| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
It is that which is on the margin of a system that is able to put that system in question.
Exile takes on a structural position of radical difference within the system of identity and nationality. That position poses a particular threat to those systems of post-coloniality that rely on the perpetuation of the notion of a singular and stable entity such as “the self” and “the nation.” Robert Young, among many others, has pointed out how any system of oppression—but particularly colonial oppression—relies on the notion of a stable self and a notion of a piece of land that can be called, singularly and without the awkward imposition of difference, a nation.3 It is the nation—singularly and without difference—that allows a people to take another man’s land and rule over it. The oppressor’s nation is made to appear “a civilizing influence,” while the colonized’s country is barely considered worthy of the term “nation” at all. Equally, it is the subject that considers itself a single self that allows the stereotypes of the black man (the black man as sexual barbarian, the black man as degenerate) to proliferate. If a man is black, then he must be thus, there is no possibility of him being otherwise. As such, the notion of the exile—working within the cultural frameworks of the oppressive situation—poses a distinct threat to colonial discourse. The exile (perhaps by copying Western ways) shows that the black man, the Indian man, the Chinese man (or black, Indian or Chinese women) can be something else.
Within the theory of post-colonialism, the idea of subject-place (the notion that the being of a subject is determined more by their structural position in a cultural system than through an internal and originary soul-like light) has taken on extreme importance particularly in the work of Frantz Fanon and following him, Homi Bhabha. They, along with a number of other theorists who have interested themselves in the existential side of the colonial situation, have seen the structural importance within the post-colonial schema of the “black man” or the colonial subject. What they are centrally involved with is the understanding of who the colonial is outside of and apart from the discourses that are set in motion by the colonial situation—a set of processes that are a means of oppression and subjection.