it imply a deliberate rejection of one’s homeland. It is free from active dissent
or opposition. As “the migrant intellectual” is not necessarily a “figure of
exile” according to A.mad’s engagement with Said (Ibid. 12), there is no
point in drawing upon immigration at large as a resourceful or “positively
enabling experience” (Ibid. 134). In other words, migration, self-exile, and
expatriation can prove pleasurable, self-pleasing, and aesthetically rewarding,
but they are bound to fail in reaching for the actual sufferings and consequent
creativity of dislocation, displacement, and fear. Hence, self-exiles, such as
Rushdie before the death decree, tend to confuse issues whenever migration
is invoked ontologically, regardless of pressing concerns and ultimate needs
for clear-cut analysis. In an article on Günter Grass, Rushdie writes with
gusto regarding migration as a state of being and thinking in an age of global
culture: “Migrants—borne-across humans—are metaphorical beings in their
very essence; and migration, seen as a metaphor, is everywhere around us. We
all cross frontiers; in that sense, we are all migrant peoples.”^36
What is disturbing to Aijaz A.mad and other intellectuals on the left is
this free appropriation of the “condition of exile,” but specifically migration,
as “the basic metaphor for modernity and even for the human condition
itself” (In Theory, 134). While driving non-European or American intellectu-
als to another location, this condition offers them a feeling of satisfaction
upon finding their contribution decentering Eurocentrism by subversion,
opposition, and counter advocacy. Hence, before the exiling decree, Rushdie
has been passing through some “excess of belonging” (Ibid. 130), which also
undermines any tangible commitment or belonging. Even when recalling the
past or reconstructing it in an English-language context, it is there as a vari-
ety of fragments, recollections, and bits that make it too sliced to warrant or
provoke nostalgia or a sense of guilt. Certainly, intellectuals with more
grounding in Higher Humanism like Edward Said enjoy self-identification
with such minds as Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Auerbach to the extent
that the former’s Reflectionsrecreates itself in Said’s “Reflections on Exile,”
whereas Auerbach’s Mimesiscreates its “counter-classic” in Orientalism, as
Aijaz A.mad insightfully explains (Ibid. 163). But rather than citing this
instance as an accusation, it should be recalled to emphasize the complexity
of the issue, to which Said’s Out of Placemay well testify. Exile neither disori-
ents grounding nor involves it in the inevitable change of heart. Auerbach
found himself in Mimesiswith no better companion than memory to rein-
scribe a tradition into text. The latter grew into a homeland of some sort.
However, this may not be yours or mine. Said’s grounding in this tradition
leads him to recall it as the prime example of intellectual productivity, but he
also fights it back in Orientalismand Culture and Imperialismas the tradition
whose centrism repels other cultures.
On the other hand, intellectuals who are relatively free from predicaments
of exile will enjoy a larger cultural and psychological location. Excess of
belonging, in this case, becomes an asset that helps them out toward wider
ENVISIONING EXILE