Cultural Identity and Diaspora- Stuart Hall

Cultural identity has been a topic of discussion among many scholars, each of them trying to come up with the best definition and explanation of the same. Stuart Hall has not been left out, and in his article ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, he has a main aim of defining it and illustrating to the readers what is contained in cultural identity and its relationship with the Diaspora

In his discussion, Stuart uses a Caribbean cinema better known as a Third cinema to elaborate on cultural identity. He considers the cinema as a visual form of representation. This cinema is different from other forms of the visual representation used on the Afro-Caribbean; it represents the blacks in the Diasporas of the west, better known as the new post colonial subjects. Using this cinema as evidence, Stuart Hall discusses the issues on cultural practices, identity and cultural production.

Hall questions the emergence of this new subject, the black, in the context of cultural identity. Hall asks himself who the emergent of the new cinema is and from where he speak. He claims, “Practices of representation always implicate the positions from which we speak or write – the positions of enunciation.”(Stuart Hall, 222). He supports this by using the suggestions on the theories of enunciation. Hall argues that we should think of it as an incomplete production, instead of viewing cultural identity as a finished product.

He further supports his claims on the process of identity formation by using Derrida’s theory ‘difference’ and sees the positioning of identity which is temporal as arbitrary and strategic. Hall goes on to use the three presences, American, African and European present in the Caribbean as an illustration of the idea of ‘traces’ in our identity. Hall claims that through the Caribbean experience, there are three types of cultural identities: African, considered as the site of those repressed, the identity of the Europeans said to be the site of the colonialists and Americans, identified as a new world. In this, he identifies Caribbean identify as Diaspora identity.

Identity is not as unproblematic or transparent as we think. (Stuart Hall, 223). We should not ignore the past of an individual when trying to understand their cultural identity. Hall suggests that we should view the identity as a progressive process which is consisted within the representation. With his views, it is easier to identity the culture of a person from any of the three presences mentioned by Hall.