EXILIC CONSCIOUSNESS STORIES AND CREATION OF NEW HOMES IN SEGUN AFOLABI’S A LIFE ELSEWHERE

Abstract

This paper explores exile and exilic consciousness in Segun Afolabi’s novel, A Life Elsewhere. Whereas the most common conception of exile relates to absence from one’s homeland, that is, an erasure of one’s physical presence from their native landscape, this essay delves deep to unravel the literary vision of Afolabi, submitting that his short stories offer other interpretative insights into the phenomenon of exile. The postcolonial trauma theory explains the sociological, political and economic dimensions of trauma as it affects the characters in the novel These stories reveal that exile transcends the physical state and extends to psychological displacement (loss, loneliness and disorientation) that does not necessarily imply physical absence from home. The paper also problematises the concept of home. It affirms that while home could be the physical territory where a character finds solace, it could also mean a state of mind which affords one the opportunity to create that which has been lost and which is impossible to experience in tangible terms.