Citizenship, Responsibility, and Belonging

Alice McDonald

“What comes to mind when you hear the word “citizenship?” This was the first question posed to the class in our discussion of citizenship this semester. Answers varied from person to person — some considered citizenship to be a burden, some a safety, some an honor — but two words in particular surfaced in nearly every person’s answer: “responsibility” and “belonging.” It was a commonly held sentiment among most of my classmates that with citizenship comes great responsibility for one’s neighbors, community and country, but also a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself. My classmates appear not to be alone in their understanding of citizenship, since a number of the philosophers and poets we have studied throughout the semester center their writings on citizenship around one or both of these concepts.

Plato was the first philosopher we studied this semester, and in his Republic, he outlines in detail his concept for an ideal city and its ideal citizens, as well as several important criteria for citizenship. Plato is clearly most concerned with the responsibility aspect of citizenship, as all his criteria center around the responsibilities of the citizens in maintaining their city. Foremost among these criteria is the responsibility of each citizen to protect their city from any potential harm both inside and outside the city walls. Plato explains that in order to maintain harmony and equanimity among citizens within the confines of the city, each citizen must be educated to believe that “no citizen has ever hated another and that it’s impious to do so…” (Plato, 378 c), so that they learn to treat fellow citizens with respect, kindness and care. In the instance that “anyone attacks the land in which they live” from the outside, Plato states that citizens “must plan on [the city’s] behalf and defend it as their mother and nurse and think of the other citizens as their earthborn brothers” (Plato, 414 e). No matter how well-protected the city may be, citizens must still concern themselves with their own survival and well-being. As it is impossible, according to Plato, for an individual to perform all necessary jobs of life in solitude without any help from others, it is the responsibility of each citizen to use their area of skill and expertise to “not only produce enough for themselves at home but also goods of the right quality and quantity to satisfy the requirements of others” (Plato, 371 b). Additionally, every well-functioning and harmonious city must have a government, and members of the government (guardians in Platonic terms) must be compensated for the efforts they put into ruling and protecting their citizens.

Plato suggests that any sustenance, goods and compensation needed for the well-being of government members “they’ll receive by taxation on the other citizens as a salary for their guardianship” (Plato, 416 e). Plato’s ideas on citizenship are not specific to his time — they have been used as the model for government systems over and over again throughout history and continue to apply today. For instance, in her 2013 essay “Maple Nation: A Citizenship Guide,” Robin Wall Kimmerer, an American professor and writer of indigenous heritage, includes many similar ideas in her own list of criteria for citizenship. However, her ideal city, which she refers to as “Maple Nation,” is slightly different than Plato’s, the goal being for maple trees and humans to coexist as equal citizens. Throughout the essay, Kimmerer repeatedly poses the question: “What does it mean to be a good citizen of Maple Nation?” (Kimmerer, p. 170). Like Plato, she focuses mainly on the responsibility that comes with citizenship, and she starts by suggesting that Maple Nation would have a “Bill of Responsibilities” in place of the United States “Bill of Rights.” She begins her list of responsibilities where Plato left off, “with two terse words of resentment: pay taxes.” However, she argues that taxes should not necessarily be resented, but rather that paying them should be considered an act of “sharing in the support of the your community” (Kimmerer, p. 168). Kimmerer quickly takes this concept of “sharing in the support of your community” beyond simply paying taxes, as she collects the perspectives of several colleagues and friends from her community, posing to each of them her question of what it means to be a good citizen of Maple Nation. “‘You take what you’re given and you treat it right’” (Kimmerer, p. 172) was the answer of one community member, and another stated that “‘we’ve got a lot to be grateful for, and we all have to do our part to keep it going’” (Kimmerer, p. 169). For one community member, treating with care and gratitude what you are given means protecting the environment and wasting nothing — “you take care of the trees and they’ll take care of you” (Kimmerer, p. 171). The central idea in all these answers is what Kimmerer later refers to as “the law of reciprocity, of regeneration and of mutual flourishing” (Kimmerer, p. 173), and it amounts to something similar to Plato’s belief that citizens are responsible not only for their own survival and well-being but also for the survival and well-being of their fellow citizens.

We can begin to see in Kimmerer’s essay how a sense of belonging grows from being part of a tight-knit and caring community. Kimmerer never explicitly discusses the theme of belonging, but several other authors and poets we studied throughout the semester treat it as a central theme in their writings. One such example is Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her short story, The Thing Around Your Neck. The narrator of the story, a citizen of Nigeria, traveled to the United States for the first time in her life as a winner of the “American visa lottery.” Her image of America as a dream-land of wealth, freedom, success and happiness was shattered upon arrival and she was never able to escape the deep loneliness and alienation she felt being away from her family and home country. This loneliness is described as a choking feeling, something that “would wrap itself around your neck, something that very nearly choked you before you fell asleep” (Adichie, p. 119) and it tightened or loosened depending on whether the narrator felt a sense of familiarity and belonging in a given situation. During her first few days at her uncle’s house in Maine, she did not experience this choking sensation since, as she explained about herself, “you felt at home in his house; his wife called you nwanne, sister, and his two school-age children called you Aunty. They spoke Igbo and ate garri for lunch and it was like home” (Adichie, p. 116). Though upon leaving the familiarity of her home country’s culture, “the thing around [her] neck” tightened and did not loosen again until she felt comfortable enough with her American boyfriend to cook traditional Nigerian recipes and tell him stories about her family at home, for instance, that her “father was not really a school teacher in Lagos, that he was a junior driver for a construction company” (Adichie, pp. 122-123). Over the course of the story, the narrator learns along with us, that the familiarity, comfort and sense of belonging she gained from being a citizen of her home country would ultimately bring her far greater and more profound happiness than the wealth and freedom proposed by the American Dream ever could.

Poet Ada Limón approaches citizenship and belonging from a slightly different angle in her poem titled Against Belonging. While Adichie treats the belonging that results from citizenship as a source of comfort, peace and happiness, Limón implies that it is something one must shake off in order to attain freedom and a sense of empowerment. Already in the title of the poem, she makes clear that she is fighting against a sense of belonging and looking to break free from its confines. The poem centers around the speaker’s discussion of the three snakes surrounding her house. Although she identifies them as “harmless Eastern garter snakes,” they are portrayed as wild, untamable and “ever expanding” (Limón) creatures with a power that reaches beyond the confines of the her garden, home, community and ultimately her sense of belonging. They represent a deeply personal feeling of unrest and a desire to break free, illustrated by the speaker’s description of them “moving around inside [her]” and “hissing” (Limón). In the last three lines of the poem, she identifies the three snakes as “what cannot be tamed, what shakes off citizenship, what draws her own signature with her body in whatever dirt she wants” (Limón). Limón draws a close connection between citizenship and belonging in these lines, which imply that the shaking off of citizenship equates to a shaking off of the sense of belonging or, as the title of the poem states, going “against belonging.” As we discovered in our first class discussion of the topic, citizenship and the responsibility and sense of belonging that come with it take on different meanings for every individual. For Plato, citizenship means being responsible for the safety and harmony within one’s city and while Kimmerer generally aligns with this idea, she extends it to suit our modern day need for environmental protection and conservation, creating a hypothetical nation in which humanity coexists with nature, takes what nature offers, treats it with care and does not waste any of it. Adichie, less concerned with the citizen’s responsibility to maintain their community, focuses on the profound sense of belonging that being part of such a community can offer, even while away from home and the motherland. Limón attempts to break free altogether from the confines of citizenship and the comfort and safety it offers, stepping into a world of utter freedom and untamable empowerment.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. The Thing Around Your Neck. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Limón, Ada. The Carrying. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Milkweed Editions, 2018.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Milkweed Editions, 2015.

Plato. Complete Works. Edited, with introduction and notes, by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Indiana, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997.