‘A Ridiculous Thing that Passes for a Passport’: Seeking Asylum in Ali Smith’s Fiction

Bennett, Alice (2018) ‘A Ridiculous Thing that Passes for a Passport’: Seeking Asylum in Ali Smith’s Fiction. Contemporary Women's Writing. ISSN 1754-1484 (Accepted for Publication)

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Abstract

Ali Smith’s There but for the (2011) represents a change in Smith’s work from metaphorical meditations on the stranger who enters domestic space to a more literal representation of the specific politics of asylum issues. In There but for the this political intervention takes the form of explicit engagement with the stories of people seeking asylum, and runs alongside Smith’s activism with the Refugee Tales Project. Through some dialogue with Derrida’s Of Hospitality, this essay argues that Smith’s recent fiction uses the passport and things that are offered in its absence – things that pass for a passport – as a way of exploring broader processes of analogy that compare the welcome offered to the stranger in the home to the welcome offered to strangers at the border.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Arts & Humanities > English
Depositing User:	Alice Bennett
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2018 09:44
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2018 09:44
URI:	http://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2393

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