Citizens of Exile

Abstract

fi letters TS Citizens of Exile I would like to respond to Ales Debeljak's delightful essay, "In Praise of the Republic of Letters/' which appears in yourMarch 2009 issue. The essay is delightful, play ful even, yet evokes a potent mel ancholy for the "lost cause that represents our true home/' This is nostalgia, originally a pathologi cal condition of severe homesick ness. More commonly, nostalgia is a yearning fora lostpast, a time of innocence and purity before mean ing was corrupted. For the enthusiastic reader citizen of the Republic of Letters, nostalgia is endemic. You cannot visit these worlds. The Istanbul of Orhan Pamuk's Black Book is not present in the Istanbul of today,nor WLT Exile Migration I.ih.n [)v\^JHIoun f'11 *11 MilSiiiul.ii.ilmq.im d.iiy Sh1i-yiuj.il t Nu hol.S.im.n.is was itpresent when Pamuk wrote this great novel. Stories are always already past, even iftheyare placed in the future. A citizen of this republic is simultaneously an exile from it. Alfred de Musset once said that "great artists have no country," suggesting that citizenship of this republic requires belonging tonone. It's a commitment to an abstrac tion that can never be realized, a cause thatwas immediately lost as alienation and unity fundamentally contradict. Just because a cause is lost, however, is no reason to surrender. Whereas the hyperreality of elec tronic media may have extinguished realityaswe knew it,as Baudrillard argues, theRepublic of Letterswas never real. Its impossibility, never realized, not realizable, keeps Utopia on thehorizon of the imagination. JamesSmoot Ljubljana, Slovenia The Death of Francophone Literature? World LiteratureToday's translation of the 2007 manifesto in favor of a "World Literature in French" is one ofmany signs of theextensive inter est generated by this document in the English-speaking world (WLT, March 2009, 54-56). Paradoxically, but not untypically, themanifesto has attracted less discussion within France, where its call foran end to the implicitly hierarchical distinc tion between "French" and "Franco phone" literatureshas fallen largely on deaf ears.While scholars in the Anglophone world are generally sympathetic to the spiritof this call, they face considerable challenges in finding a nomenclature tomatch it. Some believe that the best way of ending the superiority complex of "French" literature (understood as thatofFrance) isby declaring ittobe simply one among "Francophone" literatures as a whole (understood as embracing all writing of French expression). Others consider the term "Francophone" to be so tainted by neocolonial overtones that they would prefer tobanish italtogether and rework the concept of "French" literature(s) to serve as an umbrella term for all writing in the French language, irrespective of the coun tries inwhich it is produced or the national origins of itsauthors.While the underlying goal appears simi lar, its verbal formulation is strik ingly different. While it is still too soon to say which (ifany) of these alternatives will prevail, WLT is to be congratulated on making avail able toAnglophone readers such a timelycontribution to this important debate. Alec G. Hargreaves Florida StateUniversity Have a comment or suggestion? Send a letter to the editor via the feedback link on our website ormail to: WLT Letters 630 Parrington Oval, Suite 110 University ofOklahoma Norman,OK 73019-4033 USA 4 i World Literature Today ...