The Zone of Displacement: Variety and Movement

The study of exile is burdened by conceptual disputes about the displaced persons who are to be classed as exiles rather than refugees or émigrés or emigrants or cosmopolitans or members of a diaspora. The disputes are an indicator, first, of the political weights variously attached to the term—ranging from the disgrace of the expelled kleptocrat to the celebration of the freedom fighter—and, second, of the historical place of the trope in metaphorical or symbolic senses in numerous religious, aesthetic, and other cultural contexts— ranging from the sacral privileged status of the Christian or Jew awaiting the ultimate restoration to the elevated distance supposedly occupied by the creative artist. The issues are further complicated by the circumstance that the contested concepts figure in many of the variations in the claims and counterclaims constitutive of the displaced condition, so that persons seeking asylum may claim refugee status and deny that they are exiles, lest they be excluded as likely disturbers of the political order or policies of the host state, while individuals seeking recognition as agents and allies in political ventures will assert their status as exiles and reject the passive victimization implied by the term “refugee.”