Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization by David Livingstone Smith (review)

Abstract

Barsky places Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden in conversation with Lolita. He invites the reader to consider both the impossibility and the possibility of redemption, of living in the same country with, in Dorfman’s terms, “the most despicable villains.”5 The connection works brilliantly and is as strong an argument as one could make for the usefulness of the enterprise of investigating the experience of refugees through the lens of literature. Throughout the book, Barsky connects the vulnerability of the characters in the literary texts to the vulnerability of refugees and invites consideration of universal human rights. As he points out, many authors of the volumes he examines were quite familiar with migration and border crossing, whether because they lived in places and periods of migration or because they were themselves travelers. As noted earlier Barsky takes care to position the works within the politics of the time in which they were written. We might ask: are these literary works read through the lens of the refugees’ experiences or are the refugees’ experiences read through the lens of the literature? Barsky argues that the lenses are not singular. In bringing together the literary accounts, the legal discourses, information from news media, and examples of migration memoirs, Barsky offers multiple perspectives and at the same time sustains his primary goal of understanding the complexity of refugees fleeing danger, taking risks, entering inhospitable territories, and seeking legal protection.