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be confused as a lack of commitment to truth and accuracy by the western listener (Potter
1996) requiring a great deal of attention and suspension of certain engrained narrative
conventions. As the expected endpoint (ideal Europe) of the journey from Africa is
ostensibly never reached, that is, the journey seems suspended in a Iiminal place, motion
is redefined in narrative in such a way that fate is replaced by agency. Here we have an
indication that the relationship between the undocumented migrant and Greece is
problematic since the narrative link between the two which was expected to be one of
transition subject to the same conditions and momentum that governed previous
relationships along the journey becomes one of unexpected and undesirable permanence.
Thus Greece is a place outside of narrative and outside of an imagined topography
defined by historical, economic, and power relations within which the migrant may
endeavor (between Africa and Europe). In light of this problematic relationship, the
omission of place in narrative can be taken as a kind of therapeutic poetics where the
speaker, unable to reconcile the errant, negative experiences suffered in terms of a fateful
transition, invents a new strategy in response to the reality on the ground to help both
manage present difficult experiences and to create the potential for a return to the
expected travel∕arrival narrative by appropriating an element of control and power18.
With this new strategy, motion erases place as a source of stability and consequently
agency replaces fate. Without place, motion, in turn, is defined relative to placeless
practice and time. Causality is repositioned squarely within the realm of the speaker’s
perceived scope of influence. All this, of course, is an exercise in redefining experiential
frames which can be taken as central to a process of reflexive subjectivity (redefining
18 This is accomplished by the individual, but not wholly separate from the group, as will be explored in
further detail below.