The Sounds of the Slave: Hannah Arendt and the Silent Revolt of Refugees

This paper is a continuation of Arendt's inquiry into the status of revolutions. Rather than advance Arendt's discussion in total fidelity however, I look to a revolt that Arendt did not consider with sincere earnest: that of the slave. Granting Arendt's consideration of slavery as a social condition sustained within the political realm rather than an exclusive predicate of the individual, I locate the slave's revolution within the space of appearance in which humans exercise and are affirmed in their freedom. Pushing at when it means to conceptualise slavery and latterly freedom in these relational terms, I ultimately argue that, in the twenty first century, slavery has become the condition of the refugee. Unable to appear, to speak in public or to realise the reciprocal condition of freedom, the refugee assumes a status not only outside legal statehood but outside the Arendtian framework of humanity. This is the context of revolution today.