“Autodafe [1743, Portugues auto da fe, lit. act of faith]: The ceremony accompanying the pronouncement of judgement by the Inquistition and followed by the execution of sentence by the secular authorities; esp.: the burning of a person condemned as a heretic or of writings condemned as heretical. More generally, the action of destruction by fire.”
–Page 1, Autodafe 3/4
pg 386 – Death of Tajar Djaout, “third major intellectual” (farag Fouda and Ugur Mumcu) to be murdered that year. Western media wasn’t interested.
pg 390 – “The killings of Farag Fouda, Ugur Mumcu, Tahar Djaout and the Sivas dead were eloquent proof that the attack on The Satanic Verses was no isolated incident, but part of a global Islamic assault on freethinkers.”
pg 397 – First meeting of IPW was in Strasbough, Rushdie was worried about the name parilament because the group was unelected but “the French shrugged and said that in France un parlement was just a place where people talked.” The group drafted a statement against Ismamic terror because of dreaths and fatwa.
419 – IPW elected Rushdie president around the 5th anniversary of fatwa. He was asked write a declaration of intent “We writers are miners and jewelers…truth-tellers and liars, jesters and commanders, mongrels and bastards, parents and lovers, architects and demolition men. We are citizens of many countries: the finite and the frontiered country of observable reality and everyday life, the united states of the mind, the celestial and infernal nations of desire, the unfettered republic of the tongue. Together they comprise a territory far greater than that governed by any worldly power; yet their defenses against that power can seem very week. The creative spirit is all too frequently treated as an enemy by those might or petty potentates who resent our power to build pictures of the world which quarrel with, or undermine, their own simpler and less openhearted views. The best of literature will survive, but we cannot wait for the future to release it from the censor’s chains.”
419 – The IPW founded the ICORN, nations sometimes had problems with admitting persecuted writers (ie with international trade deals) but on the level of the city, mayors didn’t see a problem with it. [[[INTERESTING POINT TO LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CITY-LEVEL REACTION AND NATIONAL REACTION]]]] The program was relatively cheap.
Introduction
My thesis research began with the desire to study the writing of exiled African writers and understand how the condition of exile impacted and shaped that writing. In the African writing world, authenticity and culture is a fraught question, especially when it comes to the language in which an African author chooses to write. Exile takes those questions to a greater level as distance creates questions of authenticity when writing about one’s native country. Interested in this quandary and with a longstanding interest in travel and the idea of the “Other” I began to research exile.
My research took me two places — first to a thriving academic debate on exile theory and then to an organization that has received little to no academic attention. The International Parliament of Writers (which became the International Cities of Refuge Network).
For primary texts I would like to examine Autodafe, the literary magazine of the IPW as well as the declarations, speeches and legal documents put out by the organization and its presidents. Additionally, the writings of authors such as Wole Soyinka and Salman Rushdie about their own experience of exile will be a helpful jumping off point for entering into theory. For secondary texts, I will lean on those discussing exile as a theoretical framework for understanding the impact and importance of ICORN.
Thesising 