“We Are All Migrants”: The Refugee Novel and the Claims of Universalism

I draw on Edward Said’s meditations on exile to critique Mohsin Hamid’s representation of the migrant as a universal figure in his acclaimed 2017 novel Exit West. Hamid naturalizes the fact of migration to evacuate the specific historical experience that generates it, rendering banal what must remain historical. I consider how the refugee novel as a genre reckons with the difficulties of representation in relation to debates in visual culture and anthropology. Along the way, I probe claims to the singularity of the refugee, as well as attempts to create itineraries of ethical and historical relation.