By Sandra Barriales-Bouche, McGill University
Post-exile refers to the period that begins after exiles return to their country of origin. The term’s prefix indicates that, far from putting an end to the existential disorientation of exile, coming back from exile brings out, in most cases, new dilemmas that are as intricate as those experienced outside of the national context. If in exile, as Edward Said explains, “homecoming is out of the question” (179), once the return becomes a reality, it is usually filled with emotional alienation and frequently leads to the exiles’ realisation that the end of geographical exile does not mean the end of psychological estrangement. Mario Benedetti, a Uruguayan author who wrote one of the first essays on this topic, envisioned the comeback as “a problem almost as arduous” as exile, and “maybe more complex” (40).[i] In this respect, the “contrapuntal” nature that Said conferred to exile¾which alludes to the plurality and originality that the viewpoints of those expelled from their nation gain due to an awareness of at least two cultural dimensions¾is amplified in post-exile (186). After their return, the conflicted vision of exiles achieves a more complicated state, since it includes not only their pre-exile reality and the experiences lived in the new environment of exile, but also the transformed reality of their country of origin at the time of their return. Sophia McClennen states that in the study of exile literature, it is key to examine the dialectical tension of the “interpenetrating oppositions” that exile writing includes (30). In post-exile studies, it is crucial to analyse how those conflicts persist or evolve after the authors’ return.
Post-exile is a diverse phenomenon that resists systematisation because it encompasses the unique conditions of each exile, the different types of return (i.e. temporary or definite, early or late, gradual or abrupt), and the specific political and social circumstances of each country of origin. In all its variety and complexity, the exploration of the unique perspective that authors attain after their return can bring valuable insights both into their intellectual trajectory, and into the political, social, and cultural conditions of the country to which they are returning. In the case of the Spanish Republican exile, for example, the return of intellectuals to post-Franco Spain was affected by the profound changes that the country had undergone during their absence of more than three decades. As Giulia Quaggio explains, the circumstances of the Spanish Transition to Democracy did not allow for a real reintegration of the exiles into the political, cultural or academic institutions of the democracy (5). Instead, they played only a symbolic role as idealised and mythical figures that helped legitimise the new political regime in what Mari Paz Balibrea sees as a mediatic operation that sacrificed all traces of their previous political radicalism (15).[ii] According to Inmaculada Cordero Oliveros, the clash of Spanish exiles with their country of origin resulted, on the one hand, from the exiles hardly recognising their nation (149); and, on the other, from feeling like forgotten ghosts in a country that was not interested in dwelling on the past (150).[iii] Examining the returnees’ sense of alienation can expand our understanding of the relationship between post-Franco Spain and the Republican legacy, as well as our understanding of the exiles’ perceptions of the significance of that legacy. Instead of trying to normalise and integrate the uneasiness and resistance of the returnees into the national narrative “a posteriori”, some critics, like Olga Glondys, propose keeping the exiles in their return as a separate category (220). When homecoming does not bring returnees back from what Said calls the exile’s “perilous territory of not-belonging” (177), the outsiders’ perspective can offer relevant critical perceptions of post-dictatorial societies.
Post-exile prompts the re-evaluation of one’s life and writing. Being face to face with their fellow citizens again makes many authors take a conscious step back toward their past and their previous work. By attempting to vindicate the exiles’ version of the past, by offering new reflections on the old political rivalries or on the historical event that caused the exile, or by contesting dominant visions of the exile, the revisionist gaze of post-exile can bring to light the narratives that do not fit into the official accounts of the national past.[iv] As part of the reevaluation, some authors can come to terms with the meaning of their exile and its legacy, and they take the opportunity to state the value of their experiences while living abroad, to rescue and confirm the value of fellow exile authors, to protect exile texts from misreadings or oblivion, or to give an explanatory addendum to previous works. Analysing the meaning that returnees confer to their exile and the lessons they decide to safeguard can prompt a new understanding of the relevance that exile had for these authors. In addition, examining the distinctive turn that post-exile texts sometimes take as a result of being addressed to a national audience can shed light on whether exiles envision the members of that audience as suitable readers and on how they react to the way their exile and works are regarded by their fellow citizens. The analysis of the defensive tone of some post-exile works can also help determine where the exiles detect the instrumentalisation or neglect of their legacy after their return.
Works Cited
Balibrea, Mari Paz. Tiempo de exilio. Una mirada crítica a la modernidad española desde el pensamiento republicano en el exilio. Montesinos, 2007.
Benedetti, Mario. “El desexilio.” Articulario. Desexilio y perplejidades. Reflexiones desde el Sur. El País/Aguilar, 1994.
Cordero Oliveros, Inmaculada. “El retorno del exiliado”. Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México, vol. 17, 1996, pp. 141-162.
Glondys, Gloria. “Regresos.” Líneas de fuga. Hacia otra historiografía cultural del exilio republicano español, edited by Mari Paz Balibrea, Siglo XXI, 2017, pp. 217-224.
Jato, Mónica, and John Klapper. Fractured Frontiers: The Exile Writing of Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain. Camden House, 2020.
McClennen, Sophia. The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language, and Space in Hispanic Literatures. Purdue University Press, 2004.
Quaggio, Giulia. “Volver a España. El regreso del exilio intelectual durante la transición.” Historia del presente, vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 5-9.
Roniger, Luis. “Displacement and Testimony: Recent History and the Study of Exile and Post-Exile.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 29, no. 2, 2016, pp. 111–133.
Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Harvard University Press, 2000.
[i] Mario Benedetti coined the term desexilio (dis-exile) to refer to the difficult process of readjustment that exiles experience after their return to their country of origin.
[ii] For information on earlier returns of some exiles during Franco’s dictatorship, see the chapter “Destiempo: The Challenges of a Long Return in the Spanish Context” by Mónica Jato in Jato and Klapper (184-215).
[iii] Francisco Ayala was, as Quaggio explains, one of the few intellectuals who managed to happily reintegrate into post-Franco Spain (8).
[iv] For a study on the relevant role that exile and post-exile testimonies can play in the reconstruction of Latin American history, see the article by Luis Roniger “Displacement and Testimony.”
MeMiRe - A Discursive Glossary 