unpalatable especially in an age that is witness to an unprecedented acceleration of
dynamics of globalization. But so must it be upheld because such instance of
multiculturalism undermines the place-based ethos of nationalism, especially of formerly
colonized people, owing to the imperialist exploitations that lurk in the prospects of the
concept. This assertion is further borne out by the imperative of globalization which
demands, at least in principle, that a certain measure of convergence should be
demonstrated on the other concepts and abstractions through which the pragmatism of
compression of time and space can be sustained. And once this culture is entrenched, it
may “no longer matter where” one lives. The celebration of such spatial promiscuity into
which notable modernist writers and artists tapped in the 20th century is still on the
ascendancy today. Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that the primacy of original
location and race especially, still plays a crucial role in the success or otherwise that is
made of any chosen multicultural life and career. Put differently, to what extent can the
testimonial articulation of, say, Paul Nizon (1995) be taken to be representative when it
comes to testimonies on the intimate encounters with multiculturalism in the process of
accounting for a life of exile? The Swiss author is definitely behind himself when he
reflects on multiculturalism and his life as an exile:
For a writer who chose exile, multiculturalism is manifest not only in his desires but also in
his everyday life. For almost twenty years I have lived in Paris, another sphere of language
and culture. My everyday language is French. My newspaper is French. For that matter, a
large part of my reading is French. Even my marriage is French. French translations of my
books circulate, such that I receive letters from my French readers, and French authors, some
of whom are young and unknown, send me their books. French students write about me. The
desk clerk at the police station recognizes me as a well-known Parisian writer simply from my
name. Nevertheless, I remain a German-language author. I could characterize myself as a
Parisian writer of Swiss descent who writes in German... accordingly, my two-to threefold
literary affiliation could certainly be called multicultural. I suppose that multiculturalism has
surreptitiously found its way into my language, as a stylistic agent. (474)Obviously, the level of reception in which Nizon regales cannot be divorced from his
skin pigmentation as Caucasian. What is more, exile for him is a matter of choice and for
that matter, he may not bear about a psyche that is burdened by the trauma of a forced
separation from a homeland one loves so much as is the case of many postcolonial
writers and indeed many others from postcolonial spaces of African and Asia who have
been goaded into existential rifts between their countries of origin and those of