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White innocence in the Black Mediterranean: hospitality and the erasure of history

Danewid, Ida (2017) White innocence in the Black Mediterranean: hospitality and the erasure of history. Third World Quarterly, 38 (7). pp. 1674-1689. ISSN 0143-6597

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Identification Number: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1331123

Abstract

Themes of loss, grief, and vulnerability have come to occupy an increasingly central position in contemporary poststructuralist and feminist theory. Thinkers such as Judith Butler and Stephen White have argued that grief has the capacity to accesses or stage a commonality that eludes politics and on which a new cosmopolitan ethics can be built. Focusing on the role of grief in recent prorefugee activism in Europe, this article argues that these ethical perspectives contribute to an ideological formation that disconnects connected histories and that turns questions of responsibility, guilt, restitution, repentance, and structural reform into matters of empathy, generosity, and hospitality. The result is a veil of ignorance which, while not precisely Rawlsian, allows the European subject to re-constitute itself as “ethical” and “good”, innocent of its imperialist histories and present complicities.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ctwq20/current
Additional Information: © 2017 Southseries Inc.
Divisions: International Relations
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Date Deposited: 26 Jun 2017 09:55
Last Modified: 15 Apr 2024 23:45
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/82236

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