Stuart Hall's Cultural Identity and Diaspora

In the book titled, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, author David Gilroy, focused on the issue of modernity through the various experiences of Africans across various locations such as Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. Gilroy also highlighted many intellectual contributors to the discussion, which included Fredrick Douglas, Donald Byrd, W.E.B. DuBois and Richard Wright. His approach to the diaspora study differed from the typical, but did incorporate personal stories from those who experienced it themselves. While focusing on the various components of the work including nationalism, race, music, double consciousness and the understanding of Afrocentrism, Gilroy hopes that through his research, “the history of the

For this week’s reading, we read the article “Racialized Discourses and Ethnic Epistemologies” by Gloria Ladson-Billings. The main purpose of this reading is to argue that “there are well-developed system of knowledge, or epistemologies, that stand in contrast to the dominant Euro-American epistemology.” (Denzin and Lincoln P. 399) The author started out the article by arguing the importance of national and racial consciousness. Author Billings pointed out that the Europeans view that the individual’s mind is the origin of knowledge and presence. On the other hand, the African word “Ubuntu” means “I am because we are.” This shows that the African thinks that the idea of humanity is very important and everyone should be treated fairly no matter what racial and ethnic background they are from. These two ideas came out in the mid to late 1960’s, the two different point of views clear choice between hegemony and liberation. Comparing these two various perspectives shows that this is a critical case.

This ‘false identity’ to which Haugthon refers, is indicative of how most countries that were colonies operate. This has impacted the way we dress, speak and relate to each other. Stone (1992) posits that the because the social ideology of plantation society defined black people as being

Unfortunately, Rachel Price’s narrow-minded attitude remains stagnant into late adulthood. The Equatorial where Rachel’s “proudest achievement[s]” lie alludes to the imaginary line that divides up the world, establishing how Rachel’s accomplishments lie on a unjust foundation (462). Fittingly, her “own little world” (462) is upheld by her “standards of white supremacy” (28).The word “world” suggests to the reader the illustration of a European explorer charting the globe for unknown lands to redeem as his own. It frames the painting of colonialism and segregation to the reader, as Rachel “can run [her world] exactly however [she] please”, further alluding to the image of a white colonist dictating and exploiting the lives of “local boys” and “punish [them] with a firm hand” (462). Rachel’s self-appointed responsibility of policing her African staff with violence only gives more weight to her internalized ignorance, prolonged by her stay in the Congo and unwavered by the years. Unlike her siblings’ change of heart over the years, Rachel’s exposure to Africa only reiterates her initial belief of how “these people here can’t decide anything for themselves” (480), suggesting how she sees them as lesser than her, as a docile child who remains incapable of assertion. All in all, Rachel’s unfazed ignorance

This week’s reading of Roderick A. Ferguson’s Aberrations in Black: Towards a Queer of Color Critique offers a queer of color analysis that poses itself against Marxism, revolutionary nationalism, liberal pluralism and historical materialism, and opts instead for an “understanding of nation and capital as the outcome of manifold intersections that contradict the idea of liberal nation-state and capital as sites of resolution, perfection, progress and confirmation (3). By challenging some of the main complacent thinking that characterized canonical sociology, Ferguson pushes for an engagement with racial knowledge about African American culture as it was produced by American sociology if one is to fully understand the gender and sexual variations within the African American culture. One of the principle assumptions of canonical sociology is represented by its use of cultural, racial and sexual differences in the process of pathologizing African American culture. By juxtaposing canonical sociological texts from the Chicago School of Sociology with that of African American literature, Ferguson provides a genealogy of this foundational issue of imagining African American culture as sites of polymorphous gender and sexual perversions and how these perversions are in turn associated with societal and moral failings.

Between the World and Me has been called a book about race, but the author argues that race itself is a flawed, if anything, nothing more than a pretext for racism. Early in the book he writes, “Race, is the child of racism, not the father.” The idea of race has been so important in the history of America and in the self-identification of its people and racial designations have literally marked the difference between life and death in some instances. How does discrediting the idea of race as an immutable, unchangeable fact changes the way we look at our history? Ourselves? In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and the current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the

The concepts of alienation and not getting one’s voice heard as discussed by Judith Bradford and Crispin Sartwell in their essay “Voiced Bodies/Embodied Voices,” and Anna Kegler in her essay “The Sugarcoated Language Of White Fragility,” expose the problems of having one’s voice heard. Jackson and Small articulate this notion as they explain the difficulties of maintaining their culture with the land they depend on.

The earliest movements for repatriation by Black Americans in the late nineteenth-century reflected the ways in which the gratuity of violence of both colonialism and slavery created a dialectical tension between Black Americans and Continental Africans. The psychological and social effects of this violence manifested in the concerns W. E. B. Du Bois discusses in relation to double consciousness. Amongst the most important of them would be the ways in slavery and colonialism had shaped Black Americans perspectives of themselves, Continental Africans and Africa as a land. While many Black Americans are representative of this process, people such as Martin Delaney, one of the first proponents for Black Nationalism, and Robert Campbell, a teacher at the Institute of Colored Youth in Philadelphia, exemplify the attitudes taken up by Black Americans in the late nineteenth-century and how both behavioral and structural violence shaped their understandings. Through the conceptual framework provided by people such as Du Bois, E. P. Skinner, Frantz Fanon and Frank B. Wilderson, III, one can begin to understand how these movements not only were a product of the ideologies of Black Americans, but also the products of white supremacist, anti-Black ideology.

Stuart Hall’s Cultural Identity and Diaspora focuses on the current issues of identity, cultural practices and cultural representations. He analyses the visual representations of Afro-Caribbean’s and challenges the notions of identity from African and European places. Hall then goes on to explain how Caribbean cinema has chosen to both, refute and embrace European influence. He presents two different forms of thinking about cultural identity. In the first position, Hall defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared culture, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common. The first model uses “stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meanings’ to present the idea of shared culture, history, and ancestry rooted beneath ‘more superficial imposed ‘selves’” (Hall, 223).

In Derek Walcott’s From in a Green Night: A Far Cry from Africa, the author explains and dives into the topic of colonialism and self-reflection through his own experiences of being trapped between his Kenyan and British descent. Similar to Fanon’s concept of complicity, Walcott also understands both sides of the story in an unbiased manner. In his poem, he uses imagery to describe the violent past in which Kenyans and British people have committed to each other, the ‘savage’ nature of humans during colonization, and his own internal speech where he himself is confused of his cultural and social identity. This paper will explore the core concepts of Walcott’s writing and further explain it through Fanon’s lens to amplify the meaning of the poem.

When studying the black diaspora within the United States, the story typically starts with the classic slave narratives including those of Frederick Douglass and Mary Price and ends with the affirmative action decisions of the late 1990s. History tells the story of an internal racial identity struggle through the institutions of slavery and oppression, resistance and rebellion, cultural reawakening and civil rights which evokes the question: what does it mean to be African American? Aaron McGruder’s animated series The Boondocks creates a context to consider the question of what it means to be an African American today and discusses the institutions that are now molding the African American identity. McGruder criticizes the idea of a

The following paper will discuss two of the major dimensions of my cultural identity, and analyze the way in which my identity holds privileges, or has exposed me to oppression. Being that I am white, I have lived a life of privilege simply because of the color of my skin. I have been afforded opportunities, and lived a life free from persecution due to my skin color. I have also lived a life that has been impacted by oppression because of my female identity. This unique position between privilege and oppression is where I live my life.

I believe that my academic background and personal interests provide a solid foundation for contributing to the graduate history program at Sacramento State. My primary interests are in exploring the interplay between race, gender, and culture in 20th century American and European history and its influence on issues of cultural identity and memory. In addition, my coursework introduced me to theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches such as critical race theory and postcolonial studies. Through courses such as History and Theory (HIST 200) and History and Memory (HIST 282F), I hope to continue developing my interests, knowledge of theory and historiography, and learn more about history as a discipline.

Critically examine the ways through which the Black British diaspora has been imagined and represented by the theorisations of Paul Gilroy and others. Why does Gilroy (and others) suggest his notion of ‘The Black Atlantic’ as useful for re-imagining black identities?

Frantz Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness,” a chapter from Black Skin, White Masks describes the anxiety felt while held in the gaze of the colonizer. A reading of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble in conjunction with Fanon’s work raises questions and possible strategies on how to reject neocolonialism and contemporary white supremacy. Fanon’s idea of blackness is performative but not for the gain of the black man, rather for the white man. Butler suggests that regaining control of the black man’s fate comes from interpellation, the act, of interrupting the white man’s claims or ideas, or rather their misconceptions of the black man. A way of disregarding the white man’s claims is a form of rejecting that normativity, similar to Butler’s analysis of drag where one rejects normativity altogether. The black man’s lack of interpellation enhances the white man’s performativity furthering white supremacy; a way of rejecting neocolonialism that disregards societal norms.