concept which must be understood as reinforcing the dynamism with which it has come
to be identified. But as well as this, and perhaps more importantly, the dynamism speaks
to the complexity and complication in which the discourse is enmeshed, both historically
and contemporaneously. The flexibility that comes into play when the discourse of exile
is addressed in postcolonial theory is another reason. In respect of this, the study as an
exploration of the politics of exile in African poetry has taken the liberty of the flexibility
to engage with other issues and concepts, which, though often conceived as related but
different from exile, are in actuality mere transmutations of exile as: migrancy, diaspora,
nomadism, transnationalism, globalization, transnation, cosmopolitanism and
multiculturalism, among others. Not least because these concepts and other similarly
invoked terms are nothing but a connotation of some kind of deracination which forces an
estrangement, usually in that physical sense, from home. Where the estrangement or
cutting off is better considered in the psychological sense, the rift and cleavage it
produces between the mind and the body still reinforces a way of not being at home.
Therefore, one may do well to concur with Susan Suleiman (1998:1) that “over and
above their fine distinctions, however, these words designate a state of being ‘not home’
(or of being ‘everywhere at home’, the flip side of the same coin)”.
On this score, while it becomes apt to explore further each of these terms, especially the
ones that accrue to frame dominant arguments in the chapters of this thesis, a great deal
of attention will be paid first to the blanket relevance of exile and how it sets the pace for
the discussion of the other terms, which have all found sustained engagement in
postcolonial theorizing. For that matter, exile must be situated first within the broad
spectrum of migration, which is today considered to be one singular phenomenon by
which the contemporary world condition is defined.
As a concept that is as old as any known human institution, exile is characterized by a
long history that does not, however, cease to engage with the present. Owing to its
enduring duality as both historical and contemporary, the term still catalyzes literary and
critical preoccupation at present just as it is known to have done in the past. Not being