The term ‘homeland’, in its contemporary meaning as native country, appears together with the concept it is meant to designate: the modern nation state. Homeland and state form an inherent pair, one does not exist without the other. Whereas the state stands in correlation to its citizens, homeland is endowed to its nationals. So, unlike the state, homeland is an affective concept, not a matter of recognition, of rights, but of belonging.
The nation state creates its corresponding homeland. It fills it with content, it composes songs, recites verses, it invents and retells myths. It cleans, it homogenizes, it kicks out, it assimilates, all in the name of the nation.
The (potential or factual) loss of a homeland can be read a kind of genre of the present. Ece Temelkuran’s view on Erdogan’s Turkey, Arundhati Roy’s perspectives on Modi’s India, Farahnaz Sharifi’s account on hidden lives of Iranians, all articulate the growing sense of homelandlessness that parallels the gradual (or sudden) transformation of their home countries away from (liberal) democracies and towards autocratic, totalitarian, illiberal, fundamentalist, fascist etc. orders. To these homelands they no longer belong, and they no longer belong to them. Here, the container of the nation-state is not in question, only its current (authoritarian and reactionary) form. There’s an inherent assumption that these, or any homelands are salvageable, that they could and should be saved.
Svetlana Alexievich and Dubravka Ugrešić deal with another kind of homelandless people in their work, the former ones: former Soviets, former Yugoslavs. Here, any continuity is erased, their states had vanished and so had their homelands. One was replaced with the other, into which one ceases to fit. There’s no possibility of return, these homelands are forever lost.
Then there are homelandless migrants, “illegals”, temporal, circular in-betweens. Traversing the globe, in search of safety, jobs, decent life, freedom. Those that left their homelands, those that move between not-anymore and not-yet, those that have inherited the leaving, descendants of the displaced, eternally out-of-joint. Those stuck in limbo, in detention centers, forever. To them, homeland is unreachable, no matter it’s actual existence. It’s a myth, a memory, a story, a hope, a waiting.
Alan Badiou sees in the emergence of the “undocumented”, the sans papiers, the single most important contemporary political event. I propose homelandless, due to its scope and affectivity, as a useful complementary concept. Is it possible to abandon the concept of homeland? Can one become homelandless as a political act? What if [shard: What if?] one refuses to “pledge allegiance”?
my country is a mouth trying to say pledge and it comes out all salt // my country is a mouth and nobody can pronounce my name // I mean my country forgets my name // I mean my country is always asking for my name // and I’m always saying it twice // spelling it like an address // my country is a number
(…)
it is every year and my country is taken // I mean my country is stolen land // I mean all my countries are stolen land // I mean sometimes I am on the wrong side of the stealing // my country is an opening // I mean bloom // I mean bloom not like flower // but bloom like explosion // my country is a teacher // I mean do you want to see my passport // I mean do you like my accent // I mean I stole them // I mean I stole them // I mean where do you think I learned that from - When They Say Pledge Allegiance, I say Hala Aylan
References:
Alexievich, Svetlana. 2016. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. Random House
Alyan, Hala. 2020. “When they say pledge allegiance, I say”. The Adroit Journal. Issue 33. May 2020.
Boochani, Behrouz. 2018. No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison
Roy, Arundhati. 2019. My Seditious Heart: Collected Non-Fiction. Haymarket Books
Shahram Khosravi. 2010. ‘Illegal’ Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders. Palgrave Macmillan
Sharifi, Farahnaz. 2023. My Stolen Planet (documentary film)
Temelkuran, Ece. 2019. How to Lose a Country: the 7 steps from democracy to dictatorship. Fourth Estate Ltd.
Temelkuran Ece. 2010. Deep Mountain Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide. Verso
Ugrešić, Dubravka, 1998. The Culture of Lies. Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Ugrešić, Dubravka, 1998. The Museum of Unconditional Surrender. Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Ugrešić, Dubravka, 2011. Karaoke Culture. University of Rochester: Open Letter Books