Documenting the undocumented: Valeria Luiselli’s refugee children archives

Oana Sabo
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

This article reads comparatively Valeria Luiselli’s essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and her novel Lost Children Archive in the context of critical debates about the uses of archival documents in contemporary literature and in relation to archival theory (Foucault, Derrida, Farge). Both texts draw on a wealth of archival materials to explore the causes of mass migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States since 2014, and especially the plight of refugee children who disappear in the desert, in detention centres, and through deportation. I argue that these texts use the archive as a compositional method to confront restricted representations of Mexican and Central American migration with a plethora of documents that propose a historical and transnational perspective. The proliferation of archives stands in for missing evidence and foregrounds multiple points of view on the refugee children, compelling readers to imagine their migrant journeys more vividly.
记录无证件:瓦莱里娅·路易塞利的难民儿童档案
本文比较阅读瓦莱里娅·路易塞利的文章《告诉我它是如何结束的:40个问题中的一篇文章》和她的小说《迷失的孩子档案》,在关于档案文件在当代文学中的使用以及与档案理论(福柯、德里达、法奇)有关的批判性辩论的背景下。这两本书都借鉴了大量的档案材料,探讨了2014年以来从墨西哥和中美洲向美国大规模移民的原因,特别是在沙漠、拘留中心和被驱逐出境中失踪的难民儿童的困境。我认为,这些文本使用档案作为一种组合方法,以大量提出历史和跨国视角的文件来面对墨西哥和中美洲移民的有限表现。大量的档案弥补了缺失的证据,展现了关于难民儿童的多种观点,迫使读者更生动地想象他们的移民之旅。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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