C21Research

On predictions of a cashless economy

Really appreciate the contribution of all our speakers yesterday at #WritingRefugees @kellsoleigh @arekigo @___c_h_r_i_s__ @gatsbyscar and Anna Ball. But also to our audience participants (@margaretrave, Stella Miilli and Laura Gallon) who made for great conversation all day.

Motherhood is a flexible concept that changes in different contexts and different cultures. This is made apparent by unpicking the simplified image of the refugee mother. Anna Ball #WritingRefugees

Anna Ball argues that Nada Awar Jarrar's An Unsafe Haven unpicks the easy representation of the refugee mother by representing maternal ambivalence. Jarrar depicts the complex emotions of motherhood and contests the discourses of popular representation. #WritingRefugees

1 in 10 of Syrian refugees reported to be pregnant suggests motherhood and maternity are an under discussed element of refugeeness. By contrast the figure of the mother is central to humanitarian iconography. (Anna Ball) #WritingRefugees

Now, Anna Ball on the refugee mother in literary discourse. Contrasting popular vilification with humanitarian reverence. #WritingRefugees

The experiments of Ban en Banlieu by Bhanu Kapil unpick the formal scaffolding of the novel @___c_h_r_i_s__ . The exposes the myth of unitary and linear human life that the nation demands and that novels support #WritingRefugees

The novel is not a neutral platform for staging a discussion of rights but is a technology of power @___c_h_r_i_s__ . However, the mingling of the personal with physical journeys in the novel allows these texts to interrogate the political. #WritingRefugees

Up next @___c_h_r_i_s__ on movement and subjectivity in recent fiction. How do contemporary novel interrogate the question of whether individuals have the right to live wherever they want? #WritingRefugees

Both The Wandering Falcon and The Collaborator demonstrate the value of 'paper' as a technique of the border. @GatsbysCar shows how these novels perform the absences and efficacies of documents as a technology of state control. #WritingRefugees

In our second panel @GatsbysCar discusses Jamil Ahmad The Wandering Falcon and Mirza Waheed The Collaborator to think about the different kind of border regulations in Pakistan's eastern and western borders. #WritingRefugees

Are we 'rushing refugee literature' asks Sophie Kelly. Have we too quickly demanded that refugee art display certain characteristics while refugee are might be still emerging? #WritingRefugees

.@arekigo discussing how to de-subjectivise refugees by opening up a space for opacity in their own account of refugeedom through graffiti mural in Beruit. #WritingRefugees

Sophie Kelly launching our Writing Refugees symposium by thinking through the problems of biographical coherence in Kate Clanchy's Antigona and Me.