Displacement is a bitter muse, but a very powerful one. In this week’s episode we are talking about how #exile has influenced the literary works of those who had been forced out of their homes, and have inspired theories surrounding language, identity and memory.

We have a star-studded episode to close our first season with, but fear not as we'll be back in September with a whole new season. DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE YOUR TOPIC SUGGESTIONS IN COMMENT! 🖋️✒️

Our guests are: Behrouz Boochani, Ibtisam Azem and Bilgin Ayata

00:00 Intro 06:10 How to decide which language to use in which context? 12:09 The terminology of exile 17:15 Political developments and their manifestations in register and language 20:45 Colonialism is not a personal story 22:26 Does literature have a political mandate? 26:23 The global footprints of 500 years of colonization 28:34 Who are deserving of human rights? 31:38 Literature reinstates, insists or posits values but it cannot do this job alone 33:41 Does the change of digital media alter the position of literature?

Behrouz Boochani is an award-winning Kurdish writer, journalist, cultural advocate, and filmmaker. His memoir No Friend But the Mountains (Pan Macmillan 2018, trans. Omid Tofighian).

Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist based in New York. Her second novel “The Book of Disappearance” was translated into English, Italian and German.

Bilgin Ayata is professor of southeastern European studies at the University of Graz (Austria) and is leading the project Elastic Borders: Rethinking the Borders of the 21st Century.

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