The impact of `exile' on thought: Plotinus, Derrida and Gnosticism

Abstract

This article examines the impact of 'exile' -as an individual or collective experience -on how human experience is theorized. The relationship between 'exile' and thought is initially approached historically by looking at the period that Eric Dodds famously called the 'age of anxiety' in late antiquity, i.e. the period between the emperors Aurelius and Constantine. A particular interest is in the dynamics of 'empire' and the concomitant religious ferment as a context in which 'exile', both experientially and symbolically, appears to assume an overbearing significance. Plotinus' narrative of emanation and epistrophe as well as a group of narratives often classified as 'Gnosticism' are juxtaposed as two radical examples of a wider spiritual trend at the time according to which 'exile' could be considered constitutive of human experience. By way of an historical analogy, the insights gained from this study of late antiquity are then used to guide an analysis of the current, 'restless' epoch, in which experiences of displacement and exile on a mass scale undermine traditional notions of belonging, thus reviving the gnostic vision of cosmic reality as an alien, exilic environment. The article concludes with a discussion of Jacques Derrida's work as an example of contemporary gnosticism, in which a 'metaphysics of exile' is presented in the disguise of an 'exile from metaphysics'.

Between order and insurgency: Post-structuralism and the problem of justice

“…A cogent argument has been made that Derrida's early philosophy is a 'metaphysics of exile', expressing a historical experience of dislocation and alienation. 37 In a similar fashion, Derrida's celebrated 'political turn' -a salient form of which are precisely his ruminations on justice -can be seen as 'a theory of defeat'. 38 That is, it is worth looking at Derrida's mature work on justice as expressive of a period when the revolutionary hopes that the 'red' utopias have nourished for over a century were fading away, after their last upsurge in the late 60s and early 70s.…”

Displacement, women intellectuals and entangled knowledge in the making of global modernity

“…This is how displacement becomes a useful concept for social and historical analysis. As Rossbach (2007) argues, the condition of having experienced a form of displacement and the connection of this movement to the process of interpretation needs to be analysed in relation to the concrete experience of concrete people, not in highly abstract terms. Following this way of reasoning, any person who produces knowledge based on forms of displacement, not only exchanges ideas and produces interpretation of the world but also acts as a cultural mediator and thus creates channels that connect and transform cultures.…”