A brief history of exile in the Western worldhttp://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/westciv/romanrevolution.htmlComment by safaa hussein:

http://windomrome.weebly.com/roman-republic---31-bce.htmlJUL 27Toronto mayor Rob Ford suggested last week that criminals convicted of gun crimes be exiled from the city. The minister of immigration, Jason Kenny, shot the idea down soon after.Exile, however, has a long history in the Western world. While Ford has been ridiculed for suggesting it, the practice has been used in various ways by different societies.Rome and Athens during antiquityIn antiquity, the practice was used in the Roman Republic as well as the Roman Empire. It was also used in places like Athens, the Greek city state that is often credited with inventing democracy.In the Roman Republic, exile was often an option given to upper class criminals, says Gordon Kelly, who is a visiting assistant professor of humanities at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Kelly is the author of A History of Exile in the Roman Republic.During the Roman Republic, between the 5th century BC and 27 BC, exile was used by upper class Roman citizens as a means to escape capital punishment. Having chosen exile instead of death, they would never be allowed to return to Roman territory.Kelly says it is hard to know whether exile was an option for lower class members of the Roman Republic because of a lack of evidence. During this period, those who were exiled did not lose their Roman citizenship, though most chose to adopt that of their new state.This would be very serious, for these political classes, because that would absolutely rule out a further political career, says Kelly. It was a form of political death.At times, Kelly says, you could move a mere 10 miles outside of Rome and live in comfort as a result of your accumulated wealth, but would likely leave your family behind. The sons of an exiled father, having remained in Rome, could still pursue a political career themselves.For a lot of ancient communities, the community is everything. So having to leave the community is a pretty serious blow to them; their identity is really wound up in this particular community, says Kelly.During the later Roman Empire, there is evidence that different punishments were given out to people of different social status. Kelly says that while those in the upper classes could be exiled, those of the lower classes could be killed, worked to death in mines or killed for sport in an arena, for similar serious crimes.Peter OBrien, who is an assistant professor in the classics department at Dalhousie University and specializes in Latin literature, says most of the ancient Mediterranean cultures used exile as a form of punishment.At the root of exile as a form of political punishment is the notion that participation in a particular state, the one into which one was born, really defined what it meant to be human, says OBrien.Famously, Aristotle says that, life outside of the polis, their form of state, is the life either of a god or a dog, of an animal. Humanity is defined by participation in the state. So exclusion from that at any level is an extremely serious thing and in some cases is considered to be even worse than death, says OBrien.The practice of exile took a different form in the Greek city state of Athens. There, the practice of ostracism, took place once a year. The citizens of Athens who had voting rights, usually men who owned property and whose families were from Athens, gathered annually and voted for an individual to be exiled.You didnt need any reasons, you just voted somebody off the island, or the polis, says Jack Mitchell, an assistant professor of Roman history at Dalhousie University.The practice is named ostracism because each citizen scratched the name of the person they wanted to exile on a shard of pottery called ostraca, the voting ballot of the day, says Mitchell.Once voted out of Athens, the citizen would generally be able to return after ten years in exile. This allowed Athenians to diffuse political tensions between rival parties, or get rid of a prominent politician who might try to become a tyrant and wrest control of the city.Medieval England: 12th to 15th centuriesDuring the medieval ages the practice of exile served a similar function as it did during the Roman Republic.In England, between the 12th and 15th centuries, exile took the form of abjuration, a practice which was integrated into English Common Law, says Shannon McSheffrey, a professor at Concordia University who specializes in late medieval and early Tudor England.During that time period, murder and theft were punishable by death. If a criminal wanted to avoid capital punishment they could claim sanctuary on church grounds, where because the land was considered sacred, they could not be arrested.Once a person claimed sanctuary they could ask to speak with a coroner, who at the time both investigated murders as well as preformed other civic duties. The perpetrator would have to confess to the crime they committed and have the coroner record the confession.The criminal could then ask for the right of abjuration, which meant that they would swear off the realm, says McSheffrey. You would agree to go into exile for the rest of your life. That would be in return for not then suffering the capital punishment that was due to you.The person was given a white cross and put into the custody of a legal official called a constable who would escort the criminal to the end of their jurisdiction and hand them over to the constable in charge of the next jurisdiction. This was done until the perpetrator reached the nearest port, where they would be forced to seek passage on a ship to Europe.McSheffrey adds that if the perpetrator was ever seen on English soil, they would then face capital punishment. This experience would have been easier to deal with for those who were wealthy and may have had money or property elsewhere in Europe. However, it was still seen as a horrific punishment because many often did not speak other languages besidesEnglish, a language not spoken in Europe at the time. Most would never see their friends or family again.McSheffrey says that there is almost no evidence of what happened to people who abjured the realm and went into exile. It is thus very hard to know how they fared wherever they ended up.Early Modern Europe: 16th to 18th centuries in Italy and FranceDuring the early modern era, between the 16th and 18th centuries in Italy, exile was used as a means to dispense justice as well as avoid feuds and vendettas among people living in close communities.Gregory Hanlon, a university research professor at Dalhousie University who specializes in early modern Italy and France, among other fields, points out that exile was used during this period while there were still no jails, and little money in government coffers to set them up.Everybody lived their lives locally. This is a period in which even a lot of poor people owned some land, and they resided there for generations. That meant that there were constantly tensions between different families, says Hanlon.Authorities were concerned that cycles of violence would erupt between families who would seek retribution for murders or rapes committed by members of another family.When a person was exiled, they would in extreme cases, have their goods and property confiscated and given to their family members who could then use those assets to send an allowance to the exiled individual.The period of the exile was either a set duration or indefinite, but people could petition the local magistrate or authorities and plead for the right to return. Poorer families would often suffer because a main breadwinner was exiled, and their plight would often be a reason why authorities would allow an exiled individual to return after a period of time.The communities that received the exiled individuals were not very welcoming and, as in France, sometimes had derogatory words referring to exiles. In periods when most people owned lands, they didnt move around a whole lot. And so, some stranger coming in to live with you is perhaps bad news. Theyd probably been sent away from their homes for bad behavior and therefore you can suspect they will commit bad things in their new locality, says Hanlon.They were supposed to make peace with their enemies, that is a formal written peace with their enemies and pay some kind of compensation before theyre allowed to come home. This is a reasonably efficient way of doing justice in a period when you dont have much money for the means of punishment, like prisons, says Hanlon, who adds that this form of punishment was extremely common. He also adds that most people were allowed to return from exile after a period of time.Be Sociable, Share!Table of ContentsChapter One: Introduction1. Overview2. The Cultural and Political Background of Roman Exile3. Summary of the Relationship of Exile to Roman Republican PoliticsChapter Two: Exilium: Legal and Historical Issues1. The Basics of Exile2. Exile as a Citizen Right3. Aquae et ignis interdictio4. Exile and Interdiction as a Legal Penalty5. Exile and Citizenship6. The Attempted Exile of L. Hostilius Tubulus and Q. Pleminius7. The ius exulare8. RelegatioChapter Three: The Journey Into Exile: The Early Republic to the Social War1. Choosing a Site for Exile: An Introduction2. Brief Journey Into Exile: The Early Republic to 1233. Politics, Demonstrations and the Hope of Recall4. The Advantages of Dyrrachium and Western Greece for Exiles5. Locations Distant From Rome and the Permanence of ExileChapter Four: Exilium from the Social War to the Death of Julius Caesar1. The Mass Recall of Exiles in the 80s2. Exules in Italia: The Cases of Oppianicus and Q. Pompeius3. The 60s and the Exile "Boom" in Western Greece4. The Exile of M. Tullius Cicero5. Milo and the Mullets of Massilia: Exilium in the 50s6. A New Civil War and Mass Recall of Exiles7. Defeated Pompeians and Casesar's ClementiaChapter Five: Topics of Exile1. Accompaniment Into Exile2. The Economics of Exile3. Exempla and Accounts of ExileChapter Six: Prosopography of Roman ExilesConclusionsAppendix I: The leges Clodiae Concerning Cicero's ExileAppendix II: Restoration of Legendary Figures of the Early RepublicBibliographyLibrary of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:Exiles -- Rome -- History.Rome -- History -- Republic, 510-30 B.C.Exileis a form ofpunishmentin which one has to leave one's home (whether that be on the level ofcity, region, ornation-state) while either being explicitly refused permission and/or being threatened byprisonordeathupon return. It is common to distinguish betweeninternal exile,forced resettlement within the country of residence, andexternal exile,deportation outside the country of residence.When an entire people or ethnic population is forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands, it is called adiaspora.Throughout history, numerous nations have been forced into diasporas. For the Jews, whose diaspora lasted more than two thousand years, until the founding of the modern State ofIsraelin 1948, theological reflection on the meaning of exile has led to the insight thatGod, who dwells amongst his people, also lives and suffers in exile.Exile can also be a self-imposed departure from one's homeland. Self-exile is often practiced as form of protest or to avoid persecution or prosecution forcriminalactivity.Contents[show]

Whatever the cause or circumstances, exile necessarily causes emotional pain to all involved. Leaving one's homeland means breaking the first and most essential bonds developed to one'sfamily,community, and the natural environment. Prevented from reuniting with those people and places cherished from youth, human hearts can never be whole.HistoryExile,also calledbanishment,has a long tradition as a form ofpunishment. It was known in ancient Rome, where the Senate had the power to exile individuals, entirefamilies, or countries (which amounted to a declaration ofwar).The towns ofancient Greecealso used exile both as a legal punishment and, inAthens, as a social punishment. In Athens during the time ofdemocracy, the process of "ostracism" was devised in which one man who was a threat to the stability of the society was banished from the city without prejudice for ten years, after which he was allowed to return. Among the more famous recipients of this punishment were Themistocles, Cimon, and Aristides the Just. Further, Solon the lawgiver voluntarily exiled himself from Athens after drafting the city's constitution, to prevent being pressed to change it.In thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a court of law could sentence a noble to exile(banicja). As long as the exile(banita)remained in the Commonwealth, he had a price on his head and lost the privileges and protection granted to him as a noble. Even killing abanitawas not considered a crime, although there was no reward for his death. Special forms of exile were accompanied bywywiecenie(a declaration of the sentence in churches) or by issuance of a separate declaration to townfolk andpeasantry, all of them increased the knowledge of the exile and thus made his capture more likely. A more severe penalty than exile was "infamy"(infamia): A loss of honor and respect(utrata czci i wiary)in addition to exile.On October 23, 2006, for the first time inUnited Stateshistory, a judge in the United States imposed exile on a U.S. citizen for crimes committed in the U.S. The case concerned Malcolm Watson, a citizen of the United States and a permanent resident ofCanada, who resided in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, across the border from Buffalo, New York. Watson, a teacher at Buffalo Seminary and a cross-border commuter, pleaded guilty to misdemeanorsex crimesagainst a 15 year old former student. Watson received a sentence of three years ofprobation, but wanted to serve this time in Canada where he, his wife, and their children lived. This was approved subject to the condition that Watson had to remain out of the U.S. except for meetings with his probation officer, effectively exiling Watson for three years. Watson, however, was arrested upon his re-entry to Canada amid public outcry, and faced possible deportation to the U.S.[1]Personal exileExile has been used particularly for political opponents of those in power. The use of exile for political purposes serves the government by preventing their exiled opponent from organizing in their native land or from becoming a martyr.Exile represented an especially severe punishment in times past, particularly for those, likeOvidorDu Fu, who were exiled to strange or backward regions, cut off from all of the possibilities of their accustomed lifestyle as well as from their families and associates.Dantedescribed the pain of exile inThe Divine Comedy: Tu lascerai ogne cosa dilettapi caramente; e questo quello straleche l'arco de lo essilio pria saetta.Tu proverai s come sa di salelo pane altrui, e come duro callelo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale You will leave everything you love most:this is the arrow that the bow of exileshoots first. You will know how saltyanother's bread tastes and how hard itis to ascend and descendanother's stairs "Paradiso XVII: 55-60[2]Exile has been softened, to some extent, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as exiles have been welcomed in other countries. There, they have been able to create new communities in those countries or, less frequently, returned to their homelands following the demise of the regime that exiled them.Deportation serves as a modern form of exile. This involves either the expulsion of persons of foreign citizenship from a country (usually back to that person's country of origin) or forcible relocation within a nation. Deportation is imposed either as the result of a criminal activity, including illegal immigration, or based on the needs and policies of a government.TheBritishandFrenchgovernments often deported people topenal colonies, such asAustraliaor Georgia. These colonies were usually underdeveloped pieces of land owned by that government in which conditions were harsh enough to serve as punishment.[3]Famous people who have been in exile Napoleon Iexiled fromFranceto Elba and, later, St Helena Idi Amin, exiled toLibya, andSaudi Arabiauntil his death. Bertolt Brecht Joseph Brodsky, exiled fromSoviet UniontoUnited States John Calvin, exiled fromSwitzerlandto France, but later let back into Switzerland, due to change in government Frdric Chopin, exiled fromPolandto France El Cid, banned from Castile, served other Iberian kings ending with the conquest of Valencia Dante Alighieri, Medieval Italian poet and author of theDivine Comedy,sentenced to two years of exile and forced to pay a fine when the Black Guelfs took control of Florence. However, Dante could not pay his fine because he was staying at Rome at the request of Pope Boniface VIII and was considered to be an absconder and sentenced to permanent exile. Albert Einsteinself-exiled fromGermanyto the United States Sigmund Freudself-exiled fromAustriatoUnited Kingdom Heinrich Heine Victor Hugoexiled from France to theChannel Islands Arthur Koestler Jan Amos Komensk Leninself-exiled to Switzerland Thomas Mannself-exile to Switzerland and to the United States, moved back to Switzerland Karl Marxself-exiled from Germany to United Kingdom Adam Mickiewicz Ovid EmperorHaile Selassieof Ethiopia Alexander Solzhenitsynexiled from the Soviet Union, returned after the fall ofCommunism Leon Trotskyexiled toTurkey, France,Norway, andMexico Miguel de Unamunoconfined to Fuerteventura, fled to FranceGovernment in exileA "government in exile" is a political group that claims to be a country's legitimate government, but for various reasons is unable to exercise its legal power, and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually operate under the assumption that they will one day return to their native country and regain power.Governments in exile frequently come into existence duringwartimeoccupation. For example, during the German expansion of theSecond World War, numerous European governments andmonarchswere forced to seek refuge in theUnited Kingdom, rather than face certain destruction at the hands of the Nazis. As well as during a foreign occupation, after an internal coup d'etat, a government in exile may be established abroad.Actions of governments in exileInternational law recognizes that governments in exile may undertake many types of actions in the conduct of their daily affairs. These actions include: Becoming a party to a bilateral or internationaltreaty Amending or revising its own constitution Maintaining military forces Retaining (or "newly obtaining") diplomatic recognition by sovereign states Issuing identity cards Allowing the formation of new political parties Instituting democratic reforms Holding elections Allowing for direct (or more broadly-based) elections of its government officersHowever, none of these actions can serve to legitimatize a government in exile to become the internationally recognized legal government of its current locality. By definition, a government in exile is spoken of in terms of its native country; hence it must return to its native country and regain power there in order to obtain legitimacy as the legal government of that geographic area.Past governments in exile Provisional Government of the Republic ofKorea Crown Council ofEthiopia, led by H.I.M Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie and based in theWashington D.C.area, claimed that the Emperor was still the legal head of Ethiopia The government in exile of the Free City of Danzig Spanish Republican governmentin exile afterFranco's coup d'tat. Based in Mexico City from 1939 to 1946, when it was moved toParis, where it lasted until Franco's death The Provisional Government of FreeIndiawas established by Indian nationalists in exile during the war Other exiled leaders inEnglandincluded King Zog ofAlbaniaand EmperorHaile SelassieofEthiopiaMany countries established a government in exile after loss of sovereignty in connection withWorld War II: Belgium(invaded May 10, 1940) Czechoslovakia(established in 1940 by Bene and recognized by the British government) FreeFrance(after 1940) Greece(invaded October 28, 1940) Luxembourg(invaded May 10, 1940) Netherlands(invaded May 10, 1940) Norway(invaded April 9, 1940) Poland(from September 1939) Yugoslavia(invaded April 6, 1941) Commonwealth of thePhilippines(invaded December 8, 1941) Denmark's occupation (April 9, 1940) was administered by the German Foreign Office, contrary to other occupied lands that were under military administration. Denmark did not establish a government in exile, although there was an Association of Free Danes established inLondon. The King and his government remained in Denmark, and functioned comparatively independently for the first three years of German occupation. Meanwhile,Icelandand theFaroe Islandswere occupied by the Allies, and effectively separated from the Danish crown.Nation in exileWhen large groups, or occasionally a whole people or nation is exiled, it can be said that this nation is in "exile," ordiaspora.The termdiaspora(inAncient Greek,"a scattering or sowing of seeds") refers to any people or ethnic population who are forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands, the dispersal of such people, and the ensuing developments in their culture.Nations that have been in exile for substantial periods include theJews, who were deported byNebuchadnezzar II of Babylonin 597B.C.E., and again in the years following the destruction of the second temple inJerusalemin the year 70C.E.The Jewish diaspora has lasted more than two thousand years, until the founding of the modern State ofIsraelin 1948, which finally opened the possibility of returning to the ancestral homeland. The Jewish diaspora brought on many distinctive cultural developments within the exiled communities. Theological reflection on the meaning of exile has led to the insight thatGod, who dwells amongst his people, also lives and suffers in exile. The Hasidic master Israel Baal Shem Tov said, "Pray continually for Gods glory, that it may be redeemed from its exile."[4]In modern Israel, there is a Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, and Jews from around the world are encouraged to makealiyah(ascend)to end their exile by emigrating to Israel.History contains numerous diaspora-like events. The Migration Period relocations, which included several phases, are just one set of many. The first phase Migration Period displacement from between 300 and 500C.E.included relocation of the Goths, (Ostrogoths, Visigoths), Vandals, Franks, various other Germanic tribes (Burgundians, Langobards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, Alamanni, Varangians), Alans, and numerous Slavic tribes. The second phase, between 500 and 900C.E., saw Slavic, Turkic, and other tribes on the move, re-settling inEastern Europeand gradually making it predominantly Slavic, and affectingAnatoliaand the Caucasus as the first Turkic peoples (Avars, Bulgars, Huns, Khazars, Pechenegs) arrived. The last phase of the migrations saw the coming of theMagyarsand theVikingexpansion out ofScandinavia.Here is a partial list of forced exiles in recent times: After the partitions ofPolandin the late eighteenth century, and following the uprisings (Kosciuszko Uprising, November Uprising, and January Uprising) against the partitioning powers (Russian Empire,PrussiaandAustro-Hungary), many Poles chose, or were forced, into exile, forming large diasporas (known as "Polonia"), especially inFranceand theUnited States. The Acadian diasporathe Great Expulsion(Grand Drangement)occurred when the British expelled about 10,000 Acadians (over three-fourths of the Acadian population ofNova Scotia) between 1755 and 1764. The British split the Acadians between different colonies to impose assimilation. Armenian diasporaArmenians living in their ancient homeland, which had been controlled by theOttoman Empirefor centuries, fled persecution and massacres during several periods of forced emigration, from the 1880s to the 1910s. Many Armenians settled in theUnited States(a majority of whom live in the state ofCalifornia),France,India,Iran,Lebanon,RussiaandSyria. Circassiansfled CircassiaKabardey, Cherkes, Adigey Republics and Shapsug Area in 1864. Exiled 90 percent of Circassians are by Russian colonialists toOttoman Empireor imperialTurkey. The Circassian Diaspora is over four million worldwide, with large Circassian communities inBulgaria,Cyprus,Egypt,Greece,Israel,Jordan,Lebanon,Romania,Syria,Russiaas well the formerUSSR, and 100,000 Circassians in North America (the United States and Canada), as well over 10,000 Circassians inAustralia. The entire population of Crimean Tatars (200,000) that remained in their homeland Crimea was exiled on May 18, 1944, to Central Asia as a form of "ethnic cleansing" and collective punishment on false accusations.The twentieth century saw huge population movements. Partly this was due to natural disasters, as has happened throughout history, but it also involved large-scale transfers of people by government decree. Some diasporas occurred because the people went along with, or could not escape, the government's plan (such asStalin's desire to populate EasternRussia, Central Asia, and Siberia; and the transfer of hundreds of thousands of people betweenIndiaandPakistanin the 1947 Partition). Other diasporas occurred as people fled the decrees; for example, European Jews fleeing theHolocaustduring World war II), and Hutu and Tutsi trying to escape theRwandan Genocidein 1994.During theCold Warera, huge populations of refugees continued to form from areas of war, especially from Third World nations; all overAfrica(for example, over 50,000 South Asians expelled fromUgandabyIdi Aminin 1975),South America(for example, thousands ofUruguayanrefugees fled to Europe during military rule in the 1970s and 80s) andCentral America(for example, Nicaraguans,Salvadorians,Guatemalans,Hondurans,Costa RicansandPanamanians), the Middle East (the Iranians who fled the 1978 Islamic revolution), the Indian subcontinent (thousands of former subjects of theBritish Rajwent to theUKafterIndiaandPakistanbecame independent in 1947), andSoutheast Asia(for example, the displaced 30,000 FrenchcolonsfromCambodiaexpelled by theKhmer Rougeregime underPol Pot). The issue of untold millions of Third World refugees created more diasporas than ever in human history.Tax exileA wealthy citizen who departs from a former abode for a lower tax jurisdiction in order to reduce his/her tax burden is termed a "tax exile." These are people who choose to leave their native country for a foreign nation or jurisdiction, where taxes on their personal income are appreciably lower, or even nothing. Going into tax exile is a means of tax mitigation or avoidance.UnderUKlaw, a person is "tax resident" if they visit the country for 183 days or more in the tax year or for 91 days or more on average in any four consecutive tax years.[5]Tax havenAtax havenis a place where certain taxes are levied at a low rate or not at all. This encourages wealthy individuals and/orbusinessesto establish themselves in areas that would otherwise be overlooked. Different jurisdictions tend to be havens for different types of taxes, and for different categories of people and/or companies.Often described in different ways, it is difficult to find a satisfactory or generally accepted definition for what constitutes a tax haven.The Economisttentatively adopted the description by Colin Powell (former Economic Adviser toJersey): "What identifies an area as a tax haven is the existence of a composite tax structure established deliberately to take advantage of, and exploit, a worldwide demand for opportunities to engage in tax avoidance."The Economistpointed out, however, that this definition would still exclude a number of jurisdictions traditionally thought of as tax havens.[6]One way a person or company takes advantage of tax havens is by moving to, and becoming resident for tax purposes in, a particular country. Another way for an individual or a company to take advantage of a tax haven is to establish a separate legal entity (an "offshore company," "offshore trust," orfoundation), subsidiary or holding company there. Assets are transferred to the new company or trust so that gains may be realized, or income earned, within this legal entity rather than earned by the beneficial owner.TheUnited Statesis unlike most other countries in that its citizens are subject to U.S. tax on their worldwide income no matter where in the world they reside. U.S. citizens therefore cannot avoid U.S. taxes either by emigrating or by transferring assets abroad.Notes1. www.canada.com,U.S. sex offender serving probation in Canada was not "exiled," says N.Y. judge.Retrieved December 6, 2006.2. Read Easily,Dante Alighieri. Retrieved December 6, 2006.3. Public Book Shelf,History of Colonial Georgia. Retrieved December 12, 2006.4. Martin Buber,Hasidism and Modern Man(New York: Harper & Row, 1958).5. www.hmrc.gov.uk,Taxable UK Residents. Retrieved December 6, 2006.6. Caroline Doggart,Tax Havens and Their Uses(Economist Intelligence Unit, 2002,ISBN 0862181631).External linksAll links retrieved October 11, 2013. Offshore Financial CentersIMF Background Paper. Tax Justice Network. An OECD Proposal To Eliminate Tax Competition Would Mean Higher Taxes and Less PrivacyHeritage Foundation: Washington D.C.CreditsNew World Encyclopediawriters and editors rewrote and completed theWikipediaarticle in accordance withNew World Encyclopediastandards. This article abides by terms of theCreative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License(CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both theNew World Encyclopediacontributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this articleclick herefor a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here: Exile(Nov 9, 2006)history Government_in_exile(Nov 9, 2006)history Tax_exile(Nov 9, 2006)history Tax_haven(Nov 9, 2006)history Diaspora(Nov 9, 2006)historyExile, meaning to be away from ones home state while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return, has become in vogue once more for heads of state. The departure of Tunisian President for exile in the Saudi city ofJeddah (the same city where former PresidentIdi Aminof Uganda lived in exile until his death on 2003 after being removed from power on 1979 at end of theUgandan-Tanzanian War) in February has been followed by the departure ofYemeni President Ali Abdullah Salehto the same country, ostensibly for medical treatment following a rocket attack on his presidential palace on Friday, but which many speculate may become permanent. Though the government rejected an opposition proposal to prepare for the transition from the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and for the election of his replacement and though his spokesmen said no decisions on Yemens future could be taken until he returned from Saudi Arabia, the US and EU have pressured Sanaa to initiate what US secretary of state Hillary Clinton called an immediate transition to a new regime. Salehs departure, if it becomes permanent, will inevitably have an impact on any process of accountability for crimes committed during therecent spike in repression Saudi Arabia has not signed the Rome Statute.Exile has a very long history, stretching back to Greek tragedy. Euripedes Medea made herself and her family exiles in Corinth because of her actions in Iolcus. She talks of her exiled state in Corinth: I, a desolate woman without a city no relative at all.The exile of Medea, like that of Pol Pot in Cambodia and Hosni Mubarak in Sherm-al-Sheik, is internal in form. The more usual form in recent history is external. It is unlikely that Saleh and Ben Ali will be as desolate as Medea, though the recent history of the phenomenon shows a variety of outcomes. Typically, modern exile is permanent in the form of asylum, though Charles Taylors deportation from Nigeria for face trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2005 presents an exception which may one day constitute the rule. While 2011 may yet turn out to be an annus mirabilis for exile, it is worth nothing that Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed Baby Doc, whowas thePresident of Haitifrom 1971 until his overthrow by apopular uprisingin 1986, unexpectedly returned to Haiti on 16 January 2011, after two decades in exilein France due to a popular uprising on 7 February 1986. The following day, he was arrested byHaitian police, facing possible charges for embezzlement. On 18 January, Duvalier was charged withcorruption, and is expected to be held before a judge in Port-au-Prince for his trial. It may prove a happier ending that some of the other exiles the international community has tolerated in the interest of regime change or peace, as the following survey demonstrates.Idi AminAfter an eight-year rule (1971-79) characterized byhuman rightsabuse,political repression,ethnic persecution,extrajudicial killings,nepotism,corruption, and gross economic mismanagement (the number of people killed as a result of his regime is estimated by international observers and human rights groups to range from 100,000to 500,000), internal dissent within Uganda and Amins attempt toannextheKageraprovince ofTanzaniain 1978 led to theUgandaTanzania Warand the demise of his regime.Amins army retreated steadily in the face of Tanzanian counter-attack, and, despite military help fromLibyasMuammar al-Gaddafi, he was forced to flee into exile by helicopter on 11 April 1979, whenKampala was captured. He escaped first to Libya, where he stayed until 1980, and ultimately settled inSaudi Arabia, where theSaudi royal familyallowed him sanctuary and paid him a generous subsidy in return for his staying out of politics.Amin lived for a number of years on the top two floors of theNovotel Hotelon Palestine Road in Jeddah. In 1989, he attempted to return to Uganda, apparently to lead an armed group organised by ColonelJuma Oris. He reachedKinshasa,Zaire, before Zairian PresidentMobutuforced him to return to Saudi Arabia (exile throws up some very colourful characters). Amin died in 2003 and is buried in Jeddah.Erich HoneckerHonecker led theGerman Democratic Republicas General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State from1976. Following the definite end of theCold War, Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes and was ousted by the party in late 1989 and removed from power. After the GDR was dissolved in October 1990, the Honeckers stayed in a Soviet military hospital near Berlin before later fleeing the republic to Moscow, to avoid prosecution over charges ofCold Warcrimes. He was accused by the German government of involvement in the deaths of 192 East Germans who tried to leave the GDR in violation of anti-Republikfluchtlaws. Following thedissolution of the Soviet Unionin December 1991, Honecker took refuge in theChileanembassy in Moscow, but was extradited by theYeltsinadministration to Germany in 1992. He was officially expelled from the reformed SED-PDS before the trial opened. He then joined the very smallnew Communist Party. When the trial formally opened in early 1993, Honecker was released due to ill health and on 13 January of that year moved to Chile to live with his daughter who was married to a Chilean.Mengistu Haile MariamMengistu was the most prominent officer of theDerg, theCommunistmilitary junta that governedEthiopiafrom 1974 to 1987, and the President of thePeoples Democratic Republic of Ethiopiafrom 1987 to 1991. He oversaw theEthiopian Red Terrorof 19771978,a campaign of repression against theEthiopian Peoples Revolutionary Partyand other anti-Derg factions. Mengistu fled toZimbabwein 1991 at the conclusion of theEthiopian Civil War. He remains there, though unusually there was some degree of accountability after one of the Ethiopian courts Red Terror trials verdict found him guiltyin absentiaofgenocide. His charge sheet and evidence list was 8,000 pages long. The evidence against him included signed execution orders, videos of torture sessions and personal testimonies.The trial began in 1994 and ended in 2006. Mengistu was found guilty as charged on 12 December 2006, and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. After Mengistus conviction in December 2006, the Zimbabwean government said that he still enjoyed asylum and would not be extradited. A Zimbabwean government spokesman explained this by saying that Mengistu and his government played a key and commendable role during our struggle for independence. According to the spokesman, Mengistu assisted his countrys guerrillas during theirliberation warby providing training and arms, and after the war he had provided training for Zimbabwean air force pilots; the spokesman said that not many countries have shown such commitment to us.Ferdinand MarcosMarcos, sadly most famous for his wifes enormous shoe collection, was President of the Philippinesfrom 1965 to 1986. His administration was marred by massiveauthoritariancorruption,despotism,nepotism, political repression, and human rights violations. In 1983, his government was implicated in the assassination of his primary political opponent,Benigno Aquino, Jr.The implication caused a chain of events, including a tainted presidential election that served as the catalyst for thePeople Power Revolutionin February 1986 that led to his removal from power and eventual exile in Hawaii. A close ally of Ronald Reagans administration, Marcos died inHonolulu on September 28, 1989, of kidney, heart and lung ailments.Jean Bedel BokassaThis is perhaps the most interesting exile, incorporating return, trial, punishment and a decisive role in French elections. Bokassa was the head of stateof theCentral African Republicand its successor state, thepreposterously named Central African Empire, from hiscoup detaton 1 January 1966 until 20 September 1979.After his overthrow in 1979, Central Africa reverted to its former name and status as theCentral African Republic, and the formerBokassa Iwent into exile. On the date of the coup against him by David Dacko, Bokassa, who was visiting Libya on a state visit, fled tothe Ivory Coast where he spent four years living inAbidjan. He then moved to France where he was allowed to settle in a suburb ofParis. France gave him political asylum because of theFrench Foreign Legionobligations. During Bokassas seven-year of exile, he wrote his memoirs after complaining that his French military pension was insufficient. But the French courts ordered that all 8,000 copies of the book be confiscated and destroyed after his publisher claimed that Bokassa said that he shared women with President Valry Giscard dEstaing, who has been a frequent guest in the Central African Republic. Bokassa also claimed to have given Giscard a gift of diamonds worth around a quarter of a million dollars in 1973 while the French president was serving as finance minister. Giscards next presidential reelection campaign failed in the wake of the scandal. Bokassas presence in France proved embarrassing to many government ministers who supported him during his entire rule. He returned to Central Africa in 1986, and was arrested as soon as he stepped off the plane. He was tried for 14 different charges, includingtreason,murder,cannibalism, illegal use of property, assault and battery, andembezzlement, and convicted of these offenses in 1987. He was imprisoned in 19871993. Bokassa lived in private life in his former capital, Bangui, until his death in November 1996.Mobutu Sese SekoMobutu Sese Sekoas thePresidentof theDemocratic Republic of the Congo/Zairefrom 1965 to 1997, a rule characterised by authoritarianism, war and mass human rights abuses. Mobutu was overthrown in theFirst Congo WarbyLaurent-Dsir Kabila, who was supported by the governments of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Mobutu went into temporary exile inTogobut lived mostly inMorocco. On the very same day he was exiled,Laurent-Dsir Kabilabecame the new president of Congo.He died shortly after on 7 September 1997, inRabat, Morocco, fromprostate cancer. He is buried in Rabat. In December 2007, theNational Assembly of the Democratic Republic of the Congorecommended returning his remains to the Congo and interring them in a mausoleum.Powered By DT Author BoxWritten byPdraig McAuliffePadraig McAuliffe graduated from UCC in 2004 and completed his PhD from the same institution in 2009. He lectures in the University of Dundee. His research interests include the interaction of transitional justice with rule of law reconstruction and the politics of international criminal tribunals, most notably the on-going Khmer Rouge Trials.Share this: Twitter Facebook Email Print More Like this:Declan Costello (1926-2011) and Irish Socio-Economic Rights JurisprudenceForced Marriage, Age and Immigration.Leave a ReplyThe cult of exileModern intellectuals should stand up for outcasts. But not by pretending to be outcasts themselvesbyIan Buruma / March 20, 2001 /Leave a commentPublished inMarch 2001issue of Prospect MagazineExile is in fashion. It evokes images of a critical spirit operating on the margins of society, a traveller, rootless and yet at home in every metropolis, a tireless wanderer from conference to academic conference, a thinker in several languages, an eloquent advocate for minorities, in short, a romantic outsider living on the edge of the bourgeois world.This may sound frivolous. For exile is surely no fun. There is nothing glamorous about the poor shivering Tamil, sleeping on a cold, plastic bench at Frankfurt railway station, or an Iraqi, fleeing from Saddams butchers, afraid of walking the streets of Dover lest he be attacked by British skinheads, or a young woman from Eritrea, standing at the side of a minor road to Milan, picking up truck drivers so that she can feed her baby. These are not fashionable figures, but outcasts, who have nothing in common with the multicultural intellectuals whom we honour as the poets of post-colonial narratives.I have in front of me a book,Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss. It is a collection of lectures given at the New York Public Library by five well-known writers in exile. Edward Said is introduced as a Palestinian in exile, Eva Hoffmann as a Pole in exile, Bharati Mukherjee, a Bengali in exile, Charles Simic, a Yugoslav in exile, and Andr Aciman, as an exile from Alexandria.The lectures are, on the whole, unexceptionable. The curious thing is, however, that of the five, only two were forced to leave their country of origin: Aciman, whose family was kicked out of Egypt, and Simic, whose parents could not live under communism. Said, who grew up in Cairo, was sent to a private boarding school in the US, not because of anyforce majeure, but because his father, a US citizen, believed that an American education offered better prospects for a bright young man. Bharati Mukherjee, born into a rich Calcutta family, married a Canadian writer, moved to North America and has no desire to return to India, except for vacations.Why then, this description of exile? Why the conscious identification with banishment, with the outcasts of the world? In her contribution, Eva Hoffmann comes up with a plausible explanation. Exile, in her view, involves dislocation, disorientation, self-division And within the framework of postmodern theory, we have come to value exactly those qualities that exile demands uncertainty, displacement, the fragmented identity. Within this framework, exile becomes, well, sexy, glamorous, interesting.In literary and academic circles, then, exile has acquired something far removed from those cold plastic benches at Frankfurt station, the skinheads of Dover, or the truck drivers along the B-routes to Milan. What we have here is exile as metaphor, to use Saids own phrase, exile as the typical condition of the modern intellectual. This is not an original thesis. Saids hero, the German critic Theodor Adorno, who was for a time a real as well as theoretical exile, claimed that a sense of alienation, of not feeling at home even in your own home, was the only correct moral attitude for an intellectual to adopt. Adorno is part of a German romantic tradition in which intellectuals form a secular clerisy guarding the moral and intellectual health of the nation. (Gnter Grass is an example of a writer who still takes this line.)Exile as metaphor is not a new idea either. In the Jewish tradition, a metaphorical meaning has been attached to exile for a very long time. The last words of the story told at the Pesach Seder, Next year in Jerusalem, express a pious wish, which, for most of those who voice it, is an abstraction. For orthodox Jews, it is only time to return to Jerusalem once the Messiah has come and the temple has been restored to its former glory. It would be a form of blasphemy, in the orthodox tradition, to turn the vision into a political reality. So the idea of doing just that, of making Israel the homeland of the Jews once again, had to be a secular enterprise, started by non-orthodox, often socialist Jews like Theodor Herzl.The Israeli novelist AB Yehoshua calls Jewish exile, thegolah, a neurotic condition. It is neurotic to express a longing for something, without actually wishing to attain it. In Yehoshuas view, the longing to return to Jerusalem is no more than a neurotic form of nostalgia, a not uncommon condition among certain literary exiles too. But Yehoshua goes further he thinks that Jews are victims of their own delusion, the idea, that is, of having been chosen by God. The idea of Jewish exceptionalism is hard to maintain at home, in a largely Jewish nation, with its own government, army, political parties, showbiz celebrities, scandals, gangsters and whatnot. The self-flattering notion of being chosen, of being different from the others, is easier to maintain in exile, where ones special status can be confirmed almost daily by instances, imagined or real, of discrimination. The Holocaust came as the final proof that this was not a sensible recipe for a quiet life.The choice to live in a metaphorical exile is in fact already a form of privilege, something only people who face no real danger can afford. Herzl, who felt at ease with the highergoyimof Europe, understood this perfectly well. The return to the holy land was not to help himself, but to help other Jews who were not in a position to enjoy their status as the chosen ones. But Herzl, as far as I am aware, had the honesty never to use the word exile to describe his own condition.***One of the first stories of exile in our literary tradition is the story of Adam and Eve. No matter how we interpret the story of their expulsion from the Garden of Eden original sin or not we can be certain of one thing: there is no way back to paradise. After that bite of the apple, the return to innocence was cut off for ever. The exile of Adam and Eve is the consequence of growing up. An adult can only recall the state of childlike innocence in his imagination, and from this kind of exile a great deal of literature has emerged; it is infused with the melancholy knowledge that we can never return to Eden.The transition from childhood innocence, and the security of the maternal embrace, to the hard world of maturity, is described in Edward Saids memoir,Out of Place. He describes his arrival from Cairo in 1951, to go to school in the US. The worst wrench was to leave his mother, who never ceased to remind her son how unnatural it was to be living apart. He can still feel the loss today, the sense that Id rather be somewhere else-defined as closer to her enveloped in her special maternal love, infinitely forgiving, sacrificing, giving-because beingherewas not being where I/we had wanted to be,herebeing defined as a place of exileWe all know the feeling, even though we may not express it quite so tearfully. But exile from Eden is a part of life. Some men never look back, some never get over it, and look for the maternal embrace in the beds of many women, and yet others turn it into art. This explains the universal fascination with exile in literature. Ovid, Li Po or Joseph Roth appeal to us, because their banishments, which were not imaginary, also contain a deeper, metaphorical meaning.There are some instances where the childhood Edens cease to exist. A society, a culture, even a people can disappear. Czeslaw Milosz, born as a Pole in Lithuania, has described what it is like to look back now, as an American in California, to his youth in Vilnius. He still writes in Polish about people and ways of life which no longer exist. All things change everywhere, of course. But in the case of Milosz and Isaac Bashevis Singer, the worlds they describe exist only in their books. The same was true for Joseph Roth. He lived in exile, twice over, for he grew up in the Austro-Hungarian empire, which ceased to exist in 1918, and died as an exile in Paris in 1939, one year after Austria was swallowed up by the Third Reich.On the other hand Ulysses, one of the most remarkable exiles in western literature, was not really banished at all. But since his return from Troy was blocked for ten years, he was a kind of exile. Ulysses pined for Ithaca, where his house was, his family, and his wife Penelope. He was lord of Ithaca; that was his place in the order of things. A man who has lost his house, his wife or his position is not a proper man, but a beggar, a vagabond, half dead in the land of the living. A vagabond is sterile; he doesnt produce a family; he leaves nothing behind.The Odysseyis the story of a man who must regain his position in the order of things.It is impossible to know precisely what Homer meant to convey in his epic, but I think he was dealing with the tension between human autonomy and fate. A grown person has to feel responsible for his or her life. This is to assume that we have some degree of control over it. ButThe Odysseyshows that man is also a plaything of the gods. And this has something to do with exile too. Anyone who has wandered alone in foreign countries, often without knowing the language or customs, knows how helpless, indeed child-like, that can make you feel. Your fate really does appear to be in the hands of others, government officials, hotel managers, policemen, or even, who knows, the gods. And if I, a privileged European can feel this way, how about the poor Tamil in Frankfurt station? Only after his return to Ithaca can Ulysses wake up as a grown man who knows his way around.There are many ways to interpretThe Odyssey. Dante, himself an exile from Florence, believed that the hero never really wanted to be at home. Dantes Ulysses was a kind of eternal student who loathed the idea of domesticity, with a wife and children and a nice little dog. Who needed that kind of responsibility? It was too boring. First he would win experience of the world, hitchhike to India, as it were, sleep with many women, and above all, gather knowledge. Just as Eve couldnt resist that bite of the apple in Eden, Dantes hero thirsts for knowledge, with the risk of getting burnt, like Icarus. Ulysses returns to Ithaca, just as he does in Homers tale, but then takes off again, and ends up entering the infernal gates. Dante lived in the middle ages, but he was also touched by the spirit of the Renaissance. He admired the heros wish for knowledge. His Ulysses is really the harbinger of the intellectual as a romantic exile. Banishment is his fate by choice. He was almost a man of our time.Heinrich Heine was already a man of our time. A romantic, a poet, a revolutionary and an intellectual outsider, Heine felt nostalgia for his native Germany, but preferred to live in Paris. Germany, as he put it, kept him awake at night. Heine was an outsider as a Jew in Germany. He found it impossible to get an official position, even after he had converted without conviction to Christianity. He felt like an outsider, too, because he was a free-thinker who couldnt stand the authoritarianism of the German states. Heine loved Germany, just as Germans loved his poems, but at a distance. He would have liked to have died in Germany, but politics and illness prevented his return, and like Marlene Dietrich, another ambivalent wanderer from German lands, he died in Paris.Heine was in many ways a typical example of the modern literary exile. The borderline between banishment and emigration was fuzzy. He was really an expatriate, someone who has chosen to live his life abroad. And by Heines time the typical place of exile has shifted, from the desert the cold, lonely, windswept plains, beyond the borders of civilisation to the metropolitan centres of the west: London, Paris, Berlin, New York. Here political action, plotted in cafes and public libraries, began to play an increasingly important role in the life of exiles-freedom, usually in a left-wing form, was their typical religion. Exile from Rome in the age of Augustus, or Florence in Dantes time, meant the loss of liberty, the civil rights of a metropolitan citizen. The modern exiles in our great cities, however poor or lonely, almost invariably enjoy more freedom than the citizens of the countries they left behind. Karl Marx could complain as much as he wanted to about all those British philistines, but he stayed in London because he was free to design his workers utopia.London was a centre of European revolutionary activities after the disasters of 1848, just as London today is a centre for Arab or African politics, or New York for the Chinese diaspora. It is not an easy life, in this twilight world of migr journals, shabby apartments and personal feuds, fed endlessly by old animosities and political frustrations. Time, in this kind of exile, often appears to have been frozen. People live only for the future, and once it finally dawns on them that the desired future will never come, they live only in the past. I have seen many examples: Chinese intellectuals, who once advised government leaders in Beijing, subsisting in lonely rooms in Queens, in a mess of old newspapers and magazines. Because exile was supposed to be temporary, these fallen men never bothered to learn English or read an American paper. Before they know it, it is too late to return-stranded, their place gone, their way back cut off for ever, they might as well be dead.It doesnt have to be like that. Sometimes an exile will go home as a revolutionary hero. The point is, however, that exile has become a phenomenon of the big city-like alienation, existentialism, and post-modern, multicultural deconstruction. The outsider romantic, sexual, ethnic or whatever is described and often celebrated in our metropoles. Isherwoods English novels came from the homosexual world of 1930s Berlin. Joyce wrote about Dublin in Trieste and Paris. Burroughs brooded on his American sexual delirium in a hotel room in Tangiers. Salman Rushdie wrote in London about his fantasies of Bombay. What started with Heine became almost mainstream in the 20th century.Once more, I do not wish to appear frivolous. Writers and other exiles did not always move abroad for fun. Joyce chose to live abroad. But Roth, Feuchtwanger, Zweig, Schoenberg, Weill and many others, had to flee for their lives. However, the difference between self-imposed exile and banishment was in many cases ceasing to exist altogether at the end of the 19th century. Exile had became an attitude, a literary and intellectual way of observing the world. Baudelaire saw the writer as a detachedflneur, a mocking dandy in the big city crowd, alienated, isolated, anonymous, aristocratic, melancholic. For Joyce and other writers isolation and detachment were necessary conditions for writing literature. Silence, exile and cunning was his prescription, or at least that of Stephen Dedalus, his literary alter ego. A writer has to operate alone, as a stranger among strangers. Joseph Brodsky, whose departure from the Soviet Union was hardly voluntary, wrote that being a writer in exile is like being a dog or a man hurtled into outer space in a capsule And your capsule is your language. Like Joyce, he believed that exile was good for a writer; you were alone with your language. Exile provided distance. Exile, in this sense, is not so much metaphorical as metaphysical; it gives meaning to a way of life.Many people were forced into exile before and after the second world war. But the middle decades of the last century also saw exile and the outsider, or the outlaw, emerge as one of the main subjects of European literature. Detachment as an ideal held a particular attraction for homosexuals, but also for straight Don Juans. Genet was an extreme example; gay, criminal, homeless. Isherwood, in Berlin and LA, was a less extreme case. But aside from the quality of their prose, about which one might argue, we should also consider Henry Miller, an American in Paris, and Lawrence Durrell, an Englishman in Egypt.And yet detachment, like everything, has its limits. Joyce might have seen distance and isolation as necessary conditions for writing his masterpieces, but the loneliness of the modern tranger, and the absurdity of the weightless, unbounded existence, made others thirst for engagement, a kind of solidarity, if not with a particular people, then with humanity in general, or at least that part of humanity living in what came to be called the third world. This is how a fashion for Maoism, the most extreme revolt against individualism, could follow from existential alienation. But extreme nationalism has also cast its spells.A number of Japanese artists and writers moved to Europe at the beginning of the last century, to find a refuge from the narrow provincialism of Japan. They lived mostly in Paris, gathering knowledge, seducing women, painting, writing poems, and seeking the key to their innermost souls in the anonymity of a foreign crowd. And it was precisely these same people who often returned home in the 1930s, with a sigh of relief, to bask in the motherly embrace of the Japanese nation, which was being whipped up just then into a mood of xenophobic hysteria. Scorched by their lonely travels, some became the fiercest war propagandists once they got home.***My intention, in citing these examples, is not to plead against the spirit of adventure, promiscuity, curiosity or freedom abroad. On the contrary. I have always been led by wanderlust myself. What I am trying to get at instead is the tension between political engagement and intellectual independence. Edward Said has written about this, without quite resolving the problem. He has made great claims, for independence as well as engagement. His argument is that an intellectual should always stand up for the poor, the weak and the disadvantaged. The free-thinker should resist the dominant powers, which means, in his case, Israel and the US. But while going about his acts of resistance, he should also guard his independence. The question is whether this is always possible. Can you be a spokesman for the Palestinians, as Said was for many years, and remain independent at the same time? He believes you can. Im not so sure it is possible.One solution to this dilemma is to plump for an offshore kind of engagement, a detached involvement. The intellectual abroad, a Sikh in Toronto, let us say, or a Palestinian in New York, or a Jew in Washington, calls for action, sometimes violent action, to be carried out thousands of miles from his home, the consequences of which he will not have to bear. Engagement of this kind can become a politics without responsibility. This type of politics, like modern literary exile, might be metaphorical for the exile in New York, Paris or Toronto, but not for those living in India, Jerusalem or Gaza. Said called his stone-throwing stint on the Lebanese border a symbolic gesture, a metaphoric throw of a metaphoric stone. But stones in the middle east are seldom metaphoric; they hurt; they result in further violence; they kill people.Political engagement can be essential. But too often it results from intellectual frustration. Intellectuals have neither power (outside the universities), nor much influence in modern democracies. This is because western intellectuals, since the Enlightenment, have won their independence. They have fought themselves free. Unlike in China, where the notion of the independent intellectual barely exists, western intellectuals represent nothing but their own ideas. They are not, or should not be, a band of scribes who guard the dogmas that justify the powers that be. Instead they are obliged to take their ideas to the marketplace, and that is how it should be. For intellectual independence is sacrificed once ideas are made to serve a political organisation. This might be essential, on occasion, but one should be clear about the sacrifice involved.Yet, many intellectuals would like to represent more than themselves. The Republic of Letters is pregnant with political ambition. The great revolutionary ideals, which intellectuals once served as secular priests, are out of fashion for the moment. But the multicultural society in which we live, (if we live in the great cities of the western world), offers new chances. Especially in the US, the identity politics of minorities have become increasingly important, and the identities to be promoted are often based on a sentimental sense of collective victimhood. The smart thing to do for an intellectual with political ambition, is to act as the spokesman for such feelings. By identifying himself with the plight of more or less discriminated minorities or other forms of collective suffering, the lonely intellectual manages not only to escape from his isolation, but becomes a symbol of that suffering himself, and so obtains many of the perks and privileges that go with it.The point here is not that intellectuals shouldnt stand up for societys victims. They should. But not by pretending to be victims themselves. To don the bloody mantle of real victims trivialises actual suffering; victimhood becomes a fashion item. Thesoi-disantexile status might attach a certain glamour to the writer in London or New York, but it does nothing for that poor Tamil sleeping in Frankfurt station.The cult of victimhood, marginality and exile has also had a paralysing influence on academe, where literature, anthropology and even history are difficult to discuss anymore without being cuffed in the chains of post-colonial discourse. The notion of exile, especially from the third world, has given post-colonial intellectuals the sacred task of attacking the cultural imperialism of the western metropole. Intellectuals compete to become the new priests of the post-colonial dogma. One of the main dogmas is that hybrid, marginal, post-colonial writing should undermine the imperialist, even racist propaganda of the European literary canon.There is something to be said for this. Any culture or tradition is bound to be rejuvenated by outside influences. And the idea that the western canon should be surrounded by a culturally impregnable moat is absurd. But this so-called marginality is often a form of intellectual self-celebration, for the new influences rarely penetrate from anywhere outside the western world. Glamorous exile, the hybridity of literary style, the attack on the cultural imperialism of the metropole are products of that same metropole, and have become part of a dogma which is exported to the rest of the world. Bookstores in Beijing or Bombay are full of books which evangelise the post-colonial, multicultural, anti-imperialist gospel. And the authors of these gospels live in New York, London or Boston. They live in a closed world of theory, in metaphorical exile, far from the problems of real victims, of people who are forced to live in real exile. Worse than that, multicultural theory has led to ethnic and sexual divisions of labour in intellectual life: more and more, women write about women, gays about gays, blacks about blacks, and so on. This is not hybridity or marginality in a positive sense; it is a new and unnecessary constraint.One way of creating more clarity in these matters is to separate metaphor from reality, or what Confucius called the rectification of names. All he meant by this was that we should call a spade a spade. Exile means banishment, not intellectual loneliness. A writer or an intellectual might operate on the margins of a modern, democratic society, without political authority, but that does not make him an outlaw or an exile. It is time to reject the assumed badges of victimhood. For then we would be better able to recognise the real victims, as well as maintain our intellectual independence. And for those who find an intellectual odyssey too burdensome, they are best advised to seek another occupation.GO TO COMMENTSUser menu Log in or RegisterTop of FormSearch formSearch

Bottom of FormYou are hereCFP: Roman Exile: Poetry, Prose, and PoliticsOrganizers:David M. Pollio, Christopher Newport UniversityGordon P. Kelly, Lewis and Clark CollegeExile during the late Republic/early Empire has traditionally been studied as either an historic and political phenomenon or a literary theme. This panel aims to integrate these heretofore distinct lines of inquiry into two innovative approaches. The first seeks to analyze poetic treatments of exile specifically in relationship to the political institution of exile; the second, to apply techniques of literary interpretation to depictions of exile in works of historical interest such as histories, orations, and letters.Although the Romans inherited a rich and diverse tradition of Greek exilic literature, Roman poets and prose authors nevertheless adapted that tradition in order to address specifically Roman interests. Exile turns out to be an especially poignanttoposfor Roman writers of the late Republic/early Empire, in particular, as it relates not only to Romes legendary founding by the descendants of Trojan exiles, but also to a political institution that played a significant role in shaping the events of that era. We define exile broadly for this panel, including such phenomena as voluntary exile, exile as a legal penalty, deportation, relegation, and proscription.The organizers seek papers that consider images of exile and exiles in the poetry of Horace, Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, and others, as well as in the works of prose authors such as Cicero, Livy, and Seneca. Possible topics include: How a Roman reader would have understood exile as a literary device in relation to the current political institutions of banishment. Would the political institution of exile affect the way a reader perceived the trials and tribulations of a poems exiles? How are images of exile deployed in different genres? How the literary motifs of exile influence its depiction in historical sources.Please send an anonymous abstract of no more than one page in length for a paper suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation as a PDF attachment toapameetings@sas.upenn.edubyMarch 10, 2014. Be sure to mention the title of the panel and provide complete contact information and any AV requests in the body of your email. All submissions will be reviewed anonymously by the panel organizers.00228- See more at: http://apaclassics.org/annual-meeting/146/cfp-roman-exile-poetry-prose-and-politics#sthash.HEXrTrdb.dpufCaesar's Daughterby Alex JohnstonMarcus Mettius is back! Working for Julius Caesar almost had himburnt at the stakeandarrested by a mad Egyptian Pharaoh, but it seems our favourite Roman hasn't learnt his lesson yet. When Caesar once again asks for his help, Marcus obliges. Although, in his defence, this time his assignment is easy enough. All he has to do is take a gift to his daughter Julia, who is married to Pompey, and have a chat with her while there. Pretty safe, right? Surely nothing could go wrong...Caesar's Daughter is a bit different from Johnston's two previous novellas. His previous work is more action-packed, while this one more political. With that, I by no means mean boring. In fact, Johnston is one of the funniest historical fiction authors I know. What I mean is that, in Caesar's Daughter, we can watch the machinations of the political players of the late Roman republic. Pompey, Cicero, the infamous ex-Tribune of the Plebs Clodius, the deposed King of Egypt... they are all here, hatching plots and fearing for their own lives.Johnston well captures the atmosphere of this dangerous era, but as always infuses his story with a huge dollop of humour that will make you laugh from beginning to end. I particularly enjoyed Julia's Song, a short and fun rap song warning you not to mess with Caesar's daughter. The language, as you've probably guessed, is very anachronistic. Some people may be put off by the modern language the characters use, but to me, that just helps you relate better to them and to the story. It also brings home how modern ancient history really is. The more things change...I also loved the afterword, where the author explains what really happened and what he made up. Fast and entertaining, Caesar's Daughter is a great way to spend a summer afternoon.Available at:amazonRating:4/5