Placeless People

Writings, Rights, and Refugees

Lyndsey Stonebridge

A highly topical and timely account of refugee history and literature
Draws on the work of Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, and Simone Weil
The first literary history of modern statelessness that raises vital questions about sovereignty, humanism, and the future of human rights
Highlights the importance of modern literature in understanding the challenges of today's refugee 'crisis'

Winner of the MSA Book Prize

Placeless People

Writings, Rights, and Refugees

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Description

In 1944 the political philosopher and refugee, Hannah Arendt wrote: 'Everywhere the word 'exile' which once had an undertone of almost sacred awe, now provokes the idea of something simultaneously suspicious and unfortunate.' Today's refugee 'crisis' has its origins in the politicalDSand imaginativeDShistory of the last century. Exiles from other places have often caused trouble for ideas about sovereignty, law and nationhood. But the meanings of exile changed dramatically in the twentieth century. This book shows just how profoundly the calamity of statelessness shaped modern literature and thought. For writers such as Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, Simone Weil, among others, the outcasts of the twentieth century raised vital questions about sovereignty, humanism and the future of human rights. Placeless People argues that we urgently need to reconnect with the moral and political imagination of these first chroniclers of the placeless condition.

Winner of the MSA Book Prize

Placeless People

Writings, Rights, and Refugees

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Introduction: Placeless People: Writing, Rights and Refugees
PART ONE: READING STATELESSNESS
1. Reading Statelessness: Arendt's Kafka
2. Arendt's Message of Ill-Tidings
PART TWO: PLACELESS PEOPLE
3. Orwell's Jews
4. Weil's Uprooted
5. Beckett's Expelled
PART THREE: SANDS OF SORROW
6. Sands of Sorrow: Dorothy Thompson in Palestine
7. Statelessness and the Poetry of the Borderline: W.H. Auden and Yousif M. Qasmiyeh

Winner of the MSA Book Prize

Placeless People

Writings, Rights, and Refugees

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Author Information

Lyndsey Stonebridge is Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at University of Birmingham. Her books include: The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg (2011/2014), winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, The Destructive Element (1998), Reading Melanie Klein (with John Phillips, 1998), The Writing of Anxiety (2007), and British Fiction after Modernism (with Marina MacKay, 2007). She is currently writing a short book on Literature and Human Rights for OUP's Literary Agendas series, and collaborating on a large interdisciplinary project, Refugee Hosts.

Winner of the MSA Book Prize

Placeless People

Writings, Rights, and Refugees

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the MSA Book Prize

"This carefully researched, elegantly and passionately argues book exemplifies the values of practicing "law and literature" for apprehending modern exile and understanding refugees." -- Stephanie Jones, University of Southampton

"The book is beautifully written, and brings an intricate perspective to the topics of rights, citizenship, statelessness and refugee experience." -- Charlotte Lydia Riley, University of Southampton, The Political Quarterly

"Scrupulously researched and documented, this invaluable and informative volume is illustrated with relevant photographs and quotations." -- B. Diemert, CHOICE

"A stunning study as much of literature's own "endurance beyond nation, and its worldly capacity to conjure up human community out of despair" as of migrant refuge and the powerplay of state refusal of refuge, via the 20th century's great writers of displacement." -- Ali Smith, Books of the Year 2018, The Guardian

"[An] incandescent and admirably polemical new book ... Placeless People should help change conversations about humanitarianism, migration, citizenship, and democracy." -- Hadji Bakara, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Magisterial." -- Jess Cotton, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Anybody seeking to understand the contemporary challenges faced by refugees, and the responses by nation states that view themselves as sovereign, will find in Placeless People clues as to how we got here and ideas as to what we ought to do next ... The book navigates contested themes from multiple viewpoints. In doing so, it illuminates historical and contemporary challenges to national distinctions, political communities and human rights." -- Matthew R. Joseph, Times Higher Education

"This is a book about displacement but it offers us ways to feel at home despite these toxic and hateful times." -- Les Back, New Humanist

"Lyndsey Stonebridge's sensitive and assertive book succeeds on a range of levels. Placeless People combines careful thinking on the situation of refugees, engaged moral philosophy, and purposeful literary criticism ... Full of fascinating information, fresh perspectives, and important episodes recovered from history, Placeless People is a valuable read for those working on the injustices of forced displacement and statelessness today." -- Process North

"Placeless People delves deeply into the philosophy of human rights but with easy prose and a structure that would give anyone pause when thinking about our times. The author does not preach but rather points out the different credible views in the historiography of the subject of refugees. This small book makes a fast but thought provoking read." --New York Journal of Books

"[A] deft and incisive book ... The canon of writers assembled is one of Placeless People's great strengths ... The contribution Stonebridge makes lies in her readings. It is with close engagement that she demonstrates the ability of novels, poems, plays, and journalism to move beyond the banalising morality inherent to the idea that literature is a locus for empathy." -- Marc Mierowsky, Syndey Review of Books