This paper makes an argument about the relationship between political time and the familiarity and repetitiveness of exile in postcolonial Rwanda and Burundi. I suggest that the memory, recurrence, and anticipation of displacement is a central aspect of postcolonial life and crucial to national fashioning. With each cycle of forced expulsion, the boundaries of the nation are unmade and remade. This rhythm of recurrent displacement and exile makes for specific forms of political subjectivity that though tethered to the geography of the nation also always exceed it.
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