Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor

by Christy Wampole

People have long imagined themselves as rooted creatures, bound to the earth—and nations—from which they came. In Rootedness, Christy Wampole looks toward philosophy, ecology, literature, history, and politics to demonstrate how the metaphor of the root—surfacing often in an unexpected variety of places, from the family tree to folk etymology to the language of exile—developed in twentieth-century Europe.

Wampole examines both the philosophical implications of this metaphor and its political evolution. From the root as home to the root as genealogical origin to the root as the past itself, rootedness has survived in part through its ability to subsume other compelling metaphors, such as the foundation, the source, and the seed. With a focus on this concept’s history in France and Germany, Wampole traces its influence in diverse areas such as the search for the mystical origins of words, land worship, and nationalist rhetoric, including the disturbing portrayal of the Jews as an unrooted, and thus unrighteous, people. Exploring the works of Martin Heidegger, Simone Weil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Celan, and many more, Rootedness is a groundbreaking study of a figure of speech that has had wide-reaching—and at times dire—political and social consequences. 

Genres: Philosophy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2016

About the author

Christy Wampole is an assistant professor of French literature at Princeton University. In 2011, she obtained her Ph.D. in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford University. She is interested in the essay form and all its possibilities.

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's some really good stuff in here on the historical use of the root metaphor in German and French literature, poetry, philosophy and psychology. I did disagree quite substantially with a number of the readings though, especially of Weil, Heidegger and Deleuze. The turn in the last chapter to Marder's vegetal ontology relies on some of these misreadings (Marder hates Deleuze, but here Deleuze is cast as providing the foundation to his thought). I may he misreading wampole here, but it looks like she thinks we should re-establish the nature-culture divide to highlight our role as stewards of nature, even though, on a certain reading, it was just this separation which allowed us to abuse and destroy mature in the first place.

[Lorna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting book but you need to have a French and German dictionary and copies of the materials she references to fully understand what she is referring too in her analysis unless you are familiar with the texts already. I didn't finish it but I would like to go back again when I have more time to absorb and study it.