Like many of the other terms in postcolonial theory and discourse that popularly
suggest detachment from metropolitan or local spaces, "exile" has
been deployed as a concept beyond simply a forced removal from a given physical
location. Exile in everyday use invokes images of individual political dissidents
sent overseas or large groups of people banished to distant lands, forming various
diasporas. In these cases there is
sometimes a presumption that the exiled are different from casual migrants who
forget their original homelands and form new allegiances with the places in
which they settle. Exiles retain a sense of (be)longing to/for a real or imagined
While such a presumption appears to be insufficient for postcolonial politics
and theory, an important premise of exile surrounds the act of individual/group
displacement and the effect such displacements have on the exiled's perception
of his or her current location, the homeland, and intellectual products. The
last item being manifested in the form of literary, artistic, political expressions,
and so on. In order for "exile" to be politically enabling in postcolonialism,
a number of things can occur:
- Physical spaces are important because they are important sites of cultural
production; for example, a Nigerian exile living in Britain produces a novel
that engages both with her experiences growing up in Nigeria but current residence
in Britain. The work becomes one of ambivalence and hybridity,
expressing a sense of homelessness, nostalgia, being neither fully a Nigerian
nor British writing. Phsyical spaces are however only one aspect of exile.
- One doesn't need to physically removed from the "homeland" in
order to be exiled. Exile can take place in different cultural spaces, especially
through processes like colonization and modernization.
In this case by living in a place that has become culturally transformed through
colonialism, it is possible for exile to occur particularly when one realizes
that a traditional language, way of life, religion,
tribal practices can no longer be articulated or experienced without the mediation
of modernity. This causes a sense of loss and displacement from a traditional
- As Edward Said stresses, exile can be both
"actual" and "metaphoric," "voluntary" or "involuntary."
(39) This last point is important because it indicates that physical violence
is not the only force to cause exile, but subtler forms of compulsion can
do the same as well. This can be seen in the case of intellectuals living
overseas for education or research.
- Exile, according to Said in Representations of the Intellectual,
is fundamentally tied to the notion of the intellectual. The connection with
postcolonialism is not easily discernible in this case because exile becomes
a larger political gesture to separate intellectuals from those who "toe
the line" and those who remain critically resistant to the authorities.
For Said these are "the nay-sayers, the individuals at odds with their
society and therefore outsidersand exiles in so far as privileges, power,
and honors are concerned." (39)
What is important to grasp in postcolonial exile is therefore the profundity
of the impact of colonialism and ongoing imperialism. The term itself has to
be overdetermined so as to suggest the magnitude of cultural transformations
inflicted by colonialism, the type of consciousness exile produces, and responsibility
the exile should uphold.
Said, Edward W. Representations of the Intellectual:
The 1993 Reith Lectures. London: Vintage, 1994.
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