Critical Distance: the Postcolonial Novel and the Dilemma of Exile
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2009 Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel and the Dilemma of Exile David S. Morgan University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Morgan, David S., "Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel and the Dilemma of Exile. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2009. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/624 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by David S. Morgan entitled "Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel and the Dilemma of Exile." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Allen Dunn, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Amy J. Elias, Urmila Seshagiri, Stephen Blackwell Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by David S. Morgan entitled ―Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel and the Dilemma of Exile.‖ I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a major in English. Allen Dunn, Major Professor __________________________ We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Amy J. Elias ________________________ Urmila Seshagiri ________________________ Stephen Blackwell ________________________ Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges ____________________________________ Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel and the Dilemma of Exile A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville David S. Morgan December 2009 Acknowledgements I am grateful to the numerous friends and colleagues who have offered me support and guidance while I wrote this dissertation. This dissertation would have been impossible without the direction of Dr. Allen Dunn. Not only did he help me to secure funding for the final years of my graduate study, his guidance allowed me to find a project that fit both my interests and my personality. Because of that guidance, I have begun to understand who I am, and who I want to be, as a scholar. He proved, time and again, to be a patient and thoughtful reader of my work who took my ideas seriously even when I felt they were not yet worthy of such attention. I am deeply indebted to him for his encouragement and his criticisms which pushed me to refine my thinking and my writing in ways that have made me a more thoughtful scholar and teacher. It has been a special privilege to work with him in this capacity, and I am grateful to be able to continue to work with him as a colleague and fellow editor. I am also grateful to the other members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Amy J. Elias, Dr. Urmila Seshagiri, and Dr. Stephen Blackwell. I would especially like to thank Dr. Amy J. Elias for her thoughtful responses to my work, responses which pushed me to constantly re-think the assumptions that guided my project. Even in disagreement, Dr. Elias made me feel that my project was a work of some consequence, and I am very appreciative of that. My family and friends have been a constant support throughout my time as a student and especially during the time in which this dissertation was written. I have found consistent comfort in my parents unwavering faith in me. Lauren Todd prodded me to keep writing even when I felt most unsure of myself. Brian Gempp has been a fellow ii student and scholar in the trenches for a number of years, and my experience as a graduate student and dissertation writer would have been greatly diminished without him. I particularly appreciate the days we spent throwing a football outside South Stadium Hall as we tried to form the ideas that would later become our separate dissertations. Finally, this dissertation would not have been completed without the love, support, and faith my wife Erin has given to me over these years. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to her for her encouragement and her companionship during the writing of this dissertation. I am also grateful to her for our beautiful daughter Samantha whose presence has brought more joy to me than I can ever hope to deserve. iii Abstract In this dissertation, I argue that Edward Said‘s theory of exile offers a stronger version of human agency than do other postcolonial theories of identity which rely on poststructural theory, and therefore, his theory of exile provides a useful model for postcolonial criticism. His theory of exile animates almost all of his work from his earliest literary criticism to his later theoretical texts. By ―exile,‖ Said refers to the experience of peoples displaced from their homes for political reasons and to the experience of intellectual homelessness that a critic must have in order to be free of the constraints of cultural, ideological, and professional entanglements. However, he insists that exile is a traumatic experience that does not lead to transcendence but to a greater awareness of the contingency of human experience. In my first chapter, I establish how Said‘s theory of exile allows him to appropriate some of the lessons of poststructuralism without relinquishing the strong sense of human agency which drives his political commitments. In the following three chapters, I examine Said‘s relationship to three novelists – Joseph Conrad, V.S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie – to consider how his theory of exile is developed in relation to their work. In Joseph Conrad, Said found a fellow-traveler whose extreme depictions of the predicament of exile, especially the depiction of language‘s inability to ameliorate the isolation of exile through the production of new affiliations, remind Said that exile is an experience of trauma. Said had a publicly contentious relationship with V.S. Naipaul, but their works bear strikingly similar descriptions of the relationship between exile and writing. They both insist that exilic writing can lead to valuable self-knowledge. iv However, Said insists that writing is an act of engagement which leads to new affiliations, but Naipaul‘s writing offers a place of solace which he can reconsider his life with clearer vision. Said very publicly defended Salman Rushdie and wrote admirably of his project. Rushdie‘s theory of migrancy mirrors Said‘s theory of exile by attempting to construct a complex relationship to the metropolitan center without surrendering strategic opposition to various forms of oppression. v Table of Contents Chapter One: Exile as a Model for Critical Postcolonial Agency ...................................... 1 Exile and the Problem of Agency in Postcolonial Theory .............................................. 1 Exile and Criticism: The Intellectual Challenge of Saidian Exile ................................ 18 Exile and Humanism: The Ethico-Political Trajectory of Saidian Exile ...................... 28 Exile and the Postcolonial Novel .................................................................................. 41 Chapter Two: At the Limits of Language and Culture: Joseph Conrad, Edward Said, and the Worldliness of Exile.................................................................................................... 47 Conrad and Exilic Isolation in the Work of Edward Said ............................................ 52 Politics and the Problem of Language in Conradian Exile ........................................... 62 Chapter Three: Making a Home of the Writing Self: V.S. Naipaul and a Theory of Exilic Writing .............................................................................................................................. 76 ―Emancipation is not possible for everyone‖: The Writer in Exile in The Mimic Men 90 Naipaul‘s Transparent ―I/eye‖: The Writer‘s Vision in The Enigma of Arrival ......... 108 Chapter Four: Migrancy and the ―unstoppable predilection for alternatives‖: Salman Rushdie and the ―Newness‖ of Exilic Displacement ...................................................... 136 Living in a ―whaleless world‖: ―Imaginary Homelands‖ and ―Outside the Whale‖ .. 143 The Alternatives of Migrancy in The Satanic Verses ................................................. 149 Conclusion: Exilic Loss and Exilic Emplacement: The Twin Impulses of Said‘s Project ......................................................................................................................................... 165 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 171 Vita .................................................................................................................................