Spiritual Diaspora and Political Exile

The trope of exile stands high today. To judge by some recent writings in literary criticism and cultural studies, the exile – the outsider, the stranger – is like Simmel’s „adventurer,“ living and creating intensely in a world defined by the defiance of imposed definitions. Exile appears as a transcendent status, beyond the ambiguous supports of historical circumstance, and beyond even the painful sense of its loss. Exile appears as an enabler of the most profound thought, art, and literature – an empowerment. And yet if we look in the newspapers for exiles, we find stories of pain, criminality, maneuver, burden and racking contradictions. Exile here looks like something historically overdetermined, constricting, distorting, closely bound to the threat, suffering, and infliction of violence.¹