ABSTRACT

This essay revisits the relationship between literature and politics by focusing on a ‘current’ event – Sajid Javid’s 2019 repatriation of Shamima Begum – and Kamila Shamsie’s 2017 novel Home Fire, which predicted that revocation would be a tactic used by the Home Office to resolve the problem of returning extremists. Building on this synchronic moment, the essay argues that the sort of sustained textual engagement used to analyse a novel must be applied to a political event. In doing so, it is possible to see how statelessness has been weaponized by the Tory party’s various Home Secretaries, from Theresa May to Priti Patel. Unlike Shamsie’s prolific writing in The Guardian, Home Fire manages to take back control of the narrative of identity by emphasising the reciprocal relationship between reader and character, all the while working against what has been identified by Bonnie Honig as the ‘conditional order of hospitality’. By taking into account the difference in how we read a newspaper article versus a novel, this essay will weigh in on the unique position of the contemporary novel to emphasise the urgent need to inspect the rhetorical construction of the citizen.

摘要

本文通过关注“当前”事件——Sajid Javid 2019 年遣返 Shamima Begum——和 Kamila Shamsie 2017 年的小说Home Fire 来重新审视文学与政治之间的关系，后者预测撤销将是内政部用来解决问题的策略。极端分子回国问题。基于这一同步时刻，本文认为，用于分析小说的持续文本参与必须应用于政治事件。通过这样做，可以看到从特蕾莎·梅到普里蒂·帕特尔的保守党的各个内政大臣是如何将无国籍身份武器化的。与 Shamsie 在《卫报》、《家庭之火》中的多产写作不同通过强调读者和角色之间的互惠关系，设法收回对身份叙事的控制，同时与邦妮·霍尼格（Bonnie Honig）所认定的“热情好客的有条件秩序”相悖。通过考虑我们阅读报纸文章和阅读小说的方式的差异，本文将权衡当代小说的独特地位，强调迫切需要审视公民的修辞结构。