Postcolonial Asylum is concerned with asylum as a key emerging postcolonial field. Through an engagement with asylum legislation, legal theory and ethics, David Farrier argues that the exclusionary culture of host nations casts asylum seekers as contemporary incarnations of the infrahuman object of colonial sovereignty. Postcolonial Asylum includes readings of the work of asylum seeker and postcolonial authors and filmmakers, including J.M. Coetzee, Caryl Phillips, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Leila Aboulela, Stephen Frears, Pawel Pawlikowski and Michael Winterbottom. These readings are framed by the work of postcolonial theorists (Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Paul Gilroy, Achille Mbembe), as well as other influential thinkers (Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Ranciere, Emmanuel Levinas, Etienne Balibar, Zygmunt Bauman), in order to institute what Spivak calls a 'step beyond' postcolonial studies; one that carries with it the insights and limitations of the discipline as it looks to new ways for postcolonial studies to engage with the world.

About the Author
David Farrier is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Unsettled Narratives: the Pacific writings of Stevenson, Ellis, Melville and London. Routledge, 2007. 'Terms of hospitality: Adbulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea', Journal of Commonwealth Literature 43.3 (2008) '"The other is the neighbour": the limits of dignity in Caryl Philips's A Distant Shore', Journal of Postcolonial Writing 44.4 (2008) '"The journey is the film is the journey": Michael Winterbottom's In This World', Research in Drama Education 13.2 (2008) 'Unwritable dwellings/unsettled texts: Robert Louis Stevenson's In the South Seas and the Vailima House', International Journal of Scottish Literature 1 (2006) 'Gesturing towards the local: intimate histories in Anil's Ghost', Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 41.1 (2005) 'Charting the "Amnesiac Atlantic": chiastic cartography and Caribbean epic in Derek Walcott's Omeros', Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 38 (2003)

Reviews
A densely theoretical yet politicised and interdisciplinary book that signals an important new trajectory in postcolonial and cultural studies, towards interrogation of the plight of those looking for sanctuary in Europe, Australia and elsewhere. It is at its best in discussing asylum statistics and contexts, and analysing art, photography and literature. Recommended reading, especially for policymakers and tabloid journalists.
Claire Chambers, Times Higher Education -- Claire Chambers * Times Higher Education *



Book Information
ISBN 9781846318726
Author David Farrier
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press