Raymond Trinh
ASA 114
Professor Valverde
In Cultural Identity and DiasporaI, Stuart Hall explores that there are significant concerns for anyone struggling for liberation. In his essay, he states there are at least two different ways of thinking of cultural identity”. The first definition he defines is an essentialist identity, which emphasizes the similarities amongst a group of people. Hall states, “Within the terms of this definition, our cultural identities reflect the common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people’, with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history”. Hall argues that this definition can and does inspire feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist art and activism but cannot help us comprehend the trauma of colonialism. Furthermore, the second definition emphasizes the similarities and the differences amongst an imagined cultural group. Hall presents that this definition is useful for understanding the trauma of colonialism because it emphasizes the historical and social contingency of identity. This definition is an individual analysis of power and normalization, and that they are able to scrutinize historical and contemporary colonial relations and to struggle against them.
How can we further examine cultural identity and diaspora?
No comments:
Post a Comment