alienation and the desire to keep company drives the exile into offering a lift at an
automobile junction where it is prohibited. From the confession of living “raw exile” and
living from pillar to post” in fear of the terror of the police, it is clear that whatever
gratifications there are in maintaining an exilic life through the mediation of transnational
initiatives are nonetheless eclipsed by the sense of harassment that trails the exile. And if
postcolonial exile and transnationalism cannot but be linked to the memory of
colonialism and the informing ideology that guided its prosecution, then the success of
such springboard for the evolution of modern Africa deserves, by way of conclusion,
another look.
The idea that the modern subject is a frontier subject may be true of the contemporary
technologies of humanity; but the paradox of this identity is overwhelmingly
disproportionate to the leverage it offers. This is why the horrors it produces can neither
be tamed by philosophical apprehension, nor can it be easily subjected to dissolution
(Franco Rella in Iain Chambers 1994: 40). Applied more specifically against the
backdrop of the postcolonial identity, the evolution of the postcolonial figure, as a
product of modernity, strikes one as precariously configured. For, it is the postcolonial
identity that is a metaphor and byword for perennial migrancy. Mapanje’s failure to live
within the scope of the space-based location of his identity may on the one hand be
considered an attempt to comply with the direction of a postmodern age, however, the
process of this migrancy, being thoroughly fraught with tribulations and fragmented with
trauma, cannot be said to have achieved the goal of preserving the dignity of his
humanity. The fact that he is caught in the web of the “shadows” and “horrors” of his
frontier’s identity raises posers about the history that has produced him; and if so,
modernity as propagated by the West is not only questionable, but can appropriately be
gleaned as a failure, no matter what promise the transnational agenda shrewdly inserts
into contemporary exile experience.