Week 6_Joshua Liu_ASA 114

In "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," Stuart Hall discusses two potential methods of thinking about the term, "cultural identity." Of the two definitions, I was the most intrigued by the second. This method of thinking, as Hall writes, "recognises that. as well as the many points of similarity, there are also points of deep and significant difference which constitute what 'we really are', or rather - since history has intervened - what we have become," (Hall, 225). I was interested in this definition because it seems to emphasize all points in time, rather than just the past - it speaks to the fluid nature of one's identity. I think that such fluidity can occur on different levels of magnitude, as well as over different amounts of time. For example, a single person can have experiences that reshape who they are, but it may take years of activism or some other form of progress to reshape a diaspora as a whole. Hall also discusses how the second view of cultural identity is less familiar or more unsettling due to its non-linear nature. I appreciated how he divided the interpretation of this topic into two vectors - one that grounded us in the past, as well as another that accounts for discontinuity.

Question: What are some examples of how members of Asian Diasporas experienced changes in the cultural identity?