“Violence, Mourning, Politics.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 4, no. Grief is a theme that is seen across the body of the poem. Many thanks! [15] Hyndman and Giles, “Waiting for what?” 367. xڬ{Hw���$F�INc{uYv^���. It is best summed up in. This is a situation where life of “can be expunged by the wilful action of another.”[30] Drawing on Giles and Hyndman’s analysis of extra-legal spaces, tacit violence becomes visible; while state action may not necessarily cause violence, state inaction can create conditions that perpetrate it. [12] Hyndman and Giles, “Waiting for what?” 363. This is primary as discourse often pre-supposes categorical distinctions that rid bodies of individuality. Effect and Affect: Extra-legal Spaces, Vulnerability and Grief. This approach inevitably draws focus away from thinking in terms of mechanical binaries and aims to include emotions of grief, fear, and loss hitherto ignored from the field. [20] Hyndman and Giles, “Waiting for what?” 367. [36] The very nature of being vulnerable makes the body at risk of violence. 0000001995 00000 n endobj <>>> Warsan Shire was born in Kenya to Somali parents and lives in London. It becomes important to focus on the affect produced by these ideas of vulnerability and violence because narratives which have conventionally focused on the views, policies and politics of the state run the risk of erasing complexities and nuances surrounding people. In coherence with what Butler argues in the context of war, this conception needs to be applied more equitably where the category of being human, is not a result produced as a function of power but a process of relatability. Facing History and Ourselves. (password: dance) Original Text: "Home" by Warsan Shire no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home … It also acts to reinforce geopolitical hierarchies between the global North and South. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. In 2013-2014, she was the Young Poet Laureate for London. Both these notions of the political and the apolitical are products of what Judith Butler terms as masculine systems of knowledge production which dictate that being women, or in this case being feminized, automatically restrains violence. What the media intensifies is “racial hysteria in which fear is directed anywhere and nowhere,…so everyone is free to imagine and identify the source of terror.”[7] This, in the context of refugee crisis, is imagined as the masculinized, threatening mobile other. Comments about Home by Warsan Shire.

What’s in a frame?

<> The former is the refugee that waits[9], the latter, the refugee who acts. 0000004525 00000 n The very base upon which the conventional debate on rights exists, is hence not a guarantee to such groups. Poetry also brings to the public view crimes that are always partially hidden[6] by mechanisms of state vetted journalism. endobj The feminized temporarily settled refugee isn’t a great threat either owing to their sedentary character. They are consequently perceived as “potential liabilities as best and security threats at worst”[12]. H�\�ݪ�0F�����#x1?�3P��ƶ�z��O����Ĭ�w��o�M=��{ߖ�8�S�T}�������u���Tu9���!^�ͩM��׮C7o��=��$��W����y��9���p�?���df�4U��rK�V��e���E6>K�؍�2�M��z�s�x*�k{��l9�0&��sҌ�iNz��H+҆�!mI[�'�sJ9�9��sRN�$Kr$G����$O�@

Hanging in limbo: the sedentary feminine and the mobile threat. 3 (19 May 2011): 361-379, see 363. The very conditions of ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘you’ necessitate boundaries. Drawing on Sara Ahmed, mobility of the other is threatening, the construction of threat in turn is to protect the mobility of the self[18].

Butler says, “It is not just that a death is poorly marked, but that it is unmarkable.”[5] By the fact of being unmarkable, these groups are ungrievable; as it is very difficult to evoke emotion for an abstraction. <> Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our Butler, Judith. She is a poet, writer, editor and teacher. 0000112757 00000 n 1 (July 2008): 9-37, see 21.

0000018568 00000 n 0000012540 00000 n This conception is manifested owing to the state’s anxiety, something Butler poses as the global north coming to terms with the precarity of its own existence of never having its sovereign body “transgressed.”[22] Drawing on similar ideas, Ahmed puts this precarity in terms of fear which is created by the approach of a vague object. Home By Warsan Shire no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border ... no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying- leave, run away from me now i dont know what i’ve become but i know that anywhere is safer than here . Born in 1988, Shire has read her work extensively all over Britain and internationally - including readings in South Africa, Italy, Germany, Canada, North America and Kenya- and her début book, 'Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth," was published in 2011. Because they conform to the sedentary norm of the state, they are not a threat. Home becomes crucial as the perspective of the recipient of this discretionary goodwill is missing in the mainstream.

https://www.facinghistory.org/standing-up-hatred-intolerance/warsan-shire-home, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/warsan-shire, A Well-Founded Fear of Environment: International Resistance to Climate Refugees, The Developing World’s Need for a Postmodern Understanding of Feminism, How Understanding Emotions in IR Can Help Explain Anti-Americanism, Why the Military Did Not Take Over: Understanding Pakistan’s Democratic Path, Constructivism’s Relevance to Understanding Brexit. The feminization of asylum in protracted situations,” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 18, no. This self, here, is the privileged subject who has the power to choose their displacement or lack thereof. The poem Home by Kenyan-born Somali poet Warsan Shire points out the various motivations that fuel the need for people to flee and brings us the understanding of larger theme­­s in the discussion surrounding refugee crises around the world, especially in the global North. no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck, feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled.

[1] Jennifer Hyndman and Wenona Giles, “Waiting for what? 0000002415 00000 n It becomes especially important to think of vulnerability in light of the aforementioned extract when considering the epistemological gap between the subjects of knowledge in this sphere and its audience. 0000003956 00000 n 0000003928 00000 n