Following Edward Said, my argument is that spatial exile, despite its distress and deprivations, generates a different way of looking at the world. Since intellectuals should look at the world differently, Said insists on their transcending the existential sufferings of losing home and urges them to cultivate what George Lamming famously calls ‘the pleasures of exile’. Thus, Said turns exile into a metaphorical concept and a model of intellectual practice in order to question the familiar and the known. In effect, Saidian intellectuals do not necessarily have to be dispossessed of their homeland. Rather, they have to be figuratively exiled from it by placing themselves at a certain distance from the familiar cultural system(s), and viewing them through the lens of the ‘other’ in order to broaden their perspective on them. To establish this, I first demonstrated that exilic conditions could be intellectually empowering, and outlined the properties of Saidian intellectual practice by showing how Mahfouz, Darwish, Saadawi, Ahmed, and Chahine also uphold its principles. I analysed how the convergences and divergences of their thoughts create diverse resistances, and discussed if writing is the abode where their pluralistic minds reside. I then ascertained the discursive intersections among Said’s ‘exile’ and postcolonialism and postmodernism by exhibiting the ‘exilic’ transcendence of some of the limitations existing there. Thus, my writing formed an in-depth analysis of Said’s ‘exile’ in order to project this as a significant intellectual vocation. At the same time, I presented some of the most prominent Middle Eastern and Arab-American intellectual(s) in a new light by highlighting the humanistic strength of their writings and creations. Thus, I formulate an enhanced understanding of freedom and identity contained in the ‘exile’ through cultural, political and theoretical arguments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629329 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Sazzad, R. |
| Publisher | Nottingham Trent University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/293/ |
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