د. تيسير الناشف
06/04/2007, 08:03 AM
Socio-Political Oppression and Physical and Intellectual Exile
Dr. Taysir Nashif
A state of exile and a state of at-homeness or belonging, which not infrequently are a result or a by-product of a socializational, cultural and mental process, can be physical-geographical, mental or both. Being in a state of exile may be voluntary or involuntary, volitional or forced. Emigration, immigration, imprisonment, displacement, homelessness, estrangement, alienation, disconnectedness, separation and isolation are sorts of either physical or metaphorical exile or both real and metaphorical exile at the same time. (1) States of exile and of at-homeness can exist with respect to the family, community, people, country or continent and also with respect to the self.
Interaction of Factors of Exile
Mental and physical states of exile and of at-homeness are a result of one or more of the following varied circumstances and conditions: a psychological state or mood, one’s life experiences, financial and economic situation, socio-cultural, including political, circumstances, intellectual and emotional leanings, one’s romantic or realistic view of the world and others. (2)
These different factors or sources are in constant interaction. They are also constantly interacting with the person concerned. As these factors are in constant interaction, they reinforce or weaken each other and vary in their intensity or presence. Because of the complex nature of the interrelationships of these factors and between them and the person concerned, the process might not consummate itself, and it may be lengthy or enduring.
A state of exile consists of centrifugal, centripetal or neutral forces. People with different ages, genders, personalities, life experiences and awareness differ one from the other in the weight of these forces in their attitudes. People’s attitudes are, in a sense, a result of a blend of real and imagined perception, which determine the strength of the presence of the centripetal, centrifugal and neutral forces in a person’s attitude. As life experiences change with a maturing age, the strength of the presence of these forces changes, with a more real and realistic perception probably acquiring a stronger presence in this structure. If this happens, factors that lead to a state of exile would change, thus bringing a change in the states of exile. Hence, this change in the strength of the presence of the three forces, following a change in the blend of imagined and real perceptions, provides a room for a shift from the range of a state of belonging to the range of a state of exile and vice versa.
Factors of exile and at-homeness might move in contrasting directions. Consequently, these states of exile and of at-homeness undergo constant changes with varying intensity and speed. This means that these states are not absolute, but relative. Thus, in one individual there can be one or more than one source of exile or disconnectness in co-existence with one or more than once source of at-homeness or connectedness. In this case, both kinds of sources would highly likely to clash leading to one of the two groups of sources to have the upper hand. Also, one might be in a state of intellectual and emotional exile from a certain place and, in the passage of time, with changing psychological and mental conditions and changing cultural and political circumstances, that state of emotional exile would be pulling to return, physically or metaphorically, to the “home” or the “homeland,” whereas being still there, the state of intellectual exile will continue with its pressing in the direction away from the abandoned, previous “home.”
Politics Involves Exertion of Influence
Politics has to do with influence. In any political context there is an influencer and an influencee, be they an individual, a family, a group, a tribe, a people or an empire. This influence pervades, though with varying degrees of intensity, all fields of life. There are various sources of influence. Of these sources, governmental influence probably is the strongest. If not the strongest, it is one of the strongest factors that creates for the individual a state of exile. (3)
Exile Indicates a Need for Change
To be in a state of exile suggests that a need or a desire is sensed to change, innovate and create. Manifestations of states of exile are the sense of the need and of the desire to change, innovate and create. A writer’s sense of the need to express his/her criticism, disapproval and condemnation of prevailing conditions in whatever domain is a sort of estrangement or exile. A tendency to revolt or the sense of the need to revolt is another manifestation of the state of exile from a certain condition or a setting. By resorting to revolt one’s self is positioned in a state of exile from whatever is revolted against. Displacement, dispossession, transfer of native peoples are phenomena that African and Palestinian poets, such as Mahmood Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and Jamal Qa’war, have revolted against. (4) These phenomena are the domains from which writers and poets have placed themselves in a state of exile.
Exile and Writing
As exile and other related conditions are a result of the lack of individual control over policy formulation, government practices and socio-economic developments, then writing, especially writing to the self, a monologue or a memoir, where a considerable degree of control by the writer is exercised, is a way to have a “homeland” or to stay “at home.” (5) Because the worlds, spaces, imagery and freedom which belles-lettres, especially poetry, provide, literary figures have a strong sense of belonging to his/her home, namely, belles-lettres.
Governmental Policies and Exile
One can be in a condition of exile even where he/she is still physically living in the birthplace, whether in the family, tribe, quarter, village, town, country or region. In many countries, identity is shaped and recognized not by universal criteria, such as equal citizenship, equality before law, state for all of its citizens, political participation, but by restrictive particularistic criteria, such as class, religious, sectarian, ethnic, race, gender and linguistic affiliations. These affiliations make a difference in terms of the treatment by governmental organs of these groups. This particularistic attitude on the part of government has created a condition of alienation and exile for the followers of these groups within the country of birth. (6) An example of internalized exile is the sense of estrangement and disconnectedness many intellectuals in the Arab world (7) as well as the rest of the developing world have because of the deteriorating political, economic and social conditions internally and in the international arena.
Availability of Places of Exile is a Source of
Contentment
The availability of places of exile, geographical or metaphorical, is a source of contentment on the part of those who, for some reason or the other, although are undergoing certain feelings of lack of satisfaction, have not entered a state of exile. The availability of places of exile can reassure such people that in case their psychological and cultural absorptive capacity cannot accommodate the current initial lack of satisfaction, they can move to the state of exile. (8)
The availability of places of exile can provide the “candidates” to enter a state of exile with some additional resources to try to cope or interact with the nascent or emerging dissatisfaction. This interaction might end with this person’s ability to overcome the factors that would lead to the state of exile.
State of Exile and Gender
Men are physically stronger than women. Almost in all walks of life, men are dominating in all countries: in the economic and political life, the army and military life, representation, judiciary, the executive branch of government and others. Women feel threatened from men legally, economically, politically and culturally. They are subjected to discrimination. (9) Often, they are raped not only metaphorically but also physically. In some countries women are forced to marry men who they do not know, want or love. All these conditions and circumstances have greatly contributed to sending women into frustration, anger, resentment, bitterness, estrangement and exile metaphorically or physically. Sometimes a wife escapes from a husband because of mistreatment. Women’s bitterness at and alienation from men’s oppression in certain conditions and places are a familiar example of internalized exile. (10) All these forms of exile have certainly adversely affected the processes of the development of harmonious relations and national cohesion in many countries. (11)
Traditionalism
In all societies there is a degree of traditionalism or conservatism in the cultural and political fields. In more traditional and conservative societies, there is a more pronounced presence in inter-individual and inter-group relations of habits and practices such as intellectual and behavioral restrictions, conformity to group behavior, respect for more rigid social, political and religious hierarchy, a more rigid value and moral order of veneration, preferences and priorities. (12) With these practices in such societies, a lesser amount of freedom, taking of initiative, creation and innovation, expression of individual identity and of self is left for the individual. This state of affairs has positioned many individuals in a physical, emotional and intellectual estrangement, disconnectedness, uprootedness or homelessness.
It is obvious that social and cultural conditions have a restrictive effect on individual and collective development. As a state of exile provides a larger space with less restriction and more freedom, then this kind of development would be expedited and helped by the state of exile.
Colonialism
Colonizing states were a strong force that brought about states of exile for many individuals in the colonized countries. Colonizing states have projected an image of democracy in the social and political fields. As a matter of fact, a considerable degree of socio-political democracy is practiced in these states. This democratic image exacerbated the state of exile that was already reigning among many individuals in the
countries subjected to colonialism. Being impressed with this image, and escaping from their countries of birth, a considerable number of intellectuals took residence, whether permanent or temporary, in the erstwhile or present colonizing states. Witnessing social, political, economic and psychological environment which some of them construed, rightly or wrongly, as less than democratic, these individuals found themselves victims of two states of exile: one from their country of birth and the other from the country of their choice. (13)
Whereas certain circumstances may place one in a state of physical exile, or one may go into a state of physical exile, the country of exile may position him/her in a political, psychological or emotional exile. He/she might need that country as a place of physical exile, but he might be exiled from it psychological and politically. This condition places him in at least two states of exile: a physical – and, perhaps, other kinds of - exile from his country of birth, and a political or psychological exile from the country to which he is physically exiled.
Globalization and Maintenance of Identity
Cultural belonging gives identity to the human being. Identity is the conscious and unconscious moral, behavioral, attitudinal, psychological and cultural attributes that define one’s identity. As extraordinarily powerful transnational bodies control mechanisms, cultural invasion and globalization have weakened cultural identity. (14) By competing with indigenous cultures, cultural invasion and globalization that carry new and unfamiliar ideas weaken these cultures. Exercise of control has been one of the major factors that enable indigenous cultures to maintain themselves. With their weakening or stripping indigenous cultures of their regulatory control, cultural invasion and globalization have been able to superimpose themselves on the indigenous cultures. (15) As indigenous culture is a major factor in shaping and maintaining the interrelated cultural identity, with the weakening or obliterating of the indigenous culture, the cultural identity has been much weakened. Weakened or eliminated cultural identity for individuals and groups mean that they are thrown into alienation, estrangement and other forms of exile.
Condition of Exile and of Otherness
As has already been pointed out, because of the dynamic mutual influence among the many factors that creates a state of exile and a state of at-homeness and because of the dynamic influence between these factors and the person involved, there is no stable state of exile and of at-homeness. Because of these two types of influence, a sense of full belonging to home and of full state of exile is ideal. If one escapes from many characters of at-homeness, say, from his/her individual and collective memory, from his cultural background, from the symbols of the home, from his cultural reality, and if one feels he/she is estranged to them morally, intellectually, emotionally and culturally, and if there is nothing much left in his/her existence that makes him/her sense a condition of belonging to a home, then, this is an extreme and probably ideal case. In this case, he ceases to be himself and enters a condition of otherness.
Relativity of State of Exile and Creativity
Relativity of state of exile has a positive effect on creativity. Creativity and innovation are not manifested, brought about or nurtured by a linear, even and non-provocative intellectual and emotional setting as much as they are manifested, brought about and nurtured by qualities of non-linearity, unevenness and provocation. Being relative, conditions of states of physical and mental exile better lend themselves to the qualities needed for creativity and innovation.
As creativity involves change, rift or rupture in the social, cultural, political or psychological fields, then a state of exile, which denotes a sort of rift or rupture, is a place of creativity. A rupture is a prerequisite for creativity. There is no creativity without a certain rupture or rift between the self and the psychological, cultural or intellectual environment. The state of exile itself is a site of inspiration, emancipation and creativity. Liminality and marginality make possible new expressions of creativity.
Absence of Full State of Exile
Even though we have conceptualized various forms of exile as indicating lack of belonging, there is, even in these conditions, a certain sense, on the part of the individual, of belonging or connection to that abandoned “home” or a place from which one escaped. (16) This certain sense of belonging or connectedness is the reason, or one of the reasons, for entering the state of exile and for the sense of disconnectedness. The condition of voluntary exile is a function of an undeclared, denied or hidden, but enduring and surviving, sense of connectedness. (17) It is that existing sense that is seated deep, deep in our conscience. The condition of voluntary exile emerged because of the existence of the human sense of connectedness to a place that is claimed as abandoned.
Endnotes
(1) Leong Yew, “Exile,” Political Discourses – Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism, March 8, 2002, p. 2; C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1933), pp. 197-200; Ronald V. Urick, Alienation: Individual or Social Problem? (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 7.
(2) For inter-action theory, see Paul Meadows, The Many Faces of Change: Explorations in the Theory of Social Change (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1971), pp. 109-27, especially the section on “The Cultural Systems Approach,” pp. 128-33.
(3) Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Meridian, 1971), p. 13.
(4) Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed., Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 4-5.
(5) See, for example, Anna Smith, Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement (Macmillan, 1996).
(6) See, for example, Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford University Press, 1988; Ashis Nandy, Exiled at Home: Comprising at the Edge of Psychology, the Intimate Enemy and Creating a Nationality (Oxford University Press, 1998).
(7) Jayyusi, op. cit., p. 2.
(8) Martin Jay, Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
(9) John Dassin, ed., Torture in Brazil. Translated by Jaime Wright (New York: Vintage, 1986), pp. 25-32.
(10) Fauziya Kassindja and Layli Miller Bashir, Do They Hear You When You Cry (New York: Delta, 1998). About Simone de Beauvoir’s views on the maltreatment of women, see Ian P. McGreal, ed., Great Thinkers of the Western World (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), pp. 546-48.
(11) Bell Hooks, Sisters of the Yam (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993).
(12) William Kornblum, Sociology in a Changing World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1988), pp. 207-14.
(13) See Renate Siebert, Frantz Fanon: Colonialism and Alienation (New Yoek: Monthly Review Press, 1974).
(14) Charles K. Wilber, “Globalization and democracy,” in Journal of Economic Issues, Vol.XXXII, No. 2, June 1998, pp. 468-70.
(15) Geoff Mulgan, Connexity: How to Live in a Connected World (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), pp. 19-30.
(16) Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity. Translated from the French by Barbara Bray. (New York: Arcade, 2000), pp. 1-5.
(17) See Benjamin Graves, “Edward W. Said’s “Liminal Intellectual,” Political Discourse – Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism, 1998, p. 1.
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