Cosmopolitan Vision of Home, Subjectivity 37riven by ethnic conflict to the point where the concept of “home”
has become detached from its physical location. In the African gen-
eral’s case, the problem with the idea of “home” is due to the vicissi-
tudes of personal circumstances that have made him endure slavery,
military service, and an entirely new life in far-away Europe. For
the African interpreter in Higher Ground , the notion of “home” has
been complicated by way of the distance he feels toward the culture
and peoples associated with his birthplace.
Captured and made to work for slavers in an eighteenth-century
fort, the narrator has intimate knowledge both of British and of
West African cultures. However, his proximity to the colonial pow-
ers makes him a “traitor” in the eyes of the indigenous population,
and he is literally spat upon by a local village elder, who informs him
that there are “many old warriors in this village who would hap-
pily go to the Gods with your death on their hands” (p. 24). “Why
do they seem intent on blaming me?” he asks us (p. 24). Indeed,
throughout the narrative, the protagonist appears to try to impress
upon the reader the constraints of his situation and the degree to
which his life is entirely governed by the historical circumstances in
which he finds himself. He is merely one who has “stayed behind,”
he tells us—an “ordinary man doing an extraordinary job in dif-
ficult times” (p. 24). Such a humble, if perhaps fatalistic, depic-
tion of subjectivity in the face of historical circumstances offers an
interesting parallel to the criticism Irene’s mother voices toward her
father. The African interpreter’s resigned passivity, vis- à -vis history,
also presents a distinct contrast to the proud and dogged fundamen-
talism of Williams, who insists that “to survive is not the highest
morality” (p. 97). This is a contrast that further serves to illuminate
the absurdity of Williams’s hard-line position on racial solidarity
and “heritage.”
The contrast between Williams and the African interpreter also
exemplifies what Elena Machado S á ez argues is a persistent effort by
Phillips in his works to “refute the possibility of solidarity” and to
reject “the idea that a community with shared cultural values could
emerge from and be united by the horrors of slavery, colonialism,
and migration.”^32 From the very outset of the novel, then, Phillips
immerses us in the complexities and ambiguities that are bound up