Cliché Humanitarianism: Migrant Gazes at the Rhetoric of Dangerous Pity in We Need New Names and Americanah
Main Article Content
Keywords
Uprooting, humanitarianism, media, migration, piety
Abstract
Due to their intermediate condition of cultural translator, the migrant subject presents an ambiguous perspective on the clichés of humanitarianism. The protagonists in We Need New Names and Americanah are able to relate their experiences with humanitarian aid, while migration distances them from this condition, due to their origins, leading to a critical and ironically condemnatory voice about the paradoxes of piety. At the same time, their settlement in the host country disorients them and makes them progressively lose their ability for making penetrating reflections, turning them into consumers of suffering from a distance and reinforcing the coloniality of power. First, we look at the uprooting of migrant subjects, Ifemelu and Darling; this is followed by a discussion on the evolution of the politics and the paradoxes of pity and their influence on the spectacle of suffering from the gaze of the migrant subject; and finally, we examine the artifice of cliché humanitarianism in the media and photography, and its relationship with NGOs.
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References
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Akingbe, N., & Adeniyi, E. (2017). ‘Reconfiguring Others’: Negotiating Identity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Rupkatha
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Araújo, E. (2017). Gênero, corpo, raça e diáspora em Americanah, de Chimamanda N. Adichie. Revista Ártemis, 24(1), 73-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.22478/ufpb.1807-8214.2017v24n1.37734
Arendt, H. (1965). On Revolution. Penguin Books.
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Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacre et simulations. Galilée.
Berning, N. (2015). Narrative Ethics and Alterity in Adichie’s Novel Americanah. CLCWeb-Comparative Literature and Culture, 17(5), 2-8. https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2733
Boltanski, L. (2004). Distant Suffering Morality, Media and Politics (G. Burchell, Trad.). Cambridge University Press.
Braidotti, R. (2015). Lo posthumano (J. C. Gentile Vitale, Trad.). Gedisa.
Bulawayo, N. (2014). We Need New Names. Little Brown & Company.
Carreira, S. (2019). A reconfiguração da identidade cultural em Precisamos de Novos Nomes, Noviolet Bulawayo. Ilha Do Desterro: A Journal of English Language Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 72(1), 145-157. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2019v72n1p145
Daley, P. (2013). Rescuing African bodies: celebrities, consumerism and neoliberal humanitarianism. Review of African Political Economy, 40(137), 375-393. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2013.816944
Esplin, M. (2018). The Right Not to Translate: The Linguistic Stakes of Immigration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Research in African Literatures, 49(2), 73-86. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.49.2.05
Ferreira, R. (2021). Female Identity in Diaspora: an Analysis in Americanah. Revista de Letras Norte@Mentos, 14(35), 68-86. https://bit.ly/3tf6wI1
Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press.
Hislop, M. (2020). “I Love This Country, but Sometimes I Not Sure Where I Am”: Black Immigrant Women, Sexual Violence, and Afropessimistic Justice in New York v. Strauss-Kahn and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Law & Literature, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2019.1688546
Hume, D. (1960 [1739]). A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Oxford University Press.
Isaacs, C. (2016). Mediating women’s globalized existence through social media in the work of Adichie and Bulawayo. Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies, 17(2), 174-188. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2016.1179463
Mallya, M & Susanti, R. (2021). Theorizing race, marginalization, and language in the digital media. Communication & Society-Spain, 34(2), 403-415. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.34.2.403-415
Mapanzure, R. (2019). When Old Names Refuse to Go: Myths, Power, and Subversion in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Scrutiny2, 24(2-3), 39-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2020.1764087
Mbembe, A. (2011). Necropolítica (E. Falomir Archambault, Trad.). Melusina.
Michaelsen, S. y Johnson, D. (2003). Los secretos de la frontera: una introducción. En Teoría de la frontera: Los límites de la política cultural (G. Ventureira, Trad.; pp. 25-59). Gedisa.
Moji, P. (2015). New names, translational subjectivities: (Dis) location and (Re)naming in NoViolet Bulawayo’s “We Need New Names”. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 27(2), 181-190. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2014.993937
Motahane, N., & Makombe, R. (2020). Not at Home in the World: The Home, the Unhomely, and Migrancy in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Critique-Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 61(3), 262-273. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2020.1713715
Ncube, G. (2018). Of dirt, disinfection and purgation: Discursive construction of state violence in selected contemporary Zimbabwean literature. Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 55(1), 41-53. https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.55i1.1548
Ndaka, F. (2021). Narrating global asymmetries of power: Children’s play/games and photography in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 57(1), 75-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.1785531
Ngoshi, H. (2016). Carnivalising Postcolonial Zimbabwe: The Vulgar and Grotesque Logic of Postcolonial Protest in NoViolet Bulawayo’s
We Need New Names (2013). Journal of Literary Studies, 32(1), 53-69. https://doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2016.1158984
Oficina de las Naciones Unidas para la Coordinación de Asuntos Humanitarios. (2021). Panorama Humanitario Global 2021. https://gho.unocha.org/es
Ókè, R. (2019). Traveling Elsewheres: Afropolitanism, Americanah, and the Illocution of Travel. Critical Philosophy of Race, 7(2), 289-305. https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.7.2.0289
Phiri, A. (2017). Expanding black subjectivities in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Cultural Studies, 31(1), 121-142. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2016.1232422
Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social. Journal of World-Systems Research, 6(2), 342-386. http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20140506032333/eje1-7.pdf
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Soi-même comme un autre. Seuil.
Rita Gola, N. (2019). Forces of Development: Globalisation, Civil Societies, and NGOs in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Narratives. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 10(5), 120-127. https://bit.ly/3u1dWh6
Rousseau, J. J. (1959 [1782]). Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques. OC I. Gallimard.
Rousseau, J. J. (1964 [1754]). Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes. OC III. Gallimard.
Said, E. (2013). Reflexiones sobre el exilio (R. García Pérez, Trad.). DeBolsillo.
Sampson-Choma, T. (2019). Disengaging from the Monolithic Black Myth: The Quest for Coalition in Americanah and We Need New Names. The Journal of American Culture, 42(4), 312-325. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13094
Shuchi & Ramdinmawii Zote, J. (2020). Hair in Exile: Manifestations of Displacement, Difference, and Belongingness through Hair in
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 12(6), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n6.22
Sibanda, S. (2018). Ways of Reading Blackness: Exploring Stereotyped Constructions of Blackness in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Literary Studies, 34(3), 74-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2018.1507155
Sontag, S. (2006). Sobre la fotografía (C. Gardini y A. Major, Trads.). Alfaguara
Søren, F. (2008). Prolegomena: Toward a Literature of Migration. En Migration and Literature (pp. 1-30). Palgrave Macmillan.
Søren. F. (2010). Four Theses on Migration and Literature. En M. Gebauer y P. Schwarz Lausten (Eds.), Migration & Literature in Contemporary Europe (pp. 39-57). Martin Meidenbauer.
Søren, F. (2015). Globalization, Migration literature, and the New Europe. Cosmopolitanism and the Postnational. Literature and the New Europe, 79, 107-129. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004300651_008
Stobie, C. (2020). Precarity, poverty porn and vernacular cosmopolitanism in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Meg Vandermerwe’s Zebra Crossing. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 56(4), 517-531. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.1770494
Suárez Rodríguez, A. (2019). A Spatio-Emotional Analysis of the Disgust Discourse in Contemporary Afrodiasporic Fiction. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, (60), 127-144. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7162779
Taylor, J. (2019). Language, Race, and Identity in Adichie’s Americanah and Bulowayo’s We Need New Names. Research in African Literatures, 50(2), 68-85. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.50.2.06
Tunca, D., & Ledent, B. (2015). The power of a Singular Story: Narrating Africa and Its Diasporas. Research in African Literatures, 46(4), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.46.4.1
Vertovec, S. (2006). Transnacionalismo migrante y modos de transformación. En A. Portes y J. De Wind (Eds.), Repensando las migraciones: Nuevas perspectivas teóricas y empíricas (pp. 157-190). Instituto Nacional de Migración, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas y Miguel Ángel Porrúa.
Zweig, S. (1990). La impaciencia del corazón (A. Calm, Trad.). Porrúa.
Akingbe, N., & Adeniyi, E. (2017). ‘Reconfiguring Others’: Negotiating Identity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Rupkatha
Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 9(4), 37-55.https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n4.05
Araújo, E. (2017). Gênero, corpo, raça e diáspora em Americanah, de Chimamanda N. Adichie. Revista Ártemis, 24(1), 73-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.22478/ufpb.1807-8214.2017v24n1.37734
Arendt, H. (1965). On Revolution. Penguin Books.
Arnett, J. (2016). Taking Pictures: The Economy of Affect and Postcolonial Performativity in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 47(3), 149-173. https://bit.ly/3ichqbn
Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacre et simulations. Galilée.
Berning, N. (2015). Narrative Ethics and Alterity in Adichie’s Novel Americanah. CLCWeb-Comparative Literature and Culture, 17(5), 2-8. https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2733
Boltanski, L. (2004). Distant Suffering Morality, Media and Politics (G. Burchell, Trad.). Cambridge University Press.
Braidotti, R. (2015). Lo posthumano (J. C. Gentile Vitale, Trad.). Gedisa.
Bulawayo, N. (2014). We Need New Names. Little Brown & Company.
Carreira, S. (2019). A reconfiguração da identidade cultural em Precisamos de Novos Nomes, Noviolet Bulawayo. Ilha Do Desterro: A Journal of English Language Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 72(1), 145-157. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2019v72n1p145
Daley, P. (2013). Rescuing African bodies: celebrities, consumerism and neoliberal humanitarianism. Review of African Political Economy, 40(137), 375-393. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2013.816944
Esplin, M. (2018). The Right Not to Translate: The Linguistic Stakes of Immigration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Research in African Literatures, 49(2), 73-86. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.49.2.05
Ferreira, R. (2021). Female Identity in Diaspora: an Analysis in Americanah. Revista de Letras Norte@Mentos, 14(35), 68-86. https://bit.ly/3tf6wI1
Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press.
Hislop, M. (2020). “I Love This Country, but Sometimes I Not Sure Where I Am”: Black Immigrant Women, Sexual Violence, and Afropessimistic Justice in New York v. Strauss-Kahn and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Law & Literature, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2019.1688546
Hume, D. (1960 [1739]). A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Oxford University Press.
Isaacs, C. (2016). Mediating women’s globalized existence through social media in the work of Adichie and Bulawayo. Safundi-The Journal of South African and American Studies, 17(2), 174-188. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2016.1179463
Mallya, M & Susanti, R. (2021). Theorizing race, marginalization, and language in the digital media. Communication & Society-Spain, 34(2), 403-415. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.34.2.403-415
Mapanzure, R. (2019). When Old Names Refuse to Go: Myths, Power, and Subversion in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Scrutiny2, 24(2-3), 39-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2020.1764087
Mbembe, A. (2011). Necropolítica (E. Falomir Archambault, Trad.). Melusina.
Michaelsen, S. y Johnson, D. (2003). Los secretos de la frontera: una introducción. En Teoría de la frontera: Los límites de la política cultural (G. Ventureira, Trad.; pp. 25-59). Gedisa.
Moji, P. (2015). New names, translational subjectivities: (Dis) location and (Re)naming in NoViolet Bulawayo’s “We Need New Names”. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 27(2), 181-190. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2014.993937
Motahane, N., & Makombe, R. (2020). Not at Home in the World: The Home, the Unhomely, and Migrancy in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Critique-Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 61(3), 262-273. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2020.1713715
Ncube, G. (2018). Of dirt, disinfection and purgation: Discursive construction of state violence in selected contemporary Zimbabwean literature. Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 55(1), 41-53. https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.55i1.1548
Ndaka, F. (2021). Narrating global asymmetries of power: Children’s play/games and photography in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 57(1), 75-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.1785531
Ngoshi, H. (2016). Carnivalising Postcolonial Zimbabwe: The Vulgar and Grotesque Logic of Postcolonial Protest in NoViolet Bulawayo’s
We Need New Names (2013). Journal of Literary Studies, 32(1), 53-69. https://doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2016.1158984
Oficina de las Naciones Unidas para la Coordinación de Asuntos Humanitarios. (2021). Panorama Humanitario Global 2021. https://gho.unocha.org/es
Ókè, R. (2019). Traveling Elsewheres: Afropolitanism, Americanah, and the Illocution of Travel. Critical Philosophy of Race, 7(2), 289-305. https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.7.2.0289
Phiri, A. (2017). Expanding black subjectivities in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Cultural Studies, 31(1), 121-142. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2016.1232422
Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social. Journal of World-Systems Research, 6(2), 342-386. http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20140506032333/eje1-7.pdf
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Soi-même comme un autre. Seuil.
Rita Gola, N. (2019). Forces of Development: Globalisation, Civil Societies, and NGOs in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Narratives. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 10(5), 120-127. https://bit.ly/3u1dWh6
Rousseau, J. J. (1959 [1782]). Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques. OC I. Gallimard.
Rousseau, J. J. (1964 [1754]). Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes. OC III. Gallimard.
Said, E. (2013). Reflexiones sobre el exilio (R. García Pérez, Trad.). DeBolsillo.
Sampson-Choma, T. (2019). Disengaging from the Monolithic Black Myth: The Quest for Coalition in Americanah and We Need New Names. The Journal of American Culture, 42(4), 312-325. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13094
Shuchi & Ramdinmawii Zote, J. (2020). Hair in Exile: Manifestations of Displacement, Difference, and Belongingness through Hair in
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 12(6), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n6.22
Sibanda, S. (2018). Ways of Reading Blackness: Exploring Stereotyped Constructions of Blackness in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Literary Studies, 34(3), 74-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2018.1507155
Sontag, S. (2006). Sobre la fotografía (C. Gardini y A. Major, Trads.). Alfaguara
Søren, F. (2008). Prolegomena: Toward a Literature of Migration. En Migration and Literature (pp. 1-30). Palgrave Macmillan.
Søren. F. (2010). Four Theses on Migration and Literature. En M. Gebauer y P. Schwarz Lausten (Eds.), Migration & Literature in Contemporary Europe (pp. 39-57). Martin Meidenbauer.
Søren, F. (2015). Globalization, Migration literature, and the New Europe. Cosmopolitanism and the Postnational. Literature and the New Europe, 79, 107-129. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004300651_008
Stobie, C. (2020). Precarity, poverty porn and vernacular cosmopolitanism in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Meg Vandermerwe’s Zebra Crossing. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 56(4), 517-531. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.1770494
Suárez Rodríguez, A. (2019). A Spatio-Emotional Analysis of the Disgust Discourse in Contemporary Afrodiasporic Fiction. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, (60), 127-144. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7162779
Taylor, J. (2019). Language, Race, and Identity in Adichie’s Americanah and Bulowayo’s We Need New Names. Research in African Literatures, 50(2), 68-85. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.50.2.06
Tunca, D., & Ledent, B. (2015). The power of a Singular Story: Narrating Africa and Its Diasporas. Research in African Literatures, 46(4), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.46.4.1
Vertovec, S. (2006). Transnacionalismo migrante y modos de transformación. En A. Portes y J. De Wind (Eds.), Repensando las migraciones: Nuevas perspectivas teóricas y empíricas (pp. 157-190). Instituto Nacional de Migración, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas y Miguel Ángel Porrúa.
Zweig, S. (1990). La impaciencia del corazón (A. Calm, Trad.). Porrúa.
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Published
Jun 17, 2022
Article Details
How to Cite
Calderón Le Joliff, T. ., & Pardo-Gamboa, C. (2022). Cliché Humanitarianism: Migrant Gazes at the Rhetoric of Dangerous Pity in We Need New Names and Americanah. Co-Herencia, 19(36), 207–238. https://doi.org/10.17230/co-herencia.19.36.8
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Fondecyt, Centro de Estudios Americanos de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Author Biography
Tatiana Calderón Le Joliff, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Profesora Asociada de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.
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