'exiles Cross Borders, Break Barriers Of Thought And Experience' (edward Said). Discuss.

Introduction

At the heart of postcolonial literature, which so persistently stands as a 'resistance against the triumphant ideology of the nation-state', dwells the theme of exile. As a result of the imperialist age and issues involving war and conflict the contemporary world 'has produced more refugees, migrants, displaced persons and exiles then ever before in history'. Hence, the topic of exile is so prominent amongst postcolonial texts, as the writers use the journeys of their protagonists to push back the frontiers of ignorance through the promotion of cultural contact.

It is imperative to distinguish between the different forms of exile, whether it is enforced or self-imposed. Enforced exile can prompt feelings of yearning or nostalgia as it is predicated on the existence of love with one's native place. Self-enforced movements away from one's native home are usually perceived as 'redemptive journeys' acting as a form of cultural resistance.

In Culture and Imperialism, Said praises the marginal writers as having the power to 'break barriers' through enforcing their native discourse into Western civilization. Said believes that the vagrants would be able to challenge the system and the formidable structure of Western culture 'through language unavailable to those it has already subdued'. The notion of writing back as a form of opposition to the canonical texts is a key concept involving writers in exile. The exiled writers would often focus upon colonial subjects, not only depicting the negative consequences of their journey but also allowing the individual to gain a broader perspective on different cultures, enabling them to 'act as an agent of social transformation'.

The figure of the traveller is pivotal in postcolonial literature. The subject in exile whether it be enforced or self-imposed is used metaphorically to show mobility and integration between two cultures. The migrants displaced position will allow them to not only reflect upon the culture as a foreigner but as a critic, something, which allows them to 'challenge the authority of older ideas of rootedness and fixity'.

Caribbean intellectual George Lamming referred to exile as being 'at once an alienating and empowering experience', referring to his belief that 'I belong, wherever I am'. Suggesting that the move away from home will benefit the subject in gaining a broader perspective about history and culture, but ultimately the traveller's liberation will come at a cost. Season of Migration to the North

Sudanese-born novelist Tayeb Salih writes back to the imperial center in Season of migration to the North through his deliberate reversal of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare's Othello and the middle-eastern folk tale collection A Thousand and One Nights.

Salih's text is centered on the symbolic figure of Mustafa Sa'eed who has travelled to the North in an attempt to avenge 'The Rape Of Africa' by the British Empire between the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Mustafa's life coincides with the era of British colonization of Sudan; he is born on August 16, 1898, 'a date historically framed by the battles of Atbara and Omdurman, in which Kitchener's army [.] completed the conquest of Sudan'. Moreover, Sa'eed was born in Khartoum, 'a city whose history seems to be held suspended between the military might of two Brit generals'. Sa'eed is a product of empire, and aims to liberate Africa through his sexual crusade over white women, reinventing Shakespeare's tragic hero, as he reveals, '"I'm like Othello - Arab-African"'.

Sa'eed's exile redefines the scope of narrative form as Salih presents the 'other' as the observer of western culture in his journey from the south to north. Mustafa Sa'eed's exile liberates him momentarily as his sexual masquerade over British women symbolizes an eastern triumph over the west. The women involved become the substitutes of Queen Victoria, whom Wail Hassan defines as 'the eponym of the Age of Empire'. Sa'eed, honestly reveals that, '"yes my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes"', however his sexual onslaught leads to Sa'eed losing his identity and mirroring the 'despotic, misogynist Oriental' . Resulting in Sa'eed conforming to the image of Eastern masculinity the west evoke, most distinctively, in Othello.

Once Mustafa Sa'eed is released from prison he partakes in a redemptive journey back to Sudan in order to free himself from the illusion he has created abroad. In doing so Salih is deconstructing colonial discourse, as predominantly the redemptive journeys are self enforced exiles away from one's native home. Sa'eed constructs a letter for the narrator to read, with the aim to reveal the hardships of exile and the fantasy that one's identity can only be cemented in one place. Sa'eed's journey away from 'home' results in his own destruction, as he creates an illusion that causes his own sense of identity to become distorted with lies and deceit.

I do not know which of the two courses would be more selfish, to stay or to depart [.] It is futile to deceive oneself [.] Rationally I know what is right [.] But mysterious things in my soul and in my blood impel me towards faraway parts that loom up before me and cannot be ignored. How sad would it be if either or both of my sons grew up with the germ of this infection in them, the wanderlust.

Sa'eed's letter reveals the dangers of exile in finding and losing oneself in the same instance. Once Sa'eed has experienced life outside of his home he is impelled to experience different cultures as be becomes besotted by wanderlust. Sa'eed touches on the pointlessness of living a lie, which he essentially commits to. Sa'eed travels to the north in an attempt to enact his own reverse colonialism by offering English women an orientalist fantasy. Exile has broken the barriers of thought and experience for Sa'eed as he is able to reflect upon his own life critically. Essentially the joys of Sa'eed's travels have come at the cost of admitting that there is no single cultural home for the postcolonial subject, an aspect of life he wants to prevent his children from being exposed to.

The different effects of exile upon an individual can be explored through the dueling poetic narratives of Mustafa Sa'eed and the narrator. Whereas Sa'eed's exile allows him to gain a sense of power and control over the north his thirst for revenge consequently leads to his imprisonment. In contrast the narrators exile to the north was to further his education academically, his alienation comes in the form of his yearning for the south as his return home is described as a return to life.

The unnamed narrator is in denial about his hybrid form and attempts to repress his memories of exile throughout the text. When he first arrives back in his village he says, '"I felt not like a storm-swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, with a purpose"'. Despite only feeling fulfilled once in his homeland of Sudan, Mustafa Sa'eed forces him to reexamine his certainties, which results in the narrator realizing that his migration has resulted in him becoming nothing but a rootless outsider.

Hence, the concluding scene of the novel sees the narrator swimming out into the Nile, in a desperate attempt to find his true cultural identity, halfway between north and south, '"unable to continue, unable to return"'. The narrators presence in the middle of Nile is a reflection on the effects of exile, and that his travels have rendered him rootless, portraying him as the 'storm swept feather' he despises. Both Mustafa Sa'eed and the narrator's respective exiles have allowed them to confront their cross-cultural crisis and to see the world with 'two eyes', and as Phyllis Slyck suggests, 'that is to accept that we exist both within and outside our individual cultures'.

Both Mustafa and the narrator experience the crisis of identity due to their respective exiles, as they both learn to accept their hybrid forms even at the cost of losing their sense of belonging to one culture. The positive episodes of exile in both of their narrative are 'permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind for ever'.

Wide Sargasso Sea

As a white Creole writer living in England, the problems of cultural displacement and a fragmented identity were the main concerns of the twentieth century Caribbean writer, Jean Rhys. Rhys raises the issues of hybridity as she was, 'white but not English, West Indian but not black', thus her subjective position between two cultures 'the metropolis England, and the colony, West indies, shaped Rhys's world, resulting in her sense of exile and marginality'.

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea exists as a modernist textual intervention of Charlotte Bronte's 'cult text' Jane Eyre. Rhys uses modernism as a literary form in order to explore dislocations caused by globalized colonization. Rhys's rewrites the life of Bronte's poignant Creole outcast Bertha Mason, with the aim to subvert the negative assumptions made by the Victorian text. Rhys's rewriting of Bronte's colonial narrative is used to liberate 'what is silent or marginally present [.] in such works' allowing us to sympathize with Bertha, uncovering the life of West Indian Creole subverted under the control of a British imperial narrative.

Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of the mad first wife of Rochester, in Bronte's Jane Eyre. Bertha's story is uncovered through the heroine Antoinette, as Rhys wanted 'to write her a life'. Rhys tends to reflect on her own personal dislocation as a White Creole, as she felt alienated from the English side of her heritage and failed to fit in amongst the Caribbean people(s). The conflict between the white Creoles and the black African/Caribbean's is something, which Rhys tries to address. Rhys longed to be identified with the native Caribbean's but felt alienated due to the color of her skin, something, which she confronts not only in Wide Sargasso Sea, but also in Voyage in the Dark. The characters have symbolic significance to the life of Rhys, both Anna in Voyage in the Dark and Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea long for friendship with black girls. Race and shade dominated Rhys's consciousness as a child, as Elaine Savory reveals, 'When given a fair doll (her sister got the dark-haired one she wanted), she took it into the garden and ritually smashed its face with a rock', reflecting Rhys's cultural displacement as a child, which she then tells through the narrative of her female protagonists.

The historical circumstances which set the novel in motion prevents Antoinette from feeling rooted into one distinctive culture. Before the 1833 emancipation act, the Creoles were educated to view England as their home, but they 'were also marked and excluded as inferior colonials'. Moreover being racially privileged over the black African/Caribbean natives created a severe conflict, which Antoinette Cosway was born in the middle of.

Antoinette's connection with a slave-owning family leaves her isolated from the black community on the island. As a white Creole Antoinette finds herself as a double outsider, she fails to belong anywhere; both the black and white communities reject her due to her hybrid form as she explains to Rochester:

. a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I've heard English women call us white niggers, So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.

The terms 'cockroach' and 'nigger' are highly important as they epitomize the crippling sorrow of estrangement for Antoinette in dealing with her double exile between two cultures. Antoinette is able to move between both cultures but at great cost, she is seen as being inferior to both, leaving her marginalized from the only two places she could ever call home. As Nunez-Harrell points out, Antoinette 'bears the brunt of guilt for the history of slavery and the cruelties perpetrated by her ancestors', which divides her psyche and leads her into madness.

Antoinette often feels at home when reflecting upon her relationship with the natural landscape of the Caribbean island, a key feature in gothic romanticism. Antoinette often finds solace and reward in nature, an aspect that her maid Christophine also notices, '"She is a Creole girl, she have the sun in her"'. Antoinette is very much entangled within the island landscape whereas her husband finds nothing but secrets and unanswerable questions. Rochester's migration to Jamaica as another English aristocrat seeking fortune from a Creole heiress, explores the social quest of a colonizer. Throughout Rochester's narrative he often feels threatened by the landscape viewing it as '"not only wild, but menacing"'. As Rochester fails to gain control over the island, his authority and ownership are placed into question. Rhys's critiques imperialism through the Caribbean island conquering Rochester, forcing him and Antoinette into exile in a final attempt to gain control over his estranged wife.

As Rochester fails to assert his authority over the West Indies he compensates by uprooting Antoinette from the only place she could ever consider home, exiling her to England. Rhys uses modernist techniques to connect her own insecurities through Antoinette's narrative. Antoinette's passages often break down into dream-like narratives of her imagining places, such as England. Antoinette envisions England as being cold and gloomy which is similar to Rhys whom resisted England, labeling it a 'cold and dark country'. Once exiled to England, Antoinette contrasts the beauty of the Caribbean to the world she is confined to, describing England as a '"cardboard world where everything is colored brown or dark red or yellow that has no light in it"'. It can be argued that Antoinette's exile away from her homeland, which impacts heavily on her already fragmented psyche leads to her madness. On the contrary it can be perceived that her exile to England provides her with a platform to finally accept the Caribbean as her homeland, as portrayed in her dream:

.When I looked over the edge I saw the pool at Coulibri. Tia was there. She beckoned to me and when I hesitated she laughed [.] and I heard a man's voice, [calling] Bertha! Bertha [.] and the sky so red. Someone screamed and I thought, why did I scream? I called Tia and jumped and woke. In Antoinette's dream she is faced with the choice between her two cultures, her native Caribbean in the form of Tia and her mother land England, through the emblem of colonial privilege, Rochester. Antoinette rejects the man's voice and instead joins Tia, which demonstrates her desperate wish for a connection with her island home. The Caribbean always held claim on Antoinette's loyalty and emotions, however, her homeland now only 'exists primarily in the mind, and no act of actual, physical return can facilitate it'.

The novel ends with Antoinette committing to her dream of burning down the estate, which confines her. Antoinette's suicide can be read as a positive exilic experience as she has broken the barriers of thought and experience that trapped her throughout the novel. By setting fire to the estate Antoinette can be read as a feminist heroine of British fiction, as she has moved from the margins into gaining an identity that was formerly withheld.

Conclusion

Both Season of Migration to the North and Wide Sargasso Sea support the statement by Edward Said as their respective protagonists are eventually liberated through their different exiles. Whether the expatriate is forced, or their journey is self-inflicted their exiles act as a journey of self-discovery, exposing them to a different cultural and aesthetic experience. Nevertheless, Said also suggests that exiles produce an 'unhealable rift forced between [.] the self and it's true home' , which consequently undermine the triumphant episodes in an exile's life.

Ultimately both texts present the case that the migrants have to experience another culture to find their true sense of 'home'. By journeying away from the motherland the exiles present an exploration of the inner dimensions of the character's involved, a profound aspect of modernist literature. In doing so, the expatriate's partake in a journey of re-defining their clouded sense of identity, which results in a reflection on the importance of one's motherland but concludes with the sacrifice of life in both texts.

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