On Strangers and Ambivalence: Reconsidering the Ethical Boundaries of Asylum in Michael Helm's Cities of Refuge

Abstract

Michael Helm’s recent novel Cities of Refuge (2010) offers a gallery of physically displaced people and of spiritual exiles who, albeit presenting different characteristics, are all subsumed within the category of the stranger. By foregrounding the ethical responsibility toward the stranger in our midst, the novel engages with questions of current concern, such as the impact of global-scale displacements and conflicts on the Canadian nation-state. Consequently, while delving on the ambivalence of the stranger, this essay tangentially addresses the following questions: how does the state manage its physical and imaginary borders? How does the presence of undocumented subjects impinge on Canada’s national self-image in the age of official multiculturalism and extolled pluralism? How is the average Canadian urbanite affected in his/her everyday life by the presence of these underground, non-status subjectivities?  In which ways are the violences of history and of the state brought to bear upon the bodies and destinies of failed refugees in Canada, as well as upon Canadian citizens themselves? Given the philosophical extent of these concerns, my reading of the novel has been inspired by the discussions of Jacques Derrida and of Zigmunt Bauman around the ambiguities attached to the figure of the stranger. Frank Kermode’s Sense of an Ending has proved equally illuminating in my attempt to grasp the novel’s focus on the production of narratives as tools for providing order and meaning out of the ambivalent and apocalyptic experience characteristic of our globalized world.