On Roots and Rootlessness

On Roots

Alex Haley, the African American writer, traced his ancestry and lineage to Gambia. He rendered alive the poignant and painful odyssey of his ancestor, Kunta Kinte-transported to the United States as a slave. Haley’s famous novel called, ‘Roots: The Saga of an American Family’ was a sensation and created a stir. The details of the story and the plot need not detain us here. What is pertinent and relevant in today’s globalized world is: Are roots important?  Do they have transcendental meaning? Does globalization entail a certain ‘rootlessness’? What does this mean for the nation state and more broadly the human condition?

 First a word on roots. It is believed and held by many that human beings are attached to the territory and the kinship group they ‘belong’ to. And that this primordial attachment is biological.  This roughly speaking leads to ascribed ethnic groupings that are immutable and fixed.  Essentially entailing tribalism, this belief was accorded a lease of life by the German romanticists, and in turn, it became the premise of the nation state which was held to be a tight grouping of people who shared biological, cultural and ethnic features. The nation and the state, in this schema, were held to be congruent. This then became the premise and rationale for nationalism and ‘roots’

Later day theorists of nationalism, like Benedict Anderson, challenged this primordial nationalism and posited that nationalism was a construct and that ‘imagined communities’ were forged by conditions and trappings of modernity or the needs and demands of the nation state. Whether it is the primordial thesis of nationalism or its modern variant is more elegant and germane is not the issue here. What is of pertinence is does the condition of globalization render infructuous the notion of roots?

Globalization – a contested term and concept- entails the transformation of the nation state at/on a range of levels. Inherent in the process(es) of globalization is mobility, fluidity, porosity and churn. These conditions axiomatically impact the alleged immutability of a fixed identity, ethnicity and nationality. One could be an Indian and an Australian at the same time. While ones parents may reside in India, one’s partner could very well be a ‘white’ Australian and one’s work spread across the world. This rather paradoxical condition unthinkable only a few years ago is made possible by globalization. Emotions and emotional attachments, in the process get spread and dispersed all over.  Personality change is inevitable and given the gift of adjustment that human beings are blessed with, a new man/woman is forged. This new man/woman is at home everywhere and then in the conventional sense is ‘rootless’. Essentially a condition that means and entails cosmopolitanism, and a world view that is not harnessed and tethered to a particular territory and ethnicity, it is to be celebrated. Why?

Modern history could very well be held to be the history of nationalism. This has entailed wars, misery and strife. Even when the nation state is established, there is no guarantee that a disaffected minority group will challenge the nation state. Or a majority group will not harass and persecute a minority group.  The outrages in Rwanda or the break up of former Yugoslavia are a case in point.

 The concept of self determination- a fine principle in theory – is another eloquent reminder of how the quest for ‘roots’ and ‘authenticity’ can lead to death, misery and strife. This narrow and parochial attitude and approach is then insalubrious rife with negative consequences. A cosmopolitan approach and attitude where roots are inconsequential, to the contrary, potentially carry the seeds of a better and a peaceful world. This rootlessness is inherent in globalization. As such, globalization is not only to be celebrated but also crystallized and set in stone. This can only be salubrious for the human condition. For far too long, mankind has been in thrall to roots and the attendant Hobbesian condition where ‘life is nasty, short and brutish’. It is then incumbent on powers that be to not only give short shrift to anti globalism but also give globalization a shove. The policy making elite of the world should design and craft policies that nurture and speed up globalization. Globalization an rootlessness go together. Both are emancipatory. Enlightenment and choice are inherent in them. Let us make haste slowly and make these conditions the reigning paradigms. We owe this to the world.