the dynamics of internal progress, forcing a rift and deracination between a people and
their history of progress, it subsequently imposed a new order of progress, which has
done more to objectify a form of inscription on the palimpsesticspace of the colonized
episteme. The overwhelming feeling of exile that results between colonized people and
their originary world order must therefore be seen as the first instance of dislocation that
characterizes and also frames all other forms of crisis which the colonial and postcolonial
world has faced over the centuries.
The foregoing thus gives cogency to the remark that the condition of postcoloniality can
as well be limned as a product of “a dark vision of dislocation” (James Smithies 2004:99)
which was initiated in the questionable logic of modernism and modernization. If the
response to this dystopian vision of dislocation catalyzed the production of the triage of
literary movements which in the West did everything to engage with the reality of
dislocation and its implication through an exploration that was at once technological,
aesthetic and surrealist (Smithies 99), the response it produced in the colonies, especially
the African colonies, transcended the triune categorization just mentioned. Needless to
say, the complexity of the dislocation in the formerly colonized world defies simple
categorization. It appropriately explains why in individual post-colonies today, it is not
uncommon to make claims about the uniqueness of dislocation as exile, as in the case of,
say, Latin America (Fatima Mujcinovic 2003:169). But one must differ with Mujcinovic
on the ground that the annunciation of “US Latina literature” as an investigation into “a
complicated and complex condition that evades generalization and consistency” (169)
cannot be qualified as an exclusive preserve of this postcolonial literature, but must
instead be seen, ironically, as a commonality by which the entire postcolonial worlds are
conjoined.
This is why the choice of postcolonial theory offers congenial vistas into the investigation
of the various possibilities which come with the discourse of exile. With specific
reference to the subject, a multiplicity of approaches thus becomes one way by which this
can be done. Once this fact is established, it also becomes clear why the suggestion of
multiplicity provides the scaffold and liberty for exploring exile as an ever-changing