May Joseph and Mississippi Masala
May Joseph and Mississippi Masala
Today’s world is characterized by a global environment of rootlessness. Political upheavals, poverty, and opportunity cause populations to shift and move, and people that are citizens of one country to move to another. The resulting disconnect between the traditions of their homeland that they have internalized, experiencing these as “home,” and the new environment that they move to where the culture is vastly different calls into question what “home” really is, and what citizenship means.
In her book Nomadic Identities: The Performance of Citizenship, May Joseph explores the issues of migrancy and displacement among modern peoples. She contends that citizenship “is not organic but must be acquired through public and psychic participation,” and that the citizen interacts with his own citizenship to create new, local, evolving ideas of what a citizen is and the different types of citizenship that can exist (Joseph 3). Joseph argues that the definition of citizenship is not clearly defined because there is “no easy consensus” on its meaning or implications, but she asserts nonetheless that “citizenship connotes a sense of engagement with the public realm, generally speaking” (4). More specifically, she identifies a new kind of citizenship—“nomadic citizenship”—that belongs to the new, mobile society in which peoples leave their homeland and relocate to other countries where the culture is different (Joseph 17). In nomadic citizenship, Joseph contends, the “cultural nomad has been forced to perform citizenship across as well as within national boundaries” (17). In essence, nomadic citizenship describes how migrants detach themselves from their state and carry their citizenship with them wherever they go (Joseph 17). Even when they are disavowed by their state, they are still citizens there in a cultural sense, and their nomadic citizenship allows them to continue belonging despite the fragmentation they experience
Today’s world is characterized by a global environment of rootlessness. Political upheavals, poverty, and opportunity cause populations to shift and move, and people that are citizens of one country to move to another. The resulting disconnect between the traditions of their homeland that they have internalized, experiencing these as “home,” and the new environment that they move to where the culture is vastly different calls into question what “home” really is, and what citizenship means.
In her book Nomadic Identities: The Performance of Citizenship, May Joseph explores the issues of migrancy and displacement among modern peoples. She contends that citizenship “is not organic but must be acquired through public and psychic participation,” and that the citizen interacts with his own citizenship to create new, local, evolving ideas of what a citizen is and the different types of citizenship that can exist (Joseph 3). Joseph argues that the definition of citizenship is not clearly defined because there is “no easy consensus” on its meaning or implications, but she asserts nonetheless that “citizenship connotes a sense of engagement with the public realm, generally speaking” (4). More specifically, she identifies a new kind of citizenship—“nomadic citizenship”—that belongs to the new, mobile society in which peoples leave their homeland and relocate to other countries where the culture is different (Joseph 17). In nomadic citizenship, Joseph contends, the “cultural nomad has been forced to perform citizenship across as well as within national boundaries” (17). In essence, nomadic citizenship describes how migrants detach themselves from their state and carry their citizenship with them wherever they go (Joseph 17). Even when they are disavowed by their state, they are still citizens there in a cultural sense, and their nomadic citizenship allows them to continue belonging despite the fragmentation they experience
Cited: Joseph, May. Nomadic Identities: The Performance of Citizenship. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Mississippi Masala. Dir. Mira Nair. Perf. Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhury, Ranjit Chowdry. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2003, DVD.