In the age of migration the world’s millions of migrated selves faced colossal problems, problems of homelessness, hunger, unemployment, disease, persecution, alienation, fear. He was one of the luckier ones, but one great problem remained: that of authenticity. The migrated self became, inevitably, heterogeneous instead of homogeneous, belonging to more than one place, multiple rather than singular, responding to more than one way of being, more than averagely mixed up. Was it possible to be — to become good at being — not rootless, but multiply rooted? Not to suffer from a loss of roots but to benefit from an excess of them?
Salman Rushside, The Satanic Verses. Quoted by Alan Jacobs in his new blog at The American Conservative.
Thinking about place, roots, home, and identity is one of our favorite things to do, and Rushdie’s musings in Jacobs’ column help us get started. It is of course possible to feel rooted, to live a rooted life, somewhere other than the place you were born—so why not in many places? Can a person enjoy the benefits of a local life and a cosmopolitan one at the same time?
We’d love to hear from you about multiply-rooted identity.
Notes
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robofillet said:
Huh I basically just made a video about this today. Woo go me Wonkistani!
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wonkistan posted this
