Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran.
Abstract
Anticipating many of the tensions associated with the contemporary refugee crisis, the Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah examines refugees’ experiences and intelligibility within asylum regimes in By the Sea (2001). While existing scholarship on Gurnah has focused largely on migration, memory, identity, and postcolonial displacement, very little attention has been paid to the novel’s depiction of asylum governance through a Foucauldian framework. Consequently, this research theorizes the concept of the pastoral dispositif of recognition, drawing on Michel Foucault’s notions of pastoral power and dispositif. Through close textual analysis of airport architecture, asylum interviews, retrospective narration, narrative opacity, and post-recognition alienation, the novel presents refugee recognition as an evolving process of governance combining confession, care, surveillance, and social assimilation. Gurnah’s narrative structure resists this institutional demands through temporal disruption, narrative multiplicity, and opacity. Rather than presenting asylum as rescue or integration, By the Sea reveals the persistence of refugee governance even after legal recognition has been granted. By conceptualizing the pastoral dispositif of recognition, this study contributes to postcolonial and refugee studies by showing how literary narratives uncover the tensions between humanitarian care, institutional control, and refugee subjectivity.
Shirkhani, A. (2026). Recognition as Governance: The Pastoral Dispositif and Refugee Subjectivity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea. Critical Literary Studies, (), -.
MLA
Shirkhani, A. . "Recognition as Governance: The Pastoral Dispositif and Refugee Subjectivity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea", Critical Literary Studies, , , 2026, -.
HARVARD
Shirkhani, A. (2026). 'Recognition as Governance: The Pastoral Dispositif and Refugee Subjectivity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea', Critical Literary Studies, (), pp. -.
CHICAGO
A. Shirkhani, "Recognition as Governance: The Pastoral Dispositif and Refugee Subjectivity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea," Critical Literary Studies, (2026): -,
VANCOUVER
Shirkhani, A. Recognition as Governance: The Pastoral Dispositif and Refugee Subjectivity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea. Critical Literary Studies, 2026; (): -.
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