Exile

Posted on | December 3, 2004 | 1 Comment

As I understand it, the idea of the academic as one who is ‘in exile’ became something of a flashpoint during the widespread uptake of post-colonial theory throughout the 1990s. To put it roughly, superstar post-colonial academics claiming their status as ‘exile’ while enjoying massive salaries at Ivy League universities were viewed with suspicion by many critics. I’ve been re-reading Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (The 1993 Reith Lectures) – an examplar of the case for the intellectual as outsider, amateur and exile. While there is a definite sense of romanticism present in much of the writing (surely romanticism is a characteristic form of political mobilisation anyway) there are subtleties to the argument that still appeal to me. This passage, for instance, could easily describe the feelings of sadness I get when hearing from friends back in Sydney – if it didn’t also convey the foreboding of a much more traumatic and forced separation:

The fact is that for most exiles the difficulty consists not simply in being forced to live away from home, but rather, given todayís world, in living with the many reminders that you are in exile, that your home is not in fact so far away, and that the normal traffic of everyday contemporary life keeps you in constant but tantalizing and unfulfilled touch with the old place. The exile therefore exists in a median state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half-involvements and half-detachments, nostalgic and sentimental on one level, an adept mimic or a secret outcast on another. Being skilled at survival becomes the main imperative, with the danger of getting too comfortable and secure constituting a threat that is constantly to be guarded against.

What probably gets overlooked by pundits is that Said uses ‘exile’ in two senses, actual and metaphorical. This allows him to distinguish between those intellectuals (himself for instance) who represent an oppressed people (in his case Palestinians) and those practicing their craft from a land of origin. In the latter case, the intellectual still exists in a particular state of unease, which is

…the state of never being fully adjusted, always feeling outside the chatty, familiar world inhabited by natives, so to speak, tending to avoid and even dislike the trappings of accommodation and national well-being. Exile for the intellectual in this metaphysical sense is restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others. You cannot go back to some earlier and perhaps more stable condition of being at home; and, alas, you can never fully arrive, be at one with your new home or situation.

If this passage speaks to me even slightly – and following two scary election results, I’d hardly be alone – it also captures my frustration that this has to be the lot of intellectuals if they are to provide their ‘true function’ for society. Will academic employment condemn me to a constant state of un-homeliness? I so hope not. I’m sick of it already.

Category: Academia

Comments

One Response to “Exile”

  1. Christian McCrea
    December 6th, 2004 @ 3:20 pm

    I believe there is something that can be reclaimed here in the ‘academic as exile’ concept. Exiles are often heroes, though as Barb Kruger tells us, maybe that’s not what we need.

    Australia, after all, is bound up in the history of the exile. Maybe an absurd inverse nationalist impulse could mean academics become the tightrope walkers rather than the fence-sittings of public debate. (debate being only one example.)

    The memory is faint, but Agamben does this quite well in the beginning of Stanzas, on meloncholy, distance – although it is in the context of writing more than academia.

    PS – the last bit of the Fibreculture meeting was about some of the factors you brought up in the list lessons post. It was a good discussion, if brief.