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Defining Anti-Nationalism and Welcoming Americans to the World: Arundhati Roy’s “Come September” (2002)

I don’t want you to think like me….I just want you to think.

I almost didn’t post this, because it’s more politically charged than my usual fare, and might be perceived as slightly off topic. After lengthy consideration, however, I realized that I needed to clarify where all that anti-nationalism talk was coming from in my post earlier this month. When I first read the piece that Arundhati Roy is reading in the video below, I thought, ‘Holy crap, that’s what I’ve been saying for years (put much more eloquently in her case, of course).’

Here are a few quick quotes:

Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and history. It is about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. About the physics of power. … I find myself thinking a great deal about the relationship between citizens and the state. … In India, those of us who have expressed views on nuclear bombs, big dams, corporate globalization, views that are at variance with the Indian Governments’, are branded anti-national. While this accusation doesn’t fill me with indignation, it’s not an accurate description of what I do or how I think - because an anti-national is a person who is against his or her own nation and by inference is pro some other one. But it isn’t necessary to be anti-national to be deeply suspicious of all nationalism, to be anti-nationalism. Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the 20th century.

—

To call someone ‘anti-American’, indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you’re not a Bushie you’re a Taliban. If you don’t love us, you hate us. If you’re not Good you’re Evil. If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.

—

Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. […] but ‘The American Way of Life’ is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.

And here’s a video of her 2002 lecture entitled “Come September”:

Honestly, I’m not here to try convince anyone about where to shop for beliefs, but I have to say that I find myself nodding in agreement all the way through this rather lengthy political commentary. Roy is an unprecedented realist who truly sees the world for what it is, using her vision not to condemn, but to educate.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this issue is not just about nations and politics and war. It’s about inertia and psychological lethargy in individuals. If we do not insist on the avoidance of oversimplified labels and generalizations, then we are by default encouraging uninformed decision-making and unoriginal thought.

Chris Rock puts it quite clearly (though crudely) in his schtick on 2-party politics.

Let’s not settle for anything less than the pursuit of knowledge and truth. That is a necessary premise for the world I want to live in. And, while I can’t convince the whole world to abandon inaccurate and dangerous perspectives, I can promote the core tenets of independent inquiry, and the awareness it bears.

So what’s it gonna be then?

What world will our children and grandchildren inherit? What level of discourse will they learn to surround themselves with? My son will be born in a few months, and my teaching model will attempt to stay true to the first line of this post:

I don’t want you to think like me….I just want you to think.

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This entry was written by Steven Nishida and posted on October 15, 2007 at 5:51 am and filed under human nature, parenting, perspective, debate, autonomous learning, baby, community, politics, learning, video, history, teaching, rants. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Excellent posting. I’ve never even heard of Arundhati Roy before.

    I love it when people find nifty little terms or phrases to write something off. There’s no reason to think about or analyze the situation when you have statements like, “Oh, you’re just anti-American”, and then go back to flag-waving. Convenient little identity grids full of sweeping generalizations born out of ignorance and fear. Stemming from a distortion of the facts by brain-washing and eventually leading to brain-damage.

    1. flat-black on October 19th, 2007 at 2:14 am

  2. Great quote from Roy on 9/11:

    “Three thousand civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.”

    “To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue the grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people.”

    2. flat-black on October 19th, 2007 at 2:15 am

  3. Absolutely brilliant post Steven. I too hope that I sincerely seek to encourage people to think rather than seek to bully people into thinking like me.
    Arundhati Roy is an incredible writer. She expresses her views in the snips you’ve quotes with the same eloquence and lyricism that she wrote The God of Small Things with. I, like you, find myself becoming a bobble head as I read her words. This reminds me of something I’ve been saying recently: “I am not American” is not synonymous with “I am anti-American”, and neither is “I don’t want to be American”, but this is clearly the message we are getting from “America”. This line of thinking is a perversion of the truth that America is good and Americans are good.

    3. Michael Stout on November 1st, 2007 at 4:39 am

  4. flat-black: Agree completely. Recently, I have become fascinated with the extent to which most people hold dear to beliefs and idealogies simply out of a desire to preserve the familiar or justify established lifestyle choices and pursuits. Like children grasping for reasons why they should be allowed to stay awake later, we allow ourselves to abandon all sound logic in defense of shortsighted behavior.

    Michael: It’s true what you say about the “with us or against us” mentality. Unfortunately for Canadians like yourself, explaining to people overseas that you are not American is a regular occurrence, and in sensitive times like these, there are bound to be misinterpretations. I do think, however, that some non-American English speakers take it a bit to far, adding the “Thank God!” or I’ve even heard “I thank God every day that I’m not American.” To focus on ‘not being something,’ or ‘not wanting to be something’ is, I think, putting too much emphasis on the thing itself, which opens the statement up to criticism. Of course, I agree that “America is good, and its enemies are evil” is propaganda that insults intelligence, but I also think “I am Canadian” and “I am happy with being Canadian” is less open to perceived antagonism than “I am not American” and “I don’t want to be American,” especially given what a lot of people really mean when they make the distinction. Very interesting points, Michael. Thanks, as always, for joining the discussion:-)

    4. Steven Nishida on November 9th, 2007 at 11:06 am

  5. As usual Steven, we are in complete agreement and yet never boring - odd that ;)

    5. Michael Stout on November 11th, 2007 at 9:40 am

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