Re-orienting the gaze: visualising refugees in recent film
Re-orienting the gaze: visualising refugees in recent film
This chapter centralizes questions of visibility regarding contemporary refugee movement by focusing on recent filmmaking by and about refugees. The visual works explored here suggest a shifting refugee imaginary which tackles head-on the complex representational politics of the human rights regime and positions refugees as active agents rather than passive objects of pity. I chart the ways in which recent fiction and non-fiction film re-frame the often-objectifying humanitarian gaze of news media and subvert the politics of affect that works on feelings of both fear and compassion among settled or citizen audiences. My analysis of this visual landscape considers how effective these varied strategies are for moving beyond a representational politics perpetually caught between visibility and occlusion, between the demand for rights framed by humanitarian regimes and the right to evade interpolation as figures of either vulnerability or threat.
Woolley, Agnes
fbb69867-9f5e-4ea5-9155-653c1ba223b8
17 February 2023
Woolley, Agnes
fbb69867-9f5e-4ea5-9155-653c1ba223b8
Woolley, Agnes
(2023)
Re-orienting the gaze: visualising refugees in recent film.
In,
Gandhi, Evyn Lê Espiritu and Nguyen, Vinh
(eds.)
Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives.
1 ed.
Routledge.
(doi:10.4324/9781003131458-9).
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
This chapter centralizes questions of visibility regarding contemporary refugee movement by focusing on recent filmmaking by and about refugees. The visual works explored here suggest a shifting refugee imaginary which tackles head-on the complex representational politics of the human rights regime and positions refugees as active agents rather than passive objects of pity. I chart the ways in which recent fiction and non-fiction film re-frame the often-objectifying humanitarian gaze of news media and subvert the politics of affect that works on feelings of both fear and compassion among settled or citizen audiences. My analysis of this visual landscape considers how effective these varied strategies are for moving beyond a representational politics perpetually caught between visibility and occlusion, between the demand for rights framed by humanitarian regimes and the right to evade interpolation as figures of either vulnerability or threat.
Text
10.4324_9781003131458-9_chapterpdf
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Published date: 17 February 2023
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Local EPrints ID: 490320
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/490320
PURE UUID: 55279dd1-d4d9-48d8-8c90-36c3e32163be
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Date deposited: 23 May 2024 16:47
Last modified: 28 May 2024 02:07
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Contributors
Author:
Agnes Woolley
Editor:
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
Editor:
Vinh Nguyen
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