The Trouble with Strangers

Abstract

Edward Said’s and Hannah Arendt’s example serves as a plangent reminder as we read the work of Behrouz Boochani, and the first wave of writing by those our government has placed beyond us – and made placeless in the process. A reminder lest we dignify their experience or banalise it. A reminder to allow the work to set the terms for its own criticism, as Stonebridge does, so that it might break that fortress which in seeking to protect us has in the end held us prisoner to the narrowness of our moral imagination.