Decolonizing the Refugee Crisis: Palimpsestous Writing, Being-in-Waiting, and Spaces of Refuge on the Greek Island of Leros

This article is based on ethnographic research on the island of Leros at the peak of the so-called refugee crisis. The analytical trope of the palimpsest is employed to unravel the traumatic experiences of war, asylum, and exile that haunt the past and present of this place, thus questioning the notion of crisis, as well as the false understandings of identity manifested in the duality of victim/perpetrator and the idea of waiting as passivity/resistance. The article addresses the epistemic violence done by what I define as living on through identities infused by trauma, and being-in-waiting. It argues that an affective and performative reading of history and space, through the employment of palimpsestous writing, help us to relate and understand the meaning of "finding refuge" as a complicated process tightly related to the experience of uprootedness, confinement, disassociation, and solidarity, as well as to the desire to make life sustainable. Moreover, this process entails moving away from acts of philanthropy and neocolonial ideologies still present in any encounter with suffering and alterity.