Moten, Notes on Passage (The New International of Sovereign Feelings

Refugees stu­dy change not only because they’ve been put through changes but also because changes are what they want and what they play and what they are. Refugees stu­dy a mode of study—the contra­pun­tal inter­sec­tion of a set of inter­sti­tial fields, dis­lo­ca­tion in a hole or a hold or a whole or a crawls­pace. Such stu­dy is inha­bi­ta­tion that moves : by way of—but also in appo­si­tion to—injury, which is irre­du­cible in the refu­gee though she is irre­du­cible to it. There is, in turn, pas­sage in ack­now­led­ging the theo­re­ti­cal prac­tice of the one who emerges as if from now­here, roo­ted in having been rou­ted, dig­ging, tilling, wor­king, soun­ding, the memo­rial future of a grave, under­com­mon cell. She is the com­mo­di­ty, the impos­sible domes­tic, the interdicted/contradictive mother. Dangerously embed­ded in the home from which she is exclu­ded, she is more and less than one. The ques­tion of where and when she enters—where entrance is redu­ced to some neces­sa­ri­ly tepid mix­ture of natu­ra­li­za­tion and coro­na­tion, which is an alrea­dy fai­led solu­tion that is ever more empha­ti­cal­ly dilu­ted in its abs­tract and infi­nite replication—is always sha­ded by the option to refuse what has been refu­sed, by the pre­fe­ren­tial option not for a place but rather for radi­cal dis­pla­ce­ment, not for the same but for its change. Blackness is given in the refu­sal of the refu­gee.