introduction to thinking on exilic grounds.pdf

8/14/2019 Introduction to Thinking on Exilic Grounds.pdf

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Preface

Exile is a term I came to know long after my exilic experience began. As

I remember, my first encounter with such experience was simple andstrange. I was nine years old when, together with my family, I left theworld I had known as we fled from fascism and a military regime. Oneday we closed the door of our home in Chile, took one suitcase each (wehad to leave the country under the disguise of traveling abroad for a briefvacation), and traveled by train across the Andes. The journey took a day,and we arrived at our destination at night. It is in that moment of arrivalthat my first exilic experience appears, and it does so as a twofold event.

On the one hand, as I looked out the window I experienced a sense oftotal loss. My memory of this moment is that I saw nothing. It was as ifI had come to a point beyond the world: no words, no visible world, nota familiar sound to receive me. This memory of loss is inseparable inintensity from a certain acceleration and excitement stemming from dis-covering a place, people, sounds, and words, the second aspect of myexilic experience. These sensations seemed born right there to me, in thatinstant, since I had never experienced or imagined the world and life thatbegan to appear under the emerging lights of the strange city. Since then

this astonishing convergence between loss and the arising of life anew hasaccompanied my sense of self, world, and thought. It was also this expe-rience that led me to the term exile, and eventually to my criticalengagement with it, as I began to have a sense of the difference betweenexile and what I will call exilic experience and thought.

An exile is traditionally one who either by choice or force lives outsidehis or her country of origin. To be an exile is to be ex patria. This meansnot only being outside a city or motherland, but it also indicates separa-

tion, ones exclusion from the rights and identity given by belonging tomotherland, bloodline, family, friends, language, and certain estrange-ment from the practices and traditions that constitute identity, as well as

from Alejandro A. Vallega. Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinkingon Exilic Grounds. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.


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the grounds for making sense of life and the surrounding world. In theseterms, the exile is no one and belongs nowhere. What is the place of theexile once she has abandoned her place of origin and, even under the most

comfortable circumstances, has come to occupy the place of a guest?What claim under law, civil practices or everyday habits has the exilewhen she can no longer refer to those structures that have constituted hersense of the world, and can only at best imitate those of the host? By def-inition, the exile is a stranger, a foreigner, and no matter what he does,will remain foreign: once outside (ex) the place of origin there will be noreturn. The exile is not at home, and cannot be no matter how much heresembles the host. Indeed, once exiled, he knows that it is impossible to

return. Once exiled, he was, is, and will be the foreigner, the stranger. Areturn only reveals how much he has changed and how much the place oforigin has slipped beyond what it was, either by being still the sameinwhich case the one returning appears a strangeror by having changedin which case the one returning still finds him-self foreign. In eithercase the exile will remain the foreigner, and often a return will underscoreboth aspects of the slipping of the place of origin in different ways. Thislast point intensifies the experience of the exile by making his or her life

a kind of living death. Once an exile is outside, and severed from origin,country, language, the sense of life and world that sustained existence islost. Therefore, exile will be a living death for those who seek their iden-tity in those unchanging and ever-present, although distant, origins.

The term exile figures a condemnation of all senses of life. I live asno one. I stand nowhere. Even if I take the initiative to make a life of mysituation I speak and live by someone elses rules and practices (the long-lost origins or the hosts ways). In this sense, as someone once said, exileis like wearing someone elses suit. This is certainly the experience of

those characters in Virgils Aeneadwho, having fled from the destructionof their city, Troy, are found weeping around a small scale version of thatcity. Indeed, from mans expulsion from paradise on, humanity must livean existence condemned to a veil of tears: a life that seems to find its hori-zons and hopes marked by the memory of a loss that will shape and judgethe present in the name of that unchanging origin and the identity grant-ed by it. This is a melancholic life for which the experience of arisingfrom living configurations and senses of being will have never been

enough, because it will have never figured a return to those unchangingorigins, roots, places.

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Upon close reflection and experience though, exile as defined by sucha tradition does not begin to engage the exilic experience of encounteringsuch life beyond unchanging origins in all its senses of being. The defini-

tion of exile as a being outside ones origins, country, and so forth, referssuch experience beyondunchanging origins back to unchanging origins.The mien of the exile is the fitting exterior for the interiority of a self-determined and self-certain identity that claims to be unchanging, andtherefore the measure for interpreting all experiences and senses of being.What condemns exilic experience is not its event as such, but the insis-tence on defining experience beyond self-identical, unchanging origins interms of those very self-identical unchanging origins. The definition of

exile is one that condemns by excluding and yet retaining sovereignpower over what has been excluded. This definition never addresses theexilic experience, since it instead remains in distant judgement of it bydefining it in terms of a necessary self-certain and unchanging identity.

A return to Virgils Aeneadgives an indication of the powerful expe-rience figured by exilic life and thought. Aeneas is forced to leave Troyand must wander throughout the ancient world. However, his exiledoes not lead him to live as no one or to exist nowhere, always depend-

ent on that lost city and on copying the manners of his hosts. Aeneasexperience leads to the foundation of Rome. On the one hand, this storyindicates that exilic experience figures the possibility of the arising ororiginary event of the founding of a whole world. On the other hand, thestory also points to the way the exilic experience behind the delimitationof the senses of the world can easily be covered over in the name of whatarises and is given determination. Traditionally Aeneas story and Virgilspoem find their value in light of what has been founded, in light of Rome.But one has to wonder if this allocation of the story (of the event of con-

figuration that gives rise to such powerful world) into an economy ofunchanging origins as that found in the Roman empire was not, at leastin part, behind Virgils attempt to burn the work before his death. Virgilspoem points beyond such an economy of unchanging origins, as it indi-cates the double character of the exilic experience that grounds Aeneasfoundation of Rome: the loss of unchanging origins (in the impossibilityof a return), and the transformative effect of such experiences lead tounsuspected possibilities for the arising of senses of being. Exilic experi-

ence is not a life of nihilist negativity in the loss and absence of senses ofbeing, of self, place, and living practices and traditions. This experience

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and this thought enact an event that figures not only loss but, moreover,the transformative passage of senses of being toward yet unsuspectedconfigurations. As such, it is an experience that in its most intense mani-

festations refers us to the very possibility of the arising of life. Exilicexperience occurs as such a dynamic event, and it is in terms of itsdynamic elements (loss, transformation, possibility) that it may begin tobe engaged. The questions that appear are these: How does one begin toengage exilic experiences? What do such experiences indicate aboutthought in its configurations and about the arising of senses of being?

It is not the personal character of these observations that is importanthere but what such experiences indicate. These questions open a path for

engaging the exilic character of thought as well as for exploring the exil-ic grounds of the configurations of self, community, and the phenome-non called world. In light of these issues, I think it is not out of place tosay here that this work is but a beginning step toward articulating the dif-ficulties and possibilities opened by the engagement of exilic experience.

This book was written in many places and in a number of languages,in light of many encounters and experiences, which, in all their layers,

frame and uphold the book. This particular space remains open thanks tothose who have supported and shared in my work. I want to thank JohnSallis, whose friendship and scholarly insight have often sustained thework in these pages; Ed Casey, for his encouragement and generousscholarship; and James Risser for his relentless support. I would also liketo mention Rmi Brague and Hans-Helmuth Gander, as well as thosewho generously shared their insights and comments through many con-versations at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Italy. I am gratefulfor the support of Helmut Kusdat, Linda Neu, Jerry Sallis, Ilya

Cherkasov, and Evgenia Cherkasova. I am also grateful for the editingwork of Pam Young, Daniela Vallega-Neu, Arnold Webb, and JenniferSmith at Penn State Press. The final form of this work owes much to theclose reading and comments of Dennis Schmidt. Finally, I dont knowthat this book would have come to be without Charles Scott, SusanSchoenbohm, and Daniela Vallega-Neu.

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