Actual political exile has been inflated to describe every immigrant’s condition

Evidence

The fact that some of these intellectuals actually were political exiles has been taken advantage of, in an incredibly inflationary rhetoric, to deploy the word ‘exile’, first as a metaphor and then as a fully appropriated descriptive label for the existential condition of the immigrant as such; the upper-class Indian who chooses to live in the metropolitan country is then called ‘the diasporic Indian’, and ‘exile’ itself becomes a condition of the soul, unrelated to faces of material life. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 338

Categorization

• QUESTION: This rhetorical inflation-from-metaphor-to-literal fits the strategic essentialism question: does the metacommentary about holding ‘exile’ ironically collapse when the term gets ‘fully appropriated’ as a descriptive label? Ahmad may be giving the collapse mechanism itself.
• XREF: connects to: Inflationary rhetoric turned exile into a synonym for voluntary migration — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 136; Exile and diaspora describe displacement, not wealthy migrants anywhere abroad — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 641

Broader Connections

• Inflationary rhetoric turned exile into a synonym for voluntary migration #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 136
• Exile and diaspora describe displacement, not wealthy migrants anywhere abroad #complicates (0.85) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 641