STONES OF ST LOUIS
I am going to declare that the concept of citizenship should be extended to rocks. It is a simple enough proposition. More simple, I think, than the colonial question whether aboriginals should be citizens. After all, rocks don’t speak an impenetrable language, they don’t worship other gods, they don’t wear funny clothes or indulge in unsavory sexual practices.
We have a good start, then, with rocks. With rocks we are way ahead of the proposition that native populations might become citizens of the world, or of a nation, or have a vote, or redefine what it is to be a citizen or belong to a community, or God help us, redefine nationhood or sovereignty.
Rocks, though, are as diverse as anybody else. There are different groups. They are not all the same. We have to be careful not to homogenize them into some pan-mineral collective that can treated in the same way despite their different origins and trajectories.
But how can rocks be citizens? Rocks are the very definition of the irredeemable. Inert, static, lifeless, incurious, unfeeling - lower than animals. Lower, even than sponges. How can such non-organic matter self-organize; how do they manifest choice and freedom of will, those cornerstones of citizenship? Perhaps, however, it is not so much a question of how a rock instantiates citizenship as how the concept of citizenship must evolve.
But first, let’s bring rocks amongst us.