Asylum systems often function as sites of biopolitical control, where states regulate the lives, bodies, and movements of refugees while simultaneously failing to provide protection or recognition. This paper applies Geoffrey Bennington’s deconstructive ethics to examine how ethical responsibility emerges precisely in these gaps, where legal certainty and formal structures collapse. Bennington demonstrates that law cannot stabilize ethics; responsibility arises in the void created by structural failure. Using Behrouz Boochani’s memoir No Friend But the Mountains, which chronicles his detention as a Kurdish refugee on Manus Island, this study explores how the suspension of legal and social recognition produces zones of vulnerability and liminality. Boochani’s narrative not only documents bureaucratic and systemic failure but also enacts ethical witnessing, compelling readers to acknowledge the human consequences of legal and biopolitical suspension. By situating the text within a biopolitical framework inspired by Michel Foucault, the paper shows how asylum operates as both a mechanism of control and a space where ethical responsibility is provoked. The analysis highlights the interplay between law, care, and narrative, arguing that refugees’ experiences reveal the moral imperative to respond ethically to life under structural suspension. This study contributes to refugee studies, legal and literary ethics, and deconstruction by demonstrating how ethical responsibility is enacted in spaces where law and governance fail, offering a fresh theoretical lens for understanding asylum, liminality, and the human stakes of bureaucratic power.
NIKITA NARUKA (Thu,) studied this question.