Beyond ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ working in the grey zone of the modern academy: the paradoxical ‘problem spaces’ of implicated post-colonial scholars in exile

If self-reflexive postcolonial intellectuals view themselves as implicated in machinations of power beyond their control, then arguably such recognition should produce political subjectivities and political actions that seek to operate beyond the confines of the academy. This recognition itself would generate a striving towards alternative forms of knowledge production, ’epistemic attachments’ and ‘public belongings’ which engage diverse communities (academic, social, political, activist) driven by a desire to address global injustices. Drawing upon interview data collected from Turkish and Syrian scholars living in exile in Europe and the UK, this paper explores the different ways in which implication is navigated by exiled scholars who carry first-hand experience of conflict, detainment, and forced displacement in authoritarian regimes. Revealing the different ‘problem spaces’ the postcolonial exilic intellectual inhabits and the temporalities of injustice they grapple with in navigating power, crises, and the modern academy, we seek to demonstrate more concretely the conceptual specificity and analytical purchase of the ‘implicated postcolonial critical intellectual’ —in contradistinction from the institutionalised authorial assertions made by those who live within the governing rationales of the ’reasoned’ academy. Our data suggests that the figuration of the implicated intellectual is not one grounded in a battle over competitive memories of political or historical legitimacy but one that recognizes the incommensurable character of historical experience. Yet these figurations are not free from paradox and contradictions. How, we might ask, does or can the subaltern exilic scholar speak in the contemporary academy and what forms of political implication are possible to express?