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The refugee is a sandal forph$osophy in that the refugee recalls the radical instability of meaning and the incabculability ofthe human. The refugee is a scandal for politics also, however, in that Uheadvent of the refugee is always a reprwch to the fomzation ofthe political ordet or subjectivity which necessarilygiv@ rise to the refugee. The scandal is intensi@pany politics of identity which piresupposes that thegoal of politics is the realization of sovereign identity. The prfncipal argument, then, is that what Izpill call the scandal of the refugee i l lumbtes both the fundamental entologi~al determinations of international pblitics and the character of political action, because the refugee is both afunction the intentionnl political destruction $ the ontological horizons of peoplds always already heterogeneous wc)rlds, and effects an equally fundawental deconstruction of the ontologic~l horizons which constitute theequally heterogeneous worlds into which, as refqgees, these people are precipitated. It is precisely on this concreteand corgoreal sile that both the ontological horizons and the allied political decision-making ~f modern politics are thrown into stark reliefand profoundly called into questllon. For it is precisely here that the very actions of modern politics both create and address the incidence of its own massband selfMichael Dillon, Ph.D., is Pmfes$or o f Politics, Director of the Institutefor Cul@ral Research, and Managing Editor, Cultyral Values, University of lancaster, Lancaster, UK. The full version o f this essay is fbrthcoming in Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, edited by David Campbpll andMichael J . Shapiro (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Copyright, the Regents'ofthe University ofMinnesota). generated, political abjection. If that is one of the principal ends of international relations, one isforced to ask, what does it takeas its beginning? I f , in other words, the vernacular political architecture of modem international power commonly produces l:lE forcibly displaced peopleglobally, one is inclined to ask about the foundations upon which that architecture is itselfbased. La rhlitkdu refugeest unescandalepour la philosophie en cela que le rdfu@nous rappelle l'instabilitkradicalede la signification et l'incalculabilitk de l'humain. Mais lerdfugdest aussiun scandale pour la politique en cela que l'avi?tmnent du r@gik est toujours un reproche h la formation de l'ordre politique ou de la subjectivitt qui suscite nkcessairement l'apparition du rdfu@. Le scandale est intensijZpar toute politiquede l'identitk qui prksuppose que le but du politiqueest la rhlisation del'identitksouveraine. Le principal argument, dam ce cas, est que ceque jenommerais le&ledu rdfugk! illumine h la fois les dkterminations ontologiques fondamentales de la politique internationale et le caract2re de l'action politique, car le rkfugik est h la fois une fonction de l'intentionnelle destruction politique des horizons ontologiques des mondes toujours-dkjri hktkoghes des peuples, et ilentrafneune tout aussi fondamentaledestruction des horizons ontologiques qui constitue les mondes tout aussi hktkoghes duns lesquels, en tant que rttfgds, ces peuples sont prkcipitks. C'est exactement sur ce site concret et corporel que les horizons ontologiques et les prises de ddcision corollaires de la politique modme sont mis h nu etfermement remis en question. Car c'est exactement ici que l'action eflective de la politique moderne crke et envisage les incidences de sa propre abjection politique, massive et autogMrie. Si cela est unedes principalesfinalitks des relations internationales, force est de demander que se donnent-elles comme point de dtpart? En d'autres termes, si l'architecture politique vernaculaire du pouvoir international moderne produit ordinairement l:l15personnesglobalementdkplackes deforce, on est en droit de poser des question sur les fondements sur lesquels repose une tellearchitecture. "If yougaze longenough into an abyss, the abyss willgaze back into you."' Introduction: The "Inter" of International Relations and the Refugee Neither aco-nationalnor, even, another national, the refugee is, instead, distinguished precisely because s\he i s located in the strange territory o f estrangement which is located between the two; denaturalized, as a recent study o f migrationnotes, having "no means o f identifi~ation."~ Neither in nor outwhile nonetheless, o f course, actually bearing the name o f some previous identification on, and existing in a carefully def ined no-where place within the boundaries o f some other nation or state, so clearly also undeniably present-hebr brings the very "Inter" o f international relations t o the foreground in a disturbing and unusual way, insisting that it become the concentrated focus o f attention which it deserves tobe. In search o f a home, because forcibly deprived, b y violent and sustained political intent, o f their previous home, the refugee brings t o presence the very question o f the home as such, and o f its relation to politics. The refugee is a suppliant in search o f a home, with pahiR-, VoL 17, No. 6 (December 1998) fully indelible memories of a home that once was. Often with an abiding, seducing, nostalgia for a home that never was. For the violent event of displacement, of dislocation and subsequent diaspora, itself generates a necessary representation of home which inevitably calls into question what home was really like. No one knows what home was really like, however, because the home recalled is not the home that was and yet also, thehome that was could not have been the securely domesticated home one thought it was, because it proved so susceptible to radical dispersal and dissolution. The question of the home is therefore radically problematized by the unsettled, and is never resettled even when the unsettled regains a home.3 How, then, in all the senses of this term, is one to address the refugee? And how does that problem of address illuminate what the refugee illuminates about the human condition as such? For, while intentionally displaced, the refugee is not purposefully sent. Equally, while in desperate need of sustainable and survivable means of habitation, the refugee is not destined for some previously inscribed forwarding address. This experience-literally, of no known address-discloses something that is itself fundamental to the human: its very own lack of address, its own unsettledness. Their names erased, or Babelised, the places from which they fled changed beyond original recognition by the violence of expulsion itself, the refugee is one who-no longer safely responding to their previous namecannot be hailed securely by that original ethnic, religious, social or political designation. An administrative category for that which is no longer reliably fixed, locatable or designatable-one waiting in a sometimes interminable line, camp or holding-tank, for some other assignment-the refugee is human or s\he is nothing; or, at least, nothing but raw stuff. Here, then, is the inescapable and irresolvable, yet also practical and immediate-indeed, in our times massively posed-ontopolitical question, that the refugee brings to presence. What is tobehuman, when the human is precisely that which is in between-neither simply one thing, nor the other, precisely "inter" without a secure term or dwelling place? And how arenot onlypoliticsbut the thought of the political related to this question? The very advent of the being who is precisely without secure arid unambiguous home, identity or name, the refugee both raises our need while challenging our capacity to articulate or acknowledge the "we." That,Isuggest, is not only the territory of the political in an age which has to be out-lived if the human is to have a future, it is also, and quite precisely, the territory of the inter of an international relations that is capable of out-thinking its own traditional designation; as a techne, skilled in calculating the inter-subjective political arithmetic of Modernity's given political subjectivities. For it is precisely that arithmetic obsession-the techne of modern political subjectification and governance itself-which now produces its own massive political abjection in the form of the refugee. The Refugee as Constitutive Outsider Exadlybecause s\ he destroys the old trinity of state-nation-territory, the refugee, an apparently marginal figure, deserves on the contrary to be considered the central figure of our own political history.' What historical politicality-quality or project of being political, circumscribing the very domain of political intelligibility-is raised here by the advent of the refugee? What are we to make of what is going on when the political discourse of state-nation-territory does not merely enact that which it names-materializing the state, the nation and the territory-but the very "outside" upon which it draws for the articulation of its most traditional legitirnatory functions; representation of the people, and the monopoly not only of the legitimate use of force for the purposes of security but, also, the prior monopolistic determination of the definition of h a t ? What conclusions are we to draw from the following observations? That the harder a politics conditioned to secure production of the coherent identity "-*I? t which its discourses refer, the more it seems to produce, "the unspeakable, the unviable, the nonnarrativiaable . . . the tra~matic,"~upon whichit relies. Yet, also, the more itproduces thak which it cannot abide, the more the impossibility of its project is confirmed; such that, what remains outside the political subject, set there by the very acts which found the subject, persists a$ an integrally defining negat i v i ~ . ~ In what ways might this seemingly paradoxical political condition have becoine not only the condition but also thevefy occasion of some further, of some othdr, pol

Epilogue The Scandal of the Refugee: Some peflections on the "Inter" of International Relations