Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...
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Documenting the City of Refugees

The Rest of Us Are Already Here

A lyric essay on fleeing a city in crisis

The streets are empty No one’s there I stare -- is it true? Just yesterday, people streamed everywhere, high pitched humming currents of worry, rushing chunks of ice colliding The streets are empty No one’s there I stare -- is it true? Overnight Broadway goes dark, no money back ...
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The Rest of Us Are Already Here

Behrouz Boochani and the Biopolitics of the Camp

The New Primo Levi? 

 Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains, a literary sensation upon its publication in Australia in August 2018, and soon to be released in the United States, deserves a place alongside classics of the prison writing genre. [1] At the same time, it contains important lessons for everyone thinking about power in the ...
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Recovering Community: Part II

Remembering the Jungle at Jules Ferry

In its time at Jules Ferry, the Jungle crossed a threshold in the nature of its transgression as a political subject. This transgression was its establishment of community. What the Jungle came to embody in political form was a common project; common, that is, in two senses of the word. ...
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Recovering Community: Part II

Recovering Community: Part I

Remembering the Jungle at Jules Ferry

We know the scene; there is a gathering, and someone is telling a story. We do not yet know whether these people gathered together form an assembly, if they are a horde or a tribe. But we call them brothers and sisters because they are gathered together and because they ...
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Recovering Community: Part I