however turns out to be a search and existence in trauma. Much as home has failed to be
accommodating, exile has not proved to be worthwhile for its exclusionary practices
which on the one hand give the exile a sense of “the outsider”, and on the other, a guilty
conscience for abandoning the fight against dictatorship at home, leaving others that are
not as privileged to continue the fight all by themselves. This then accounts for the
continual longing for home no matter its condition; and if the wish of return cannot be
fulfilled in life, the idea of return must then be concretized in the ritualistic return of the
body in death for burial.
Similarly, in EarthChild , the study has demonstrated beyond the previously received
notion that survival is all there is to the collection, as I hope to have shown that the exilic
texture in the text compels a more critical consideration. This position accounts for why
the work has been read against the backdrop of the many faces and phases of exile in
African history including cosmopolitanism. Unlike in A Gathering Fear where there is an
overwhelming aura of pain of exile, EarthChild radiates with occasional moments of the
liberatory values of exile and the continual movement across spaces that it sanctions.
From the multicultural practices of the “bringing Ghana to the US” to the conviviality
that defines the philharmonic performance of the spellbinding performance of the African
American singer and dancer, exile proves relatively worthwhile after all. Nevertheless,
the overall reality of cosmopolitanism catches up with the character in the end showing
that the tribulations far exceed the gratifications it appears to offer. It then explains why
return not as a dead person as in the case of A Gathering Fear is imperative in
EarthChild , which speaks to the question of the developmental challenge with which
Africa is faced. For the informing catalyst for return in EarthChild is nothing but that of
being able to bring the knowledge acquired in exile to bear on the development of home,
otherwise home becomes the ultimate loser.
Setting off against the background of the understanding that the much contested
abstraction of modernity drove the prosecution of colonialism in Africa as well as the
other regions of the world that fell victim of Western imperialism, Chapter Three has
engaged with this fundamental assumption as well as the perceived processes of its