Home and Exile: Some General Themes

Abstract

This paper will discuss the creative potential of liminality. This idea will be developed through a discussion of the experience of the liminal position of the exiled individual and the examination of some personalities whose lives have been shaped by exile. This will encompass the dislocation of the individual from a ‘home’ space into a situation of homelessness, the reworking of the individual’s identity in the unfamiliar environment and the resulting consequences of this shift. It will be argued that the exilic position is characterised by almost permanent liminality, as many situations will not result in a return to normality, i.e. return to the home. It will also be argued that the particular experience of dislocation/exile affords a certain perspective which could not have been gained from remaining at home, and that homelessness therefore breeds innovation and creativity. 1. Understanding home. For the purposes of this essay, familiar connotations of ‘home’ will be explored. It is important to firstly acknowledge that home may represent a site of danger, torment or unhappiness to some unfortunate individuals; therefore, it is essential not to romanticise home in some way. However, there are positive understandings of ‘home’ which could be recognised by most humans. Home represents acceptance of the true self, or an arena to express this, a secure environment to be sad or happy, a space of recognition from the others who belong in the home, a place to house the soul as well as the body. As Tucker (2000) states: “Home is the reflection of our subjectivity in the world. Home is the environment that allows us to fulfil our unique selves through interaction with the world. Home is the environment that allows us to be homely...” (257). Tucker also points out the central idea that home is not restricted to a building – “[h]ome may be an emotional environment, a culture, a geographical location, a political system, a historical time and place, etc., and a combination of all of the above” (ibid). The idea of ‘home’ can also be reassigned to describe the spiritual or mental existence of the individual in the world, as when Heidegger clarifies the position of ‘Dasein’ as “bei the world and the entities in it, he means that, at least in everydayness, we are at home amid the things in our world” (Polt, 1999: 46). Home could then be seen as some sort of sanctuary which exists on many different levels, but is best conceived of as the site of the everyday, the mundane, and the normality which provides comfort for the human being. Turner (1967) documented the departure or separation from the constancy of home life during a ritual which occurred to maintain the normal state. The central characteristic of the rite of separation is “the detachment of the individual or group either from an earlier fixed point in the social structure, from a set of cultural conditions (a ‘state’), or from both” (Turner, 1967: 94). This may be a physical relocation, for example, in the tribal initiation rites of passage that Turner describes in his work, The Forest of Symbols, but