Manus Prison Theory, Art and the Politics of Refugee Representation: Contesting the ‘Deserving Refugee’ Narrative

Abstract

This chapter considers the modes and politics of refugee representation, and the function of art and literature as sites of resistance to, or the reinforcing of, dehumanising or idealised tropes of people seeking refugee protection. Specifically, the chapter addresses the connection between dehumanised representations of the imagined refugee and the violence and ‘logic’ of Australia’s offshore detention regime in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. In engaging with these issues, the chapter draws on Manus Prison Theory and its focus on who gets to represent refugee experience, and to generate knowledge about it and on what terms. It considers these questions through an examination of two contrasting art projects, which alternately raise and contest the idea of the ‘deserving refugee’. In exploring these questions, the chapter also engages with the temporalities of refugee representation and the role of crisis in generating ‘stock’ refugee representations. It ultimately argues that the politics of refugee representation are central to questions of refugee and migrant justice, and further, that we cannot separate contemporary forms and representations of violence against refugees from colonial and neocolonial acts of sovereignty and expulsion.

Citation

Vogl, A. (2024), "Manus Prison Theory, Art and the Politics of Refugee Representation: Contesting the ‘Deserving Refugee’ Narrative", Sharples, R. and Briskman, L. (Ed.) Deter, Detain, Dehumanise: The Politics of Seeking Asylum, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 107-120. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83753-224-720241009