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Postcolonial Thoughts: Out of Many, One People- Notes on Stuart Hall’s Cultural Identity and

Diaspora essay

By Christopher Hutchinson

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Hall’s essay on cultural identity is the very best essay on the problem of identity currently. In these
16 pages Hall challenges each notion of identity from African and European places and how
Caribbean cinema has chosen to refute the influence of Europe as well as embrace it. Hall began the
essay with deconstructing the make-up of the black subject. Hall’s essay is meant to be read, then
re-read, as he uses many metaphors that are interchangeable. He also destabilizes words that were
previously thought to be concrete. These unstable metaphors are so well articulated that the very
process of trying to add or deny Hall’s contribution to this subject is a mere reflection of your own
place and viewpoint. Hall uses Said, Ghandi, Garvey, Rastafarianism, China, Jamaica and many more
in a fluid essay that does exactly what he wishes we should apply to the dialogue of identity, an
identity of difference.
different view of cultural identity. This second position recognises that, as well as the many points of
similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we
really are’; or rather- since history has intervened – ‘what we have become’. We cannot speak for
very long, with any exactness, about ‘one experience, one identity’, without acknowledging its other
side – the ruptures and discontinuities which constitute, precisely, the Caribbean’s ‘uniqueness’.
Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’.-p225

http://www.unipa.it/~michele.cometa/hall_cultural_identity.pdf

Identity & Production

Before Hall gets to his identity in difference he calls into question the very problematic issue of
identity as production and its relation to the black subject. The attempt to create a monolithic Afro-
Caribbean/Afro-American culture is wrong due to all the cultural editing one would have to do to
achieve that oneness.

The first position defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one
true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’, which people
with a shared history and ancestry hold in common. 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. This ‘oneness’, underlying all the other,

more superficial differences, is the truth, the essence, of ‘Caribbeanness’,of the black experience. It is
this identity which a Caribbean or black diaspora must discover, excavate, bring to light and express
through cinematic representation.-p223

http://www.unipa.it/~michele.cometa/hall_cultural_identity.pdf

Identity in Hall’s context is not the identity of victimhood. This was hard to digest, how could unity
be wrong? How could standing as a collective be a weakness? How could Hall advocate this divisive
stance? That imposed unity that people of color have strived for is just as manufactured and false as
In …enforced separations from Africa – already figured, in the European imaginary, as ‘the Dark
Continent’.
http://themoderatevoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/avatar_high_resolution-wide.jpg

Africa Signified

Africa, the signified which could not be represented directly in slavery, remained and remains the
unspoken, unspeakable ‘presence’ in Caribbean culture. It is ‘hiding’ behind every verbal inflection,
every narrative twist of Caribbean cultural life. It is the secret code with which every Western text
was ‘re-read’. It is the ground-bass of every rhythm and bodily movement. This was- i s – the ‘Africa’
that ‘is alive and well in the diaspora’. -p230

http://www.unipa.it/~michele.cometa/hall_cultural_identity.pdf

This definition of Africa signified is obviously also present in the everyday encoding of
African/American language, bass, rhythm, and bodily movement. That evidence of Africa can then
manifest itself in the very real imaginative geography and history.

We must not collude with the West which, precisely, normalises and appropriates Africa by freezing it
into some timeless zone of the primitive, unchanging past. Africa must at last be reckoned with by
Caribbean people, but it cannot in any simple sense by merely recovered-p231

http://www.unipa.it/~michele.cometa/hall_cultural_identity.pdf
"My Son the Fanatic" by Hanif Kureishi

The short-story My Son the Fanatic is written by the British author Hanif Kureishi. He grew up in
England in the 1950s and 1960s, being the son of a Pakistani immigrant and an English woman. He
studied philosophy and began writing novels at an early age. Being the son of an immigrant, a
majority of his novels unravel the difficulties and challenges a huge amount of immigrants face in
their new country, especially the difficulties involved in finding a place to belong. Some of Kureishi’s
most famous scripts and novels are among others My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of
Suburbia.
Parvez, the father of the teenage boy Ali, begins noticing changes in his son’s behaviour and at first
sees this as a good thing. He believes that his son is finally growing out of his teenage attitude and
taking more responsibility. However, when Ali begins throwing out valuable belongings and his
friends starts avoiding him, Parvez gets seriously worried, and feels as if his son is ungrateful and
that he himself has done something wrong as a father.
Finally he opens up to his colleagues who instantly believe that Ali has a drug problem and that he is
selling his things to afford drugs, which later is revealed to be incorrect, seeing that he is giving his
belongings away to charity. Parvez begins watching every movement Ali makes, but can not find that
anything is physically wrong with his son.
He shortly after finds out that Ali has become interested and fascinated by the religion Islam, and
that he spends all his time praying or going to the mosque. While Parvez feels relived, he can not
help feeling frustrated and afraid at the same time. After a disagreement between Ali and his father,
in which Ali utters his distaste towards his fathers friendship with an English woman and his
consuming of alcohol, Parvez ends up beating his son, to which his son’s only repose is the
statement; “So who’s the fanatic now?”.
The plot surely did not take place so long ago, because of the use of video games and computers,
but then again, they do use video tapes and therefore it is fair to believe that it must be some time
ago, seeing that tapes is not that common nowadays. The setting is possibly a middleclass suburb
city and they have to work hard to achieve what they wish for; “He, for Ali, had worked long hours
and spent a lot of money paying for his education as an accountant”. It is also suggested that the
neighbourhood where the main characters live, is home to a lot of immigrants, seeing that the father
mainly works with people from his own country. The story is told from a third person’s prospective,
meaning that someone is standing on the outside observing what happens.
The short-story has two main characters, Parvez, the father, and Ali, the son. Parvez is an immigrant,
who has lived in England for at least 20 years, given that this is the period of time he has worked has
a taxi-driver there. He is Punjabis, which means that he is part of the Indo-Aryan ethnic group from
South-Asia. He is married, although it is never clarified whether is wife is English or not, and he
seems to have a certain control over her; “He order her to sit down and keep quite”.
On the contrary, when his son’s change in behaviour arises he does not see fit to discuss this with
her, and rather turns to his English prostitute friend, whom he has befriended while at work as a
taxi-driver. Their relationship is close, and they feel as if they can tell each other everything. For that
reason it is fair to believe that their relationship might go deeper than they like to admit, something
which is also suggest on numerous occasions; “Bettina put her arms around him” and “As Bettina
rubbed his head Parvez told her…”. After telling his friends at the taxi-driver office about his son’s
sudden interest in religion, they became unusually silent and this makes Parvez even more nervous.
Parvez and his son clearly disagree on a numerous amount of issues, but what are decisive to this
short-story are Parvez’s alcohol consumption and his friendship with the English prostitute. Parvez’s
hat and distaste towards Islam has its roots in an experience he had as a child, while he was being
taught the Koran. This degrading incident made him avoid all kinds of religion, and he, as well has his
colleagues, makes fun of people who believes.
Ali is Parvez’s son, good-looking and resembling his father. His exact age is not determined, but he is
entitled a teenager on several occasions and he did have an English girlfriend. Before his behaviour
changes he was a very good student and had a lot of friends. It is not made clear when or why Ali’s
interest for religion occurred, but one thing is obvious: his interest for Islam, in many ways, has gone
a bit too far.
Ali develops a sharp tongue and his friends pull away from him, something which he does not seem
to mind. He encloses himself into his oven little world where nothing which is against his belief can
be accepted. Ali’s fanatic behaviour when it comes to region and his urge to have something to
believe in, might be owing to his desire and need to have somewhere to belong and something to
indulge in, which can give him a sense of belonging.
The short-story focuses on the relationship between Pervez and Ali, a relationship which slowly, but
most certainly, decline and is broken down bit by bit. Parvez’s anger is most likely disguised fear. He
is afraid that his son will be ill-treated by people who does not accept his belief and that he will get
his life destroyed because he becomes to caught up in his belief that he will not accept anybody else.

Short Story Analysis:When Mr.Pirzarda Came to Dine by: Jhumpa Lahiri

Summary:This story is about an Indian girl named Lilla , and a man named Mr.Pirzada who comes to
lilla's house every night to dine, and watch the news. He is from dacca which used to be a part of
pakistan, but he left his family to come do a study on the vegetation in boston. And since he is not
provided with a meal that is why he comes to lilla's every night. The reason Mr.pirzada stays with
lilla is because of her parents and they helped him get to the U.S. . Mr.Pirzada writes to his family
every single night. Lilla notices everything that he does, only because her father told her to pay
attention to him and listen to him because she needs to learn more about people from other parts
of the world. As days pass the problems in Mr.Pirzada's hometown get worse. He tries not too worry
to much though. just until he hears his home country will soon go to war. Unfortunately Dacca which
is his home country starts crumble due to the war. soon he decides to return to dacca. Months later,
lilla's family receives a letter from Mr.Pirzada which said he was doing fine and was reunited with his
family. He also thanks them for everything they did for him.

conflict: The conflict was how Mr.Pirzada had left his family during a war and he just couldn't stop
worrying about them.

point of view: I saw this as a very worrysome story because basically Mr.Pirzada couldn't do anything
to help his family.

Theme: Family will always have strong ties whether they are far or near.
Sequel: Even though Mr.Pirzada was able to reunite with his family, the war was still not over. One
morning Mr.Pirzada woke up and found everyone of his family members dead...... He soon realized
that if he couldn't have a happy family then no one else could. So he turns into a psycho that has a
fetish for killing families while they are asleep. He soon remembers about his friends from america.
that night he decides to go to america. As he arrives he tries to find lila's family and kill them... but
then he wakes up and realizes it as all a dream. happily he loks around for his family,.. everything
was quiet, and then he finds out his family was dead, in order to get rid of the nager and sadness he
kills himself aswell...

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Imaginative Geography & History

‘imaginative geography and history’, which helps ‘the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by
dramatising the difference between what is close to it and what is far away’. It ‘has acquired an
imaginative or figurative value we can name and feel’.7 Our belongingness to it constitutes what
Benedict Anderson calls ‘an imagined community’.8 To this ‘Africa’, which is a necessary part of the
Caribbean imaginary, we can’t literally go home again.

Hall’s definition of the imaginative is by no means fictitious. Hall here uses the imaginative
geography and history as a solid state to stand. It is not a simulacrum of pretend realities that rely on
the elaborate sets to trick the viewer into a state of an alternate reality. The Imaginative here cannot
be used as the hegemonic tool to oversimplify and produce a manufactured culture. It is not fashion.

http://www.icrates.org/the-aesthetics-of-afro-futurism

Presence European

Presence Europeenne is almost as complex as the ‘dialogue’ with Africa. In terms of popular cultural
life, it is nowhere to be found in its pure, pristine state. It is always-already fused, syncretised, with
other cultural elements. It is always-already creolised – not lost beyond the Middle Passage, but ever-
present: from the harmonics in our musics to the ground-bass of Africa, traversing and intersecting
our lives at every point. How can we stage this dialogue so that, finally, we can place it, without
terror or violence, rather than being forever placed by it? Can we ever recognise its irreversible
influence, whilst resisting its imperializing eye? The engima is impossible, so far, to resolve. It requires
the most complex of cultural strategies. –p234

http://www.unipa.it/~michele.cometa/hall_cultural_identity.pdf

Gauguin is an example of the Presence Europeenne, so loved for his exotic depictions of Tahiti of
which Tahiti benefits from in Tourism. The cultural identity of the Caribbean as a Romantic post-card
has been offered as a true depiction of the culture that is actually present. Gauguin’s success is
derived from the hyper-color, the abstract sensual nude figure, the simulacra of Tahiti. How much of
this savage narrative of the Caribbean has been accepted as the rubric for the now Caribbean folk art
identity? This connection to the rubric of Europe is the reason for the stagnation in Caribbean art as
well African-American art.
Paul Gauguin, Te aa no areois (The Seed of the Areoi),1892, The Museum of Modern Art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/the-artists-magazine/international-folk-art-market-santa-fe

Out of Many, One People

This is the vocation of modern black cinemas: by allowing us to see and recognise the different parts
and histories of ourselves, to construct those points of identification, those positionalities we call in
retrospect our ‘cultural identities’. –p234
http://www.unipa.it/~michele.cometa/hall_cultural_identity.pdf

Hall’s essay imagine’s concretely the Jamaican motto Out of Many, One People to be the new rubric
of the New Africa, unity of difference, where difference is ideal.

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