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222 Conclusion The literature of exiles is vast and varied. Yet, despite differences in historical period and geographical context, certain tropes and literary motifs reappear throughout these texts. The central conflicts in exile writing are never resolved: they persist throughout this literature in varying forms and in varying degrees. The tendency to parse these tensions into binaries has led many scholars to emphasize one element of a multifaceted dialectic. However, this book has shown that a dialectical approach allows one to identify and analyze all of the various forces in tension in a given work. In this way, the analysis of exile writing begins from the premise that each text contains a number of contradictory and competing ways of presenting cultural identity. The strategy, then, is to identify all of these distinct elements and to study the ways in which they interact , interpenetrate, and contradict. In this study I have focused on three writers: Juan Goytisolo, Ariel Dorfman, and Cristina Peri Rossi. Although these writers’ experiences of exile were quite different, their writing shares many common features that are elucidated by employing a dialectical method of analysis. Such a strategy could productively be applied to other cases of exile writing. In addition to approaching exile literature dialectically, this book has highlighted a number of key concepts that are central to exile writing. Whereas it has often been argued that exile literature is either nostalgic, regional, and mournful, or creative, cosmopolitan, and celebratory, this study has demonstrated that exile literature often displays all of these tendencies. In terms of the nation or the homeland, the literature of exile revolves around the exile’s sense of loss after being cast out of his or her homeland and the exile’s feeling of freedom once the bonds of the nation are loosened . The exile often attempts to rewrite national history and also often attempts to create wholly alternative notions of community that are not predicated on the nation. These conflicting views and their challenge to contemporary theories of cultural identity were analyzed in the chapter “Alien Nation.” “Exile’s Time” argued that contemporary exile literature depicts time in premodern , modern, and postmodern modes. Since fascist-oriented authoritarian regimes often revert to pre-modern notions of time and existence, describing their control of the country as a return to the normal course of history, exile writers respond to the authoritarian use of myth by providing counter-myths. They also describe the exile’s time in pre-modern ways in response to their sense that their experience is timeless and eternal, linking them to exiles across the ages. Regarding the exile’s sense of history and time, exile literature is modern, representing time as linear and progressive. In this way, exile Conclusion 223 literature is able to recount the specific events that led up to the moment of exile, countering the official version of history offered by the authoritarian regime. Yet exile literature also challenges the notion of modern, linear time because exiles are sensitive to the ways that history has been manipulated by dictatorship. Exiles often sense that linear time is a patriarchal, authoritarian notion that confines and restricts identity. In addition to pre-modern and modern notions of time, exile literature from the latter part of the twentieth century describes time as postmodern. When the exile narrates time as neither circular nor linear but absent and meaningless, then time is narrated as postmodern . Recognizing the complex ways these notions of time intersect and contradict each other reveals exile literature’s dialectic of time. It might be said that all literature deals with the problem of language. Language becomes an even greater area of focus when the exile is forced to live in a new land where a foreign language is spoken. “To Be Is Not to Be” surveyed and analyzed exile literature’s complex relationship to language. For instance, exiles seek to turn experience into language and to use language to record the past. In these moments, exiles have great faith in language’s power and its ability to shape human understanding and memory. Exiles also attempt to destroy language due to their experience that language can be traitorous and can be manipulated by official discourse. In these moments , language is ruptured and disconnected from meaning and reality. Exile writers also have a very complex relationship with issues of authorship and authority as a consequence of their experience of censorship and authoritarian ideology. “Lost in Space” evaluated the multiple ways that exile writing...

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