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Figuring The Refugee, Genevieve Goulding

Honors Theses

''Figuring the Refugee" explores humanitarian relief for refugees as a discourse; a system of communication and identity-making which creates a subhuman refugee and perpetuates the problems of assistance. Through an auto-ethnographic narrative of my experience in the camp, I consider how the space itself creates exploitative binaries between aid workers and refugees. In an analysis of the United Nations 2006 film appeal, I argue that the discourse is normalized by images of the dehumanized refugee. The rhetoric of the film appeal limits the response of the western viewer to an uncritical sympathy, and allows for ineffective models of refugee assistance …