Textos curtos para Ítaca XIII

Much rush, changes, travelling, re-adaptation and inner perceptions have lately prevented me from keep this blog up-to-date. It may not be a coincidence I am writing this post in English .

The text below was written by me last October and was published originally in a zine edited by a friend in London, “Climb the Wall”(# 3). It may have references which are appropriate in the current period.

Escape or construction? Oh, dear human condition.

This is our history:

all these elements and moments of dislocation,

our hypes on a project of cultural reclamation,

and now this post- post 21^st century way of living,

coping to the aspiration of a world citizenship while asserting particular social identities.

The movement from the homeland was occasioned by: comfort, fulfilment, an abuse of the concept of freedom.

And despite the pretentious privileged perspective, beyond the supposedly critical insights - “achievements are undermined by the loss of something left behind”.[1]

At the end of the journey, the grim reality: “stand at the gates as a stranger and outsider.”[2]

Alienated, having no place they can actually call theirs: “we are in London as though we were not at all”.[3]

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[1] Edward Said, on “Reflections on Exile”

[2] Oyeniyi Okunoye, on “A song of Exile”

[3] Odia Ofeimum, on “Lagoon”