Experiencing internal displacement: poetic artistic work of collective action based on narrative testimonial material

This artistic poetic text draws on narrative testimonial material from a small group of community garden volunteers in Honduras who share a first-hand experience of internal displacement

Published on November 17, 2021

Francesca Randazzo Eisemann | lanid, Humanities, Arts, Researcher, Americas (inc Caribbean)

Honduras. Huerto comunitario Ángeles para San Juancito © Francesca Randazzo Eisemann

Proust’s famous remembrance of his childhood by the taste of a madeleine cake illustrates how involuntary memory recovers a time that can be repopulated with spaces, through inner poetic discovery. Through an artistic textual format, the intention is to put into value the individual experience of a small group of volunteers from Ángeles para San Juancito community garden (Francisco Morazán, Honduras), who share a first-hand experience of forced internal displacement. By enhancing the poetic background of a basic element of their diet, whether it is the origin or the host community, texts are created to tell a short story capable of giving meaning to the experience (Ricoeur). Originally, the Cité Nationale de l’Immigration (Paris) wanted to highlight a donated evocative object, capable of giving a posteriori meaning (Schuz) to the history of migration itself. This work seeks to return to the sensitivity of that experience.

READ THE WORK HERE (in Spanish)

Francesca Randazzo Eisemann is a poet and sociologist. Of Italian and German origin, she was born in Honduras (1973), where she is a university professor. She has been a volunteer for many years, both with Manos sin Fronteras, an organization that promotes neural stimulation technique, and with the environmental group Ángeles para San Juancito, within which this work was developed.

This work was created by the author during her Summer Fellowship on Internal Displacement at the Internal Displacement Research Program of the Refugee Law Initiative. The grant was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, on behalf of the UKRI Global Challenge Research Fund, as part of the funded project “Interdisciplinary Network on Internal Displacement, Conflict and Protection” (AH/T005351/1).

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Researching Internal Displacement publishes engaging and insightful short pieces of writing, artistic and research outputs, policy briefings and think pieces on internal displacement.

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