This 3 year study supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea consists of three parts. First part of the study mostly deals with theoretical foundation; it aims to theoretically speculate global phenomenon—refugee and its coming community u ...
This 3 year study supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea consists of three parts. First part of the study mostly deals with theoretical foundation; it aims to theoretically speculate global phenomenon—refugee and its coming community utilizing Giorgio Agamben’s theories focusing on such concepts as homo sacer, state of exception, coming community, whatever being, singularity, the potential, etc. The study delineates genealogical context of homo sacer and state exception and in turn expounds how refugees are homo sacers in state of exception materialized by refugee camp. Refugee camp is an example of state exception operated by bio-politics. The stidu then takes account of the meanings and uses of coming community and whatever being in Agamben’s Coming Community to contexualize those concepts to the discourse of refugee as the potential of nationality.
The second part of the study aims to closely read and analyze various Anglophone fictions; for example, based on the second year research, a paper onFlannery O’Connor’s “Displaced Person” is published. This essay endeavors to find political, theological, and ontological understandings of refugees. As theoretical scaffoldings, this part of the study utilizes mostly Giorgio Agamben’s theories of ethico-ontology and refugees as whatever beings of coming community. In the story, Mrs. McIntyre, a white female farm-owner, after recommended by a Catholic priest, hires Jewish Polish refugees because she has not been satisfied with other workers including the Shortleys. Mrs. McIntyre, a hypocrite hiding her prejudices, micromanages workers around her. Mr. Guizac, the Jewish Polish refugee, proves his capabilities in the maintenance of the farm; however, Mrs. McIntyre begins to regard Mr. Guizac as a monster and demonize him after she finds out that Mr. Guizac intrigues Sulk, a black worker, to emigrate his cousin prisoned in a concentration camp by promising him to get married to her. Peacock, a transfiguration of theologically displaced person, unfolds the theological status of white Southern people who are placed in limbo where profanation and consecration dialectically coexists. Mrs. Shortley’s vision of heap of bodies, described as a pandemonium, also reveals ontological meaning of community which refugees, dead or alive, create, disclosing the meaning of ontological refugees based on commonality of human conditions.
The last part of the study aims to focus on contemporary Asian American or African fictions targeting refugee issue in America. A paper was published. The paper analyzes the meaning of communities in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees, a collection of eight short stories. The stories deal with the painful experience each singular character—Vietnam refugees, an American veteran soldier returning to Vietnam, a ghost, victims of war, and so on—had during the war and the post-war. Searching for the meaning of the community in this collection, the essay utilizes recent philosophical ideas and views on community: mostly Jean-Luc Nancy’s inoperative community and Giorgio Agamben’s coming community. Nancy explores the ontological limit of community so that he presents a community where Others ethico-ontologically cohabit without threats of immanence of death and violence. Nancy’s inoperative community can be used to analyze the ontological status of refugees and their community though it lacks clarity for this application. On the other hand, Agamben takes on refugee as an example of homo sacer situated in state of exception. This essay, after the theoretical explanation, closly reads and analyzes three stories from the collection to speculate the singular representation of refugees and their communities.