CHAPTER ONE
POSTCOLONIALITY, EXILE AND THE MUTATION OF CONCEPTS
The concept of exile, like the exilic subjects themselves, is a living
dynamic organism that lurks and thrives in the interstices of social
and political formations. Hamid Naficy, “Introduction:
Framing Exile: From Homeland to Homepage,”Newness here is the irruption of the possible, the movement beyond
the boundaries of the known. But unfortunately, a different kind of
newness an invading newness can be forced into the world by
imperial power. This is sameness masquerading as newness, an
erection of boundaries where none may have been. When this occurs,
colonial space is the first thing that must be made ‘new’. Bill
Ashcroft, “Forcing Newness into the World: Language,
Place and Nature”Setting off against the background of Bill Ashcroft’s critique of the notion of “newness”,
this chapter intends to demonstrate how the time-honoured concept of exile can also be
said to have mutated, gaining amplification in other “new” concepts such as
cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, migrancy, globalization, nomadism, etc. It also
engages the relevance of postcolonial theory to the concept of exile and the various ways
in which the theory provides an appropriate template for the exploration of exilic issues
in the works under study. Specifically, I engage these concepts with a view to illustrating
how they overlap and facilitate the understanding of exile with respect to the selected
works in this study. By so doing, I also attempt to demonstrate how these concepts are as
well implicated in the concept of home. While highlighting their values, I also point out
their limitations, suggesting a middle ground for coping with their practice in view of
some realities in the age globalization.
In his remark during a keynote address at the Rerouting the Postcolonial Conference in
July 2007, Simon Gikandi reviewed the major concerns of postcolonial theory and
concluded that to date the theory had ramified issues such as nationalism, decolonization,
exile, multiculturalism, globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. The
interesting thing, however, is the possibility of arguing that all these concerns are