Glass - Cultural Identity and Diaspora

For this blog, I’m going to focus on Stuart Hall’s piece, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, in which Hall grapples with two different ways of thinking about “cultural identity.” He defines the first “version” of cultural identity as “one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self,’ hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves,’ which people with a shared history of ancestry hold in common” (Hall 1994, p 393). The version of cultural identity that Hall focuses on for the majority of his paper, however, is one that “recognizes that , as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or rather – since history has intervened – ‘what we have become’” (Hall 1994, p 394). In this second version, “cultural identity is a matter of ‘becoming” as well as of ‘being’” (Hall 1994, p 394).

In his piece, Hall speaks to Said’s work on Orientalism as he works to unfold the histories – plural – that make up the Caribbean cultural identity and its subjectivity to the West as the “other.” Halls stakes the claim that the West “had the power to make [them] see and experience [themselves] as ‘Other,’” emphasizing the regime of power formed by the power/knowledge couplet attributed to Foucault (Hall 1994, pp 394-395). Hall problematizes the idea that cultural identity is stagnant and comes from one history, but rather that “cultural identity is not a fixed essence at all” (Hall 1994, p 395). Hall discusses the Caribbean cultural identities in relation to three presences: Presence Africaine, Presence Europeene, and Presence Americaine. By tracing the histories of Afro-Caribbean people through these three presences, Hall ultimately proves that “the diaspora experience as [he intends] it here is defined, not by the essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (Hall 1994, pp 401-402, emphasis author’s).

Through tracing the histories of Afro-Caribbean people, Hall seeks to understand how they become other – and see themselves as other. Through slave trades and an origin from Africa – the site of the repressed, the European – a site of profound splitting and doubling that originated the imperialism, and the New World – the juncture point where many different cultures meet, Hall shows the multiple ways cultural identity is formed – it “doesn’t follow a straight, unbroken line” (Hall 1994, p 395).

Thinking about how this applies to my own research, I can see how this would apply to the people of color that participate in my study. The very fact that I sought them out to participate in my study from their vantage point – that I found this interesting and important – others them. But I also realize that I need to look into their histories to understand how they have arrived to this position of “the other” – by understanding the various ways in which they have experienced betrayal and mistreatment in the medical system, I can understand that on the one hand, the people of color in my study were viewed as disposable and less important by those in power (specifically white, male doctors). On the other hand, this mistreatment and betrayal explains their distrust of the health care system and their willingness to use alternative methods of birth care in order to avoid those situations.

Clarification question:

Can we define ‘diaspora’ as used by Hall – maybe operationalize it?

Discussion question:

Hall pointedly states that “practices of representation always implicate the positions from which we speak or write – the position of enunciation” – how do we as researchers be sure we are representing our subjects/respondents in a way that avoids a “regime of power formed” – or is this possible?