Exiles (II)

Last week we ended by placing emphasis on the possibility of positive things happening from living in a state of exile and marginality. This week we explore the tension between the exile’s search for evasion within the different homes/worlds inhabited and the necessity of continuous self-assessment. Central to the clip below is a poem called The River by Basque exile Joseba Sarrionaindia. 

In the words of Edward Said, other than allowing unconventional, often eccentric life styles and careers, the condition of exile experience also carried with it certain pleasures, rewards, and even privileges; hence the idea that positive things can be derived from exile and marginality. However, the questions Julia Kristeva raises still remain that whereas the ambivalent possibilities and sources of intellectual pleasure seem undeniable, this precarious sense of happiness is always temporary and short-lived:

…Y a-t-il des étrangers heureux? … Peut-on étre étranger and heureux? L’étranger suscite une idée neuve de bonheur. Entre fugue et origine: Une limite fragile, une homéostase provisoire.

Said also felt compelled to underline that the actual condition of “exile is one of the saddest fates” (p. 35). At the end of it all, the pleasures, advantages and privileges of the marginal (intellectual) exile do not alleviate every last anxiety or feeling of bitter solitude. Kristeva words this state of affairs as follows:

Libre d’attaches avec les siens, l’étranger se sent “complètement libre”. L’absolu de cette liberté s’appelle pourtant solitude … Son paradoxe: l’étranger veut être seul mais avec des complices … L’étranger est un rêveur qui fait l’amour avec l’absence, un déprimé exquis. Heureux? … Le plaisir de la souffrance est un lot necessaire dans ce tourbillon insensé.

Kristeva also captures the point that exiles feel a real urge to talk, sing and write in the metaphoric language of travelling and return, although if they do so, it is precisely because, at the end of it all, they know that all hope to return back “home” is lost:

On connaît l’étranger qui survit tourné vers le pays perdu de ses larmes. Amoureux mélancolique d’un space perdu, il ne se console pas, en fait, d’avoir abandoné un temps. Le paradis perdu est un mirage du passé qu’il ne saura jamais retrouver.

Exiles are necessarily the product of different and interrelated cultures and histories; and necessarily inhabit different “homes” at the same time. Or, what is the same, no special home is inhabited after all. The exile …

… est perdu dans le kaléidoscope de ses multiples identités et des ses souvenirs intenables, pour ne laisser de ses exils accumulés qu’une trace en mots (57).

To summarise, even if l’espace de l’étranger est un train en marche, un avion en vol, la transition même qui exclut l’arrêt. Des repêres, point(18), nevertheless, dès que les étrangers ont une action ou une passion, ils s’enracinent. Provisoirement, certes, mais intensément (I9), and therefore: le but (professionel, intellectuel, affective) que certain se donnent est déjà une trahison de l’étrangeté, car en se choisissant un programme, l’étranger se propose une trêve ou un domicile (15).

Well aware of these tensions, Said’s warning against the temptation of relaxation was stark:

There is no real escape, even for the exile who tries to remain suspended, since that state of inbetweenness can itself become a rigid ideological position, a sort of dwelling whose falseness is covered over in time, and to which one can too easily become accustomed (p. 43).

And to further emphasise this attitude of permanent awareness he mentioned Theodor Adorno’s intellectual consciousness as a main model of exile experience represented in terms of restless tension. As Adorno, the leading exponent of “Melancholy science” in the Frankfurt Institute, stated “for a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live”. However, this newly found ‘home’ does not allow the possibility of escaping the demands of intellectual rigour:

The demand that one hardens oneself against self-pity implies the technical necessity to counter any slackening of intellectual tension with the utmost alertness. […] In the end, the writer is not allowed to live in his writing (Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, pp. 38-39).