Lecture 02/18

Feb 18th ? Diaspora and Cultural Idenity The Exam Multiple Choice Essay Stuart Hall Born in Jamaca, moved to England. One of the founders of British Cultural Studies. Identity is always initiated from a personal position, and we may occupy several positions throughout our life. There is no beginning or end; it is a process of ?becoming?. Cultural identity has been thought of as an essence that comes from a shared history and nationality. He doesn?t see this as a good idea ? it is too limiting. We must make a profound search to discover our past and our identity. It is the movement, however, that matters, not the actual location. There are ruptures and critical points of difference that make a cultural identity unique. Structures Similarity and Continuity comes from a point in the past Difference and Rupture is a line that comes from discontinuity The Caribean Identity is a jagged line that bounces between the 2. Differànce A rebelous word that disturbs the system It is so similar to difference that it carries the concept of difference, but it diverges. It is defered or postponed. A clear definition of identiy. Idenity is postponed, and is never clearly defined or constituted, but it carries with it ideas and difference. ?If signification depends on the undless repositioning of its differential terms ? There is always something left over. (Hall, 27) An example of this is Facebook status. If you say ?I am in L150.? The ?.? at the end of the status is arbitrary ? it will change, and can change, at any moment. It might not even have to exist. Linking politics of identity with language. Caribean Identiy Being ?black? didn?t really occur to the Caribeans until the 70?s. They had concidered themselves as just Caribean. They had to come to grips with their African heritage and presence. There is also a European presence. This is the presence that was doing the ?talking? for the longest time. Can the African and European presence talk to each other with out fear of violence that comes from the colonial discourse? The American presence is a diasporic space. It is ?neutral? stage where differences play together without resistance. Cinema Contemporary Caribean filmmakers have new and creative ways to represent themselves and their identies through a black point of view. Lumumba Question (The movie is about a political activist from the Republic of Congo that fought for idependance. Leopold II of Belgium had taken the Republic). Focus on the opening scenes and think about how the interspersed black and white photographs with the movie scenes in color speak to the difference between colonial discourse and the new idea of cultural identity proposed by Stuart Hall. How would you describe the rhetoric (the ideas effectively communicated) by the principal character? How would you describe the difference between what you hear and what you see in these scenes? How is the juxtaposition of these two a representation of cultural identity as a process, as a production? What is the purpose of inter-cutting different times and places? What does it do to the narration of the story?