Lindsay Bogner

The Responsibility to the Non-Citizen as “Other” in Human Rights Discourse and in Danticat’s

Brother I’m Dying

The notion of a potential global citizenship becomes problematized in the liminal space of the

border, where human rights are complicated or suspended for those who fall outside the demarcated

lines of sovereignty. As Benhabib discusses in “Disaggregation,” “ a series of internal contradictions

between universal human rights and territorial sovereignty is built right into the logic of the most

comprehensive international law documents in our world” (Benhabib “Disaggregation” 13), and as I

will demonstrate, the noncitizen, particularly the refugee, reflects the tension between universality

and sovereignty that surrounds the concept “human rights” and complicates questions of

responsibility. I will work through these seeming contradictions using human rights theory, in

particular the works of Emmanuel Levinas. In dialogue with these works, I will ask the following

questions: what is our responsibility to the noncitizen as other, and does this responsibility arise out

of or relate to the concept of global citizenship? Do we need to go beyond laws and rules to demand

a more ethical engagement as Levinas posits? Yet there are actual political concerns to consider, like

national security, and the need of law to uphold the very rights that seemingly point us toward the

ethical, perhaps making the very concept of “global citizenry” insupportable. The focus of my paper

will rest mainly on the theoretical complication of the concept “human rights,” as it relates to the

refugee, a noncitizen, and I will be looking to Edwidge Danticat’s work Brother I’m Dying to help

me illuminate this discussion, as well as show perhaps how literature “announces” something new to

human rights discourse, interrupting the “said” and calling for a more global conception of

citizenship.

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In his work Entre Nous, Levinas explores the concept of responsibility, as an unceasing

obligation to the “other,” and it is through the interhuman order that the responsibility to the other is

solicited. Thus “it is as a neighbor that man is accessible: as a face” (9). For Levinas, however, the

interhuman order is not just a collective consciousness of shared suffering, where solace is found in

“common destiny.” This sense of collectivity is not sufficient, and as he notes “The interhuman

perspective can subsist, but can also be lost, in the political order of the City where the Law

establishes mutual obligations between citizens” (100). We can use this line and Levinas’ discussion

of the interhuman order to rethink human rights discourse, specifically as it relates to the position of

the noncitizen, in that Levinas points to this inadequacy of law, of thinking of responsibility as

something dependent upon likeness and a shared political order. Instead, “the interhuman…lies in a

non-indifference of one to another, in a responsibility of one for another, but before the reciprocity of

this responsibility, which will be inscribed in impersonal laws, comes to be superimposed on the pure

altruism of this responsibility inscribed in the ethical position of the I qua I” (100). The interhuman

order is an ethical engagement, one that exists prior to and independent of any political order or

inscribed laws of citizenship, and instead necessitates a more ethical, cosmopolitan citizenry. It is

significantly a responsibility that is unavoidable, not contingent upon any notion of the reciprocity of

this responsibility, going beyond the “I” as citizen and refusing this as a limit to ethical boundaries.

For Levinas, engaging with the other on the basis of law and politics alone is insufficient, and

“This implies that general rules should never overrule the face of the other” (Metsalaar 63). Levinas

explains this in another work Otherwise than Being in terms of the “saying” and the “said,” where

the “said” is representation, institution, group identities, and common knowledge. It is language in its

everyday, including the political and law. The “saying,” however, is “the very signifyinness of

signification” (5). It is before all rules, linguistic or otherwise, and while the “saying” can be

subordinate to the “said,” and is perhaps inevitably subsumed within the “said,” Levinas points to the

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“saying’s” potential to break through, and the necessity of its trying to do so. For “the original, or

pre-original saying, what is put forth in the foreword, weaves an intrigue of responsibility” (5-6). It is

what necessitates the ethical engagement, existing prior to any linguistic system, and perhaps, like

the face, signals to our responsibility to the noncitizen as other and to a need for an expanded sense

of citizenship (5).

How does human rights discourse figure into this discussion? It seems to have some kind of

sense of responsibility, and yet is a part of the “said.” Also, the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights (UDHR) creates a discourse where the conception “human rights” threatens to become too

abstract, a debilitating metalanguage fraught with paradoxes (Parekh 38). Although often framed as

universal, human rights depend upon nation states for implementation, and thus while being backed

by transnational actors, they still uphold rights to sovereignty (Tazreiter 11). This creates a

potentially problematic liberal paradox that many migration theorists have noted, where states that

subscribe to the UDHR, like the United States, fail to adhere to the established rights, ignoring their

implementation in the name of national security and other aspects of sovereignty (Giugni and Passy

6). In addition, there are still unresolved questions about who qualifies for rights and when

intervention is required to enforce them (Tazreiter 6). Lukes brings up this problem with a litany of

questions, which aptly points to the endless, impossibility inherent in questions of rights, “Who are

the possessors of civil and political rights? Nationals? Citizens? Guest-workers? Refugees? All who

are residents within a given territory?” (38) Thus although the UDHR has established stipulations,

they require interpretation, and subject many to the threat of exclusion. For example, the UDHR

remains silent on the position of the noncitizen. Article 13 notes how everyone has “the right to

freedom of movement and residence within the boundaries of each state,” and “everyone has the

right to leave any country,”1 and so the UDHR recognizes a right to emigrate but not a right to

1 See the United Nations website, <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/>.

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immigrate (Benhabib “Disaggregation” 13), ignoring the refugee, caught in between states, (Farrier

122; Hayter 10). Also, in Article 14, “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy” asylum in other

countries, but there is no obligation to grant asylum, and the latter right of “enjoyment” surely

depends on the former right to “seek,” which also significantly requires recognition.2 It is because of

this tension between sovereignty and rights, which illuminates the tension between the citizen and the

noncitizen, that the UDHR is reluctant to delineate what happens in the space of the border, where

rights become blurred, and thus the refugee depends on arbitrary immigration controls for

recognition and acceptance (Obrad Savic 2, Benhabib 125.)

So what happens during the encounter at the border, with the refugee, or “asylum seeker’s”

arrival, being a moment where this ethical responsibility is tested and called for and where traditional

notions of citizenship blur? Indeed, this arrival, is the act of “saying,” which instigates responsibility,

a “saying prior to anything said” and it is found in “the risky uncovering of oneself…and the

abandon of all shelter” (Levinas Otherwise 47), where the refugee arrives, vulnerable and exposed.

Yet, while a response is perhaps necessitated, Failinger notes how the complicated setting of the

border is a space where a turning away is made easier because of its liminality. “As they insist it

must, immigration law binds ‘we the people’ in a web of care to each American at home within our

borders constructed by our law; but the border marks where we can refuse to see other faces” (172).

The border becomes the liminal space, in between the national and transnational, the civic and

universal, that, as I already discussed, the UDHR ignores (Benhabib Displacement 50). Therefore,

the border, the space of encounter with the refugee, both solicits an ethical response and yet because

of its situation as “in between,” where rights are subject to interpretation, makes the evasion of the

ethical possible.

2 United Nations, <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/>.

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Does Levinas’s theory then depend too readily upon the person who encounters the refugee,

ignoring certain political realities that need to be acknowledged? Also, don’t there need to be laws

that will ensure the rights of the noncitizen, necessitating the said in some way, even if it comes with

economies of violence? Levinas does acknowledge these difficulties in his work Entre Nous, noting

how questions of responsibility are open to interpretation, dependent upon recognition, and vary with

each state, making a cosmopolitan citizenry and human rights discourse seem impossible. Yet

Levinas also describes in Otherwise Than Being, how “the subordination of the saying to the said, to

the linguistic system and to ontology, is the price that manifestation demands” (6). And this

manifestation is necessary, seen in how he describes the said as “the predicative statement – a

metalanguage necessary for the intelligibility of its own jetsam in a state of dissemination,”

signifying “a modality of the approach to another’ (Otherwise 47). Levinas would see Human Rights

discourse then, despite its potentially debilitating paradoxes and situation within the realm of the

“said,” as providing a potential for the “saying,” and also as being a necessary framework from

which to create an economy to discuss certain issues. Therefore, despite the sense of impossibility

that haunts human rights discourse and global citizenship, this would not deter Levinas, whose own

theory situates itself in a very ethics of impossibility and still necessitates an ongoing ethical

engagement (Otherwise 7).

The position of the noncitizen in society, particularly the refugee, evokes this same element

of impossibility, which is manifested in the liminality of the border, in that “to put oneself on an

immigration list is to put oneself into a no-man’s land of time and space: one begins to leave behind

one’s own past, own community and yet cannot enter one’s future” (Failinger 170). While the liminal

border seems to point to the possibility of the global, potentially blurring restrictive boundaries, it

also becomes a space where identities are reinforced and where those who fall outside those identities

are victimized or imprisoned. The second part of Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying confronts

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many of these issues, with her uncle Joseph Dantica3 figuring as a Haitian asylum seeker, trying to

enter into the United States after his life has been threatened. While Dantica had a legal visa to enter

the country, he “made the mistake” of asking for asylum at his arrival, and was questioned, taken to

Krome the detention center, and due to medical complications and neglect, died. Edwidge Danticat

emphasizes the vulnerability of the noncitizen that is inherent in the border space’s liminality, seen

from the moment of Dantica’s arrival in the United States, when Dantica becomes virtually

unreachable, and for a time Edwidge Danticat doesn’t even know of his whereabouts. Her uncle

literally disappears into the indeterminate space of the asylum seeker, and in this case the border is

reflected in the detention center “Krome,” which Danticat describes as “a series of gray concrete

buildings and trailers, Krome was out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, in south-west

Miami” (211). As Tazreiter notes, ““the physical distance and harsh settings of immigration

detention centres” (213) seem to contribute to a kind of violence done to the asylum seeker, and

reflect this conception of the refugee as “in some way contaminated,” one who comes “to be

considered as a potential threat to the receiver society” (215).

In describing a previous visit to this place, Danticat details how, “During our visit, a group of

men in identical dark blue overalls had been escorted into a covered, chain-link-fenced, concrete

patio rimmed by rows of barbed wire” (211). This no-man’s land virtually strips away the name and

the face of this “group of men,” and through its liminality allows for and engages in violence. For

example, Edwidge Danticat describes a litany of stories, human rights violations that seem as though

they could belong to any of the men in “identical blue overalls.” Indeed, she inserts an ellipsis where

the name would go, “My name is…” and describes how they are often simply identified by their

method of arrival, what boat they arrived on (211). This erosion of identity transforms the refugees

into marginalized and systemized men, and Danticat showcases this connection by describing their

3 In case of confusion, the author’s name is Edwidge “Danticat,” while her uncle’s last name is “Dantica,” lacking the “t”.

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nameless suffering. As she states, “Another asked us to tell the world the detainees were beaten

sometimes,” and “some detainees fought among themselves, sometimes nearly killing each other as

uninterested guards looked on” (212). With the general appellation of “another,” and “some

detainees,” Danticat emphasizes the lack of a face here, adopting this narrative style in order to

demonstrate how the immigration system leaves these noncitizens vulnerable to violence by placing

them outside a discourse of human rights, which is dependent on citizenship.

Danticat points to the violent, reinforcement of her uncle’s marginality as well, inscribed in

the unexplained gap preceding his death. In the hospital notes there is an inexplicable lapse of time,

one which threatens to expose a vulnerability to violations of human rights, a violent and oppressive

lacuna. As she states, “An electrocardiogran (EKG) was performed at 8:16 p.m. The next note on the

chart shows that he was found pulseless and unresponsive by an immigration guard at 8:30 p.m.

There is no detailed account of ‘the code’ or the sixteen minutes between the time he was found

unresponsive and the time he was pronounced dead, at 8:46 p.m.” (239). By invoking this time chart,

Danticat demonstrates how her uncle, a refugee, has fallen through the gaps of the “said,” the “code,”

as she says, in this case specifically the codes of citizenship. This is the ultimate oppressive silence,

this unaccounted time and absent note, where the encounter with her uncle’s face was ignored, and

instead those overseeing him looked away.

Although I have thus far emphasized the vulnerability of the refugee, especially in the realm

of immigration or the “said,” are there moments where a rupture can occur, and does this arise in

Danticat’s work, whether it be through the mimetic, or even the diegetic? Greg A Mullins notes how

the “representations of immigrant and refugee experience rendered in literary accounts speak

powerfully to human rights issues that US law overlooks and the INS practice ignores” (146).

Perhaps literature is able to “announce” something within the discourse of human rights and

immigration theory that is unfamiliar, calling for a different kind of understanding through its

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representation of the “other” (Lyotard 143). Danticat engages with these concepts, invoking the

“said” of the immigration department by recreating interactions between her uncle and immigration

officers, representing an interview that consists of a set of institutionalized questions. While exposing

the violence of the “said,” and the restricting elements of immigration control here, Danticat also

tries to interrupt the process with “saying,” for it is through the “said,” that the “saying” as

“exception” shows itself” (Levinas 6). For example, the text capitalizes certain responses, “Do you

have any reason to believe you are a citizen of the United States?” with his answer being an implied,

emphatic “NO” (217). This capitalization would not have appeared on the interview form, and yet

Danticat inserts it to demonstrate something beyond the form, to interrupt this moment of the “said.”

This occurs again, when he is asked “Would you be harmed if you are returned to your home country

of last residence?” and answers “YES” (219). In both of these instances, the capitalization, which is

not invoked in every response, points to an urgency, in that these questions seem to have obvious

answers, and yet an urgency that also perhaps calls for a real response from the officer.

During the interview, when Officer Reyes asks Dantica, “’Why exactly are you requesting

for political asylum in the United States today?’ he answers ‘Because they burned down my church

in Haiti and I fear for my life.’ . . . no further explanation or details were requested and my uncle did

not offer more” (218). He gives a similar answer again when the interviewer asks, “Why did you

leave your home country of last residence?” “Because I fear for my life in Haiti. And they burned

down my church” (219). This repetitive answer re-emphasizes the clinical nature of this encounter

and turns it from the interviewer’s unwillingness to inquire further, into Dantica’s unwillingness to

respond. His “saying,” or in this case not “saying,” motions toward becoming the exception in the

“said.” This same desire to repeat and saturate the official text in some way with his response also

can be seen when he signs the statement. Instead of initialing each page as required, “he signed his

name on all five pages” (220).

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It is perhaps the most violent and degrading moment that speaks most aptly to the “saying” in

Danticat’s work. In the court room, when Joseph Dantica gets sick, where he is dehumanized and his

suffering is mocked and ignored, there is an exposure and vulnerability that speaks to the “pre-

original saying” of Levinas’ discourse (Otherwise 5). As the narrative relates, “Vomit shot out of his

mouth, his nose, as well as the tracheotomy hole in his neck. The vomit was spread all over his face,

from his forehead to his chin, down the front of his dark blue Krome-issued overalls. There was also

vomit on his thighs, where a large wet stain showed he had also urinated on himself” (232). Like her

uncle’s suffering, Danticat’s narration style is also exposed, clinically describing her uncle’s

vulnerability in this instance without trying to memorialize. The clarity of her description all the

more emphasizes the medical officer’s refusal to “see,” where he reacts with “‘I think he’s faking,’

the medic said…to prove his point, the medic grabbed my uncle’s head and moved it up and down. It

was rigid rather than limp, he said. Besides, my uncle would open his eyes now and then and seemed

to be looking at him” (233-4). The medic looks at her uncle, in the face, and treats him like a puppet,

an object to move and manipulate, revictimizing him through another instance of violence (Failinger

171).

This refusal to see is repeated, with the medic again insisting, ‘He’s faking…he keeps

looking at me,” interpreting this “look,” as deviance, signifying the absence of suffering, and in

consequence the officer ignores the look as a potential ethical call, a “saying” through the face that is

“prior to anything said,” the “null site of subjectivity,” which “makes a sign to the responsible one”

(43). As a result, there is a return into the violence of the “said” after this moment, when Dantica’s

lawyer “asked Officer Castro if they could continue the credible fear interview at the clinic,” and

despite the singular circumstances of this case, is told “No” because “That was against the rules”

(235). This return to the rules, or the “said,” immediately after such an event, completely ignores the

ethical responsibility that the “saying” calls for, focusing on strict definitions of citizenship instead of

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the ethical call for a global citizenship based on responsibility. In this moment of turning away, of a

return to the “said,” Joseph Dantica seems to become the alien number they have given him, he is

reduced to a naming, or numbering (Metselaar 61; Failinger 168).

In this instance, despite the potential ethical demand of the face, or the “pre-original,” “saying,”

the Levinasian ethical relationship falters. For Dantica is relegated back to an object, and this

potentially problematizes Levinas’ theory, once again pointing to my earlier apprehension regarding

Levinas’ dependence on the individual’s response. Yet even if the intended refuses to listen, for

Levinas, this “saying” still exists, hanging in this time and space of the “said,” not dependent on the

“commitment” of any one person, and perhaps in a way not even speaking to any one person. And

even in the partial negation that occurs with the numbering, the face resists. Therefore, in Danticat’s

work, these moments of “saying” might seem frustrated, ignored by the officers they are seemingly

directed to, and yet perhaps they succeed in making “a sign to the responsible one,” the reader, who

recognizes in these moments some insistence that ranges beyond the language and structure. Despite

the inevitable impossibility of the “saying, which has to function through the mimetic structure of the

book, and in turn perhaps the inevitable insupportability of a global citizenship which has to function

in a world formed by nation states, it seems as though there is a trace here of ethical responsibility

that points towards an ideal, open cosmopolitan citizenship. Perhaps this is also found in the very

writing of the work, where Danticat takes on the task of detailing her uncle’s suffering as a refugee,

falling victim to the immigration system. As Levinas suggests, there is a way to open back up to the

ethical, to interrupt the pure, useless suffering, with the “saying,” as the “one for the other” (Levinas

5), and maybe this in some way necessitates the writing of this work. Perhaps it is the very notion of

the book, the opening or turning of a page, that signals to the “saying,” something that exists prior to

language, as a way to disrupt the oppressive silence that haunts the refugee and to evoke a discourse

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of citizenship that becomes global in possibility even when there remains a hint of practical

impossibility.

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