Abstract
This article notes the emergence of a global consciousness that recognises the need to move beyond well-worn categories of interpretation. In exploring the concepts of home and exile in Breyten Breytenbach‟s novel, “Memory of snow and of dust” (1989), the article examines how fresh perspectives in postcolonial studies – identified as a „spiritual turn‟ – allow one to gain access to new insights into the exilic condition. The author captures and conveys the experience of exile, and envisages through the exile‟s „double vision‟ a more complicated notion of home. The distressing journey into a new awareness of what constitutes home is examined. Furthermore, the article considers the restless, yet regenerative condition of exile that – although characterised by mental anguish – makes possible a more fluid response to spatiality. The renewed interest in (and legitimation of) the spiritual in postcolonial studies lends further insight into an alternative response to the search for a place/ space to call home. This article concludes with an affirmation of the relevance of “Memory of snow and of dust”, as a novel that challenges one to cultivate an expanded awareness – that moves beyond the material – in times during which the overlapping boundaries of home and exile are becoming a global condition.
Highlights
We live in an age in which boundaries are dissolving and new global maps are emerging
One author whose writing embodies the condition of the cosmopolitan, whose critical and aesthetic stance is shaped by alertness to the exilic experience, is the South African Breyten Breytenbach
The multifaceted Breytenbach is captured in the book Memory of snow and of dust (1989)
Summary
We live in an age in which boundaries are dissolving and new global maps are emerging. Mano‟s journey to South Africa can be seen as a journey of initiation towards a new state of awareness – a liminal space outside of social structures, a “No Man‟s Land”/“Middle-World”, symbolically speaking – in which an alternative construction of home is imagined. It is through a change in attitude that an alternative space is created in prison, a space through which – as Breytenbach suggests – prisoners can transcend the painful restrictions of their existence, to experience a sense of home beyond the material. The child‟s anticipated birth can be seen as a longing for a spiritual homeland, which – if reclaimed – has the potential to facilitate an alternative sense of memory and belonging, an alternative awareness of home
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