must be viewed as a human condition which is defined by dispersal or drift usually
against the wish of an individual or community.
The fact of humanity’s vulnerability to exile is evident in the various circumstances and
incidents by which it is necessitated. These circumstances and incidents range from war
to famine to political crisis and in some cases, a dissident stance. It thus becomes
understandable why the literary contents of peoples’ cultural traditions, whether oral or
written, are replete with engagements of dislocation.^7 But it is to Jewish mythology and
literature, both in the distant and contemporary context, one may turn for the assessment
of the panoptic drift of exile which usually verges on the problematized experience of
diaspora. Being closely related to and often designated as a logical consequence of exile,
it is not surprising that the etymological denotation of “dispersal” that diaspora carries
from its Jewish antecedent (Isidore Okpewho 1999: xii) remains valid in contemporary
times in matters of uprooting and re-rooting from an original homeland. Usually the
paradigm of dispersal is two-pronged in the sense that the tendency is spatio-temporal;
that is, where there is diaspora the time of dispersal and the space of arrival and
settlement are crucial in the definition of a diasporic identity and configuration.
To return to the exposition on exile, the triumphs and tribulations of it are indeed
expressed and evident in the representation of the Jewish race in biblical times as
nomadic. The simplicity of this view is however blurred in the Pauline hermeneutics
which inverts the literal understanding of the Jewish race by introducing an allegorical
twist by which as many as are converted to the Christian faitha theology that is
complicitous with the civilizing alibi of western colonialismis to be Jewish (Daniel
7
In his essay, “Uganda: The Resilience of Tradition. Displaced Acholi in Kitgum”, Ambrose Olaa reviews
the exilic history of the Acholi people of Uganda and argues that dislocation has come to be accepted by
this ethnic unit as a unique culture which typifies its identity; this fact is underscored by its inclusion in
the thematic preoccupation of the people’s folk songs. See Marc Vincent and Birgitte Refslund Sorensen
(Eds.), Caught Between Borders. (London, Sterling and Virginia: Pluto Press, 2001), 99-113. Similarly,
Chris Cusano in “Burma: Displaced Karens Like Water on the Khu Leaf”, cites the instance of the Burmese
tribe, Karen, as one which considers exile a permanent way of life. Even when a movement like Karen
National Union (K.N.U.) mobilises the tribe martially to the end of achieving restoration, the theme of exile
cannot be wished away, and this is evident in the various versions of their folk tales of origin. See also
Marc Vincent and Birgitte Refslund Sorensen (Eds.), Caught Between Borders. (London, Sterling and
Virginia: Pluto Press, 2001), 138-171.