Dwelling in Babylon

notes toward a critical genealogy of exile

Abstract

Jeremiah, the ancient critic of Israel and early propagator of exilic politics, advised the Hebrew peoples to accept the Babylonian lands in which they had been displaced as their own, and to “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” (29-4) Over the years, Jeremiah’s exilic wisdom has been circulated in an array of theologies—not without critical engagement. In his 1998 essay “Between Two Worlds,” Edward Said confronts the exilic calling to “cultivate a new garden,” or the “looking for some other association to join” after “having lost my country with no immediate hope of regaining it”[.] Yet having learned from Adorno that “reconciliation under duress is both cowardly and inauthentic,” Said concludes: “better a lost cause than a triumphant one, more satisfying a sense of the provisional and contingent…than the proprietary solidity of permanent ownership.” In the follow essay, you will find notes toward a critical genealogy of exile. If Babylon is an allegory for dwelling in exile, I contend that a critical genealogy of exilic politics would center the problematic of justice. What does justice mean for those that dwell on a ground that is not recognized as their own? And what can we learn from tracing a genealogy of the exilic for a politics of the present that would advance a notion of justice, through dwelling, on a planetary scale?