Rootless: In Search of Identity in a Globalized World

One of the more awkward questions that I am asked is: “Where are you from?” Basic enough for most, this seemingly innocent bit of introductory small-talk makes me squirm a little. Yes, it is already awkward enough being Russian these days, but that is somehow not made easier by also having to explain in what ways I am not, strictly speaking, Russian.

Identity based on origin?

Why don’t I feel so Russian? Having been abroad most of my life, I simply have not had the same kind of exposure to the real-life circumstances of being Russian as those who have lived in Russia their whole lives. There are millions of in-group experiences uniting Russians living in Russia that I have not gone through. I don’t speak the freshest Russian slang, am less attuned to the finesse of anecdotes involving in-depth experience of Russian society, etc.

In another sense, I’m not Russian because, somewhere along the way, I began losing faith in this concept of origins, of roots. At some point, I simply couldn’t continue keeping up the facade of believing in identity based on origin. So what if I was born in Russia and was raised by Russian parents? I couldn’t help being conscious of the series of coincidences that characterize such a concept of identity.

Searching for “authentic” identity

Yet nevertheless, many people are concerned with the idea of roots and do their utmost to stay true to their roots. What might be the reason for this widespread concern? Living and belonging to a community probably did not always involve the high level of self-consciousness that our present search for roots implies. In the following discussion, I will do my best to paraphrase philosopher Slavoj Zizek (from his essay “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism”) in an attempt to provide one critical view on the matter.

The current fixation seems to be a reaction to the loss of roots themselves. Roots are a retroactive construction, an idea that has been made possible only through the universality of global capital. First and foremost, we all identify with the void universality of global capital, but since the global market is not a warm and cuddly thing to identify with, we are forced to play hide-and-seek with this reality by searching for another, more “authentic” source of identity. Conveniently, global capital, which indiscriminately colonizes all cultures and subsumes them as secondary to itself, then celebrates diversity and endorses roots as authentic channels of identification.

Not-so-diverse roots

Curious what the general internet discourse has to say about roots, I Google the search term “going back to one’s roots”. Most of the hits on the first page are attempts at defining the pesky term. The seventh hit is a journal article titled “Three reasons why getting back to your roots isn’t what you think it is”. This article, by user dczook on medium.com, gives a nice example of the pitfalls of focusing on roots. Dczook says: “Recently I had a conversation with a Filipino-American gentleman who was looking forward to an upcoming trip to the Philippines. He was distressed because, as he put it, he had become “all Americanized,” and wanted to go back to his roots, to return home — though he was born in America — to get rid of the American part of his identity and cultivate the Filipino part. ….in other words being in a diverse world, had somehow diluted or tainted what he perceived to be his otherwise pure and authentic self.”

Dczook adds: “You won’t find an ethnic conflict or a genocide anywhere in history that wasn’t preceded by a group of people trying to disentangle and preen and admire their roots. Wherever you find things such as racism, apartheid, and slavery, you will also and always find disentanglement.” In support of this, I recall Zizek giving an example of the use of the rhetoric of multiculturalism to justify apartheid in South Africa, in which fear of the disappearance of the blacks’ unique culture was cited as a reason for maintaining apartheid.

Being human

As we see from the current conflict in Europe, clashes of identity on the basis of origin have the capacity to pose a serious threat to our collective survival. Perhaps Zizek is right in claiming that our dedication to intangible ideals, such as the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, provide the best material for forming a new universality.

Some claim that Enlightenment ideals are Eurocentric, but whence comes the assumption that Europe invented liberty, equality and fraternity? That in itself is a prejudice, considering the incredible influence cultures of the New World had on the development of European discourse leading up to the Enlightenment. (See David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Humanity for more on the influence of extra-European cultures on the Enlightenment.)

As for the universality of liberty, equality and fraternity, Zizek points out that the Haitian Revolution modelled itself upon the ideals of the Enlightenment, championing the rights of plantation slaves to liberty and self-determination via the establishment of a black republic, giving a concrete example of the liberating potentiality of these ideals in a non-European context.

It is possible that such intangibles are our best chance of protecting what is unique about us all, whereas the so-called return to roots only paves the way for further cultural uprooting as more livelihoods are subsumed by global capital in futures to come.

I, for one, having lived in three countries and on three continents, speaking three languages and having no single, clearly defined cultural identity, have little use for a return to roots. I am an amalgamation of identities, an entanglement of particulars, all of which together contribute to my understanding of what it means to be human.