Reframing the Debate on ‘Arab Refugee Literature.’ The Syrian Response to Labelling and Neo-Orientalist Discourse

The use in the West of the label ‘refugee literature’ as applied to the works of Arab authors forced to flee their homes or countries because of political persecution or war has sparked much discussion among Arab writers in the aftermath of the revolutionary events of 2011. Several authors who found asylum in European countries have questioned the appropriateness of this label, stressing how Western concern for their literary production, and, accordingly, the broader Arab book translation market, are mostly prompted by political discourse on the refugee crisis and its implications rather than by genuine interest in the literary quality of their works. The aim of this article is to discuss the controversial reception of this categorisation, benefiting mostly from postcolonial theoretical contributions to refugee studies. I will mainly focus on the response of some Syrian writers to such labelling, examining, in particular, Widād Nabī’s and Ghayāth al-Madhūn’s poems and public interventions on this topic.