Prayer

Is a nationless identity possible?

Fanon wrote that mixed-race people who don't break with their mixed identitites in favour of their true one are 'individuals without an anchor, without horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless - a race of angels'. It seems a scary perspective. But is one symbolic dependency fundamentaly better than the other?

Identities are a powerful source of self-reference and stability. As components of the Ego, they are the symbolic representation of the I in the outer world (Lacan 1936). We are completely convinced, without a slightest shade of doubt, that they are what we are. As such, they are taken very seriously. Being the single most powerful link  between the individual subjectivity and the social imaginary, they are also the hook on which we get angled by ideologies, beliefs, constructed desires and rules. They are the strings that lets whoever we, always unwittingly, let hold them, channel our vital force (ki, qi, kundalini, libido) to whatever end suits the puppet masters. True freedom can only come from realising the nature of identity (it's an imposed illusion based on an internalised misunderstanding) at the very "nexus of knowledge and power". But will then letting go of one's national identity make us, as Fanon warns, individuals without an anchor, without horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless - a race of angels'?

My own experience is that of escaping, first unwittingly, the stifling iron cages of bureaucratic and truth regimes. Perhaps, it has been easier for me, being a mostly invisible minority, to find myself a rather cozy heterotopia as a legal alien in the lenient anonymity and relative political freedom of London. However, that path has cost a lot of sacrifices. I've had to cast a lot of ballast, which did not seem as such at the time: the security of group identification, a family and a home of my own, a lasting romantic relationship. The gruelling effort of finding my Self has taken severing the fake, imposed parts, grown over, however, with nerves and blood vessels of my live being, sifting through the clouds of mud and silt left by my past, reconstituting my own being and what I do with it on my own terms. A complete reinvention, rediscovery of what I actually am.I don't think many would do that. I probably wouldn't have too, had I known how much pain and effort it would cost.

So, yes, it is possible to have a nationless identity, to be a free spirit, a citoyen du monde. The reward is amazing, the result is not scary as it seemed to Fanon, but profoundly liberating. However that path up the mountain gets colder and thinner air with every step. The views get ever more amazing and the horizons ever so wider, but there's hardly anyone to share them with. It is largely a solitary experience, just you and God.

 

Patience

Don't mistake a delay for a denial.

Just a game

"In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game."
Rabindranath Tagore

This every only moment is the best

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