Identity and Power in Narratives of Displacement

by Katrina M. Powell

Overview

In this book, Powell examines the ways that identities are constructed in displacement narratives based on cases of eminent domain, natural disaster, and civil unrest, attending specifically to the rhetorical strategies employed as barriers and boundaries intersect with individual lives. She provides a unique method to understand how the displaced move within accepted and subversive discourses, and how representation is a crucial component of that movement. In addition, Powell shows how notions of human rights and the "public good" are often at odds with individual well-being and result in intriguing intersections between discourses of power and discourses of identity. Given the ever-increasing numbers of displaced persons across the globe, and the "layers of displacement" experienced by many, this study sheds light on the resources of rhetoric as means of survival and resistance during the globally common experience of displacement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317539032
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/11/2015
Series:	Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	210
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Katrina M. Powell is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing in the Department of English at Virginia Tech, USA

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Constructing Narratives of (National) Identity within Relocations 2. Reservations, Internments, and a Little Pink House: Linking U.S. Histories of Displacement with Human Rights 3. Surviving the (Un)Natural Disaster in New Orleans: Rhetorical Implications of Embracing "Refugee" 4. Buying Refugee Narratives: Sudanese Identity, Civil Unrest, and the Good Refugee 5. "Barriers and Boundaries": Mixed Identities and Multiple Displacements in Sri Lanka 6. Layers of Displacement: Discursive Mark(s) of Identity

Editorial Reviews

"By considering topics ranging from refugees to the forced removal of populations in the U.S., this book addresses both the complexities and differences attending to particular situations and the larger public policy issues facing disenfranchised people. Katrine Powell’s rhetorical analysis provides new and insightful understanding of these important problems of great concern to everyone, the temporarily placed and the displaced." - Amy Shuman, Ohio State University, USA

"Powell brings together a wealth of sources to analyze the transnational and contested implications of displacement and to draw attention to the commonalities, such as a sense of abandonment." - Nedra Reynolds, University of Rhode Island, USA

From the Publisher