Stuart Hall - Luca

In his piece on Cultural Identity, Stuart Hall tries to “seek to open a dialogue, an investigation, on the subject of cultural identity and representation (p.392).” He starts off by reminding his readers that the “I” who writes must always be thought as “enuncianted,”so that all discourses are “placed.”

He sets off to talk about a “cultural identity” by understanding what history and groups are.

He talks about how there are usually two ways in which scholars talk about cultural identities. The first one entails a collective “true self inside many more selves” that are mediated and artificial. This cultural identity is constantly reproduced via cinematic representation and what Fanon calls “a passionate search”, in the hope to create “one people” to which a certain group belongs, a group of resistance. The second one Hall discusses is one of difference, meaning that we can never talk about one single solidified group or identity because the group in question, as in the case of the “Caribbean” identity, is constantly subjected to discontinuities and ruptures.

This is idea is based on the fact that “identities come from somewhere, have histories,” but at the same time they are not coming from an essentialised and fixed past. I think this idea comes from a genealogical method, that considers history as not something universal but rather the product of a specific narration. In this sense cultural identities are always a “positioning” and constituted of ruptures. To give an example, Hall talks about the difference between Martiniquais and Jamaicans, both the same for but also very different in cultural terms (for their history and customs). But how can we than talk of difference when we talk about “one identity?” How can we say that Martinique both is and is not French? Hall thinks that Derrida is useful to understand the ruptures happening at the level of representation of identities. Because every representation is always subject to being “deferred,” “staggered,” “serialised.” In talking about how difference works in terms of the Caribbean cultural identities, Hall finds three different “presences” that act as a repositioning: Présence Africaine, Presence Européenne, and the Présence Americaine. I think it’s interesting how he sees the first is the “site of the repressed” and that it happens as a mediation. Caribbean identities reveal this presence by meeting their oppression. The second, the Européenne, is related to the exclusion, to a dominant presence that fixes Caribbean people through the “look,” by making them “other,” while the Americaine presence is the site of the encounter, it’s the “New World,” the stage where hybridity and diversity happen.

I think Hall’s analysis is very compelling, especially in the way in which these identities are constantly remade and repositioned by analyzing “what is not” the identity. It’s a way to reimagine and to remake history constantly.

Questions:

How can we overcome the dimension of oppression, made by the reflection in the “other” and still retain identities? Is it even possible? How can we look forward instead of looking back at the past, whether it be a fixed one or a discontinuous one?