exile

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

“… live your lives as strangers here …” 1 Pet. 1:17

“The exile therefore lives in a median state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old”

“For the intellectual an exilic displacement means being liberated from the usual career, in which ‘doing well’ and following in time-honoured footsteps are the main milestones. Exile means that you are always going to be marginal, and that what you do as an intellectual has to be made up because you cannot follow a prescribed path… If you can experience that fate not as deprivation, … but as a sort of freedom … that is a unique pleasure.”

“The exilic intellectual does not respond to the logic of convention but to the audacity of daring, and to representing change, to moving on, not standing still.”

Edward Said in “Representations of the Intellectual”

[If you are uncomfortable with 'intellectual' (for instance, if you're English:) feel free to change it to artist, scientist, blog-writer, person...]

Permalink | April 18th, 2006

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