Writing as hope: Reflections on The Politics of Exile

Abstract

This article engages in a reflection on the author’s recently published book, The Politics of Exile. Of central concern are questions surrounding how restrictions on writing constrain the creative process; how we can access the lives and deaths of those with whom we share no temporal space; and how we can enact responsibility toward the pasts that we inherit and that shape our contemporary lives in other times and places. At stake are the issues of what social science does, for whom, and for what purposes. The author contends that, while not all personal or narrative writing is reflexive or transformative, social scientists have the opportunity to rethink writing in fundamental ways with the purpose of offering up alternative sites and forms of inquiry.