’ he tells Omar, echoing Marfleet’s assertion that in Western thinking, refugees are asylum seekers of ill egal status: opportunists seeking asylum without proper reason. In his view, Omar (a non-European) does not ‘value any of the things we value’ and hasn’t ‘paid for them through generations’. But he fails to realise that ‘the whole world had paid for Europe’s values already’. In the work Post-colonial Theory and Literatures; African, Carribbean and South Asian, scholars P. Childs, J. Weber and P. Williams have suggested that the juxtaposition of Edelman’s perspective (and its racist undertone) with Omar’s reaction can be seen as the novel deconstructing the binary of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. In their view, Omar’s identification of Edelman as the ‘bawab of Europe’ resonates with colonialist history and thus presents a transformation of roles. Jopi Nyman views this transformation as evidence of the novel’s ‘pervasive attempt to locate the refugee in a global context of responsibility’. If we take Nyman’s identification of this ‘global context’ to be true, we can perhaps view the character of Edelman as both a representative of the British asylum system and of globalisation on the whole: on one hand understood to enhance openness of trade and encourage labour forces to cross national boundaries, but on the other to exclude forced migrants by creating ‘new physical and cultural barriers’, as Phil Marfleet asserts. In the year 2000, one year before the publication of Gurnah’s novel, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, explains in a speech: ‘[the 1951] convention gives us the obligation to consider any claims [for asylum] made within our territory†¦but no obligation to facilitate the arrival on our territory of those who wish to make a claim. ’ The notion of what it means to be a refugee or asylum seeker is, by implication, loaded with meaning and constantly subject to change. The liminal status and fractured sense of identity of the refugee is mirrored in the complex political discourse in which their legal situation is described. This insight returns us to Derrida’s notion of sovereignty. According to Derrida, there can be ‘no hospitality, in the classic sense, without sovereignty [†¦] exercised by filtering, choosing, and thus by excluding and doing violence. ’(p. 55). Sovereignty is, to Derrida, the power of wilful exclusion, and is reflected both in the conflict between Omar and Edelman and in the juridical construct of the nation-state, which, as quoted above, clearly negates any ‘obligation’ it may have towards those seeking citizenship. David Farrier identifies the moment of the stranger’s arrival at a border as a kind of ‘contest’ in which the power cultivated by the host in order to confer legitimacy is pitted against the stranger’s right to access. Farrier’s assertion is supported by Derrida’s view that hospitality necessarily entails a delicate and precarious balance between ‘the alterity (hostis) of the stranger’ and the ‘power (potential) of the host’, to the effect that neither ‘is annulled by the hospitality’. In this sense, Edelman is the ‘host’, upon whose discretion Omar is entirely dependent. He has the power to confer legitimacy, and while Omar maintains the power to assert his rights, it is a contest which ultimately takes place within the sphere of the host. The novel thus presents the power struggle which is present within the constructs of British asylum law and political discourse. This essay has shown the term ‘refugee’ to be often very nebulous, which by its nature entails a (re)construction of identity as much as it entails the physical rebuilding of a life in another country. By placing the Derrida aporia associates with unconditional hospitality, in dialogue with the insights of post-colonial theory, the essay has demonstrated how the narrative’s movement within the spheres of displacement, forced migration and discourses of national identity can be illuminated. In By the Sea, asylum issues intersect with those of post-colonialism. Just as the legal and political status of the refugee is constantly being rewritten, so do the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘identity’ take on an abstract quality. The figure of the refugee is therefore one temporality: it is in constant transit both physically, politically and conceptually. The ‘refugee’ is difficult to pin-down – in both a physical and metaphorical sense, and the complexity of the term, the novel goes to show, must not be belied by its familiarity. As Omar himself says: ‘I am a refugee, an asylum seeker. These are not simple words’. .