Whiney Exile

"If you grow up in Manchester, you either go to work in a factory or you play soccer, or you sell drugs, or you become a musician. I think that's why we have two pretty good soccer teams, and we've got a lot of good factories, we've got a lot of good drug dealers and a lot of good bands." - Noel Gallagher

I’m down to my last two days living in the city exploited by the Industrial Revolution, bombed by the IRA and consistently demoralised by heavy rains. Technically, Manchester is not the city for me. It is good for athletic people, not only because of football, but also because they’re building Sportcity in East Manchester (part of sustainable regeneration programme). It’s also good for artsy people because of the lively music scene (especially jazz!) and quirky corner shops. Clearly, I’m neither athletic nor artsy, and in spite of my litany of complaints about the weather, sleazy cab drivers, decrepit dorm room, faulty fire alarms and pubs not serving coffee after 5pm, there is something about Manc that makes me want to stay.

I guess this is a common situation for someone who’s tired of being in-between cities. I am literally homeless. I’m currently staying in Lancaster, going to Manchester tomorrow and moving to Birmingham next month – that is after I stay in London and Geneva for a few days and Manila for a couple of weeks. I don’t know what my forwarding address is. My books and clothes are in boxes, ready to be shipped to the midlands, but my fancy shoes, office equipment and catalogued books are officially housed in Manila. In the interim, I literally live out of a (20 x 12”) suitcase. And my clothes are discoloured and wrinkly.

I used to think that as an academic, it is best for me to stay in a foreign city long enough to master bus routes and train times, but short enough not to develop meaningful relationships with the locals. After all, in Representations of the Intellectual, Edward Said explains that the ‘pattern that sets the course for the intellectual as outsider is best exemplified by the condition of exile, the state of never being fully adjusted, always feeling outside the chatty, familiar world inhabited by natives’ (1994:44). Although Said is talking about being ‘exilic’ in the metaphorical sense*, I’m not quite sure if I still like the literal meaning of being an exilic academic – someone who ‘flirts with mobility’ (Pels, 2000:186) and subscribes to ‘principled uncertainty’ (Deleuze in Hartley, 1996:451). In as much as I appreciate the opportunity to travel and find comfort in strangeness (Alexander, 1997:Track 5), at the end of the day, I am still the control freak who wants to know where everything is without having to look at the map.

Manc, Winter 2006

 
Before everyone disappeared, Spring 2007

---
*It is the ‘metaphysical sense of restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled and unsettling others’ (Said, 1994:53).
---

Alexander, C. (1997) ‘Comfort in Your Strangeness’ in Insomnia and Other Lullabies

Hartley, J. (1996) “Expatriation: Useful Astonishment as Cultural Studies” in Cultural Studies, 6, 3:449-67.

Pels, D. (2000) The Intellectual as Stranger: Studies in Spokespersonship. London: Routledge

Said, E. (1994) Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. London: Vintage Books