Negotiating Hall's Caribbean Identity in Kincaid's Annie John
Negotiating Hall's Caribbean Identity in Kincaid's Annie John
In his article "Negotiating Caribbean Identities," Stuart Hall attempts to relay to the reader the complications associated with assigning a single cultural identity to the Caribbean people. Even though the article is intended by the author to represent the Caribbean people as a splicing of a number of different cultures, the processes Hall highlights are noticeable on an individual scale in the main character of Jamaica Kincaid's novel, Annie John. Annie John's quest for self-identification leads her on a path strikingly similar to the one Hall describes. From Annie's journey, the reader might be able to glean what Hall hopes to instill in his own readers when he writes, "What I want to suggest is that despite the dilemmas and vicissitudes of identity through which Caribbean people have passed and continue to pass, we have a tiny but important message for the world about how to negotiate identity" (Hall 281). This message is clearly visible in Kincaid's novel if read along with Hall's article as a quest for Caribbean identity. Hall's first order of business is to explain how vital the origin of a people is to finding identity. In the following quote he explains that culture is the foundation of identity:
But the discourse of identity suggests that the culture of a people is at root a question of its essence, a question of the fundamentals of a culture. Histories come and go, peoples come and go, situations change, but somewhere down there is throbbing the culture to which we all belong. It provides a kind of ground for our identities, something to which we can return, something solid, something fixed, something stabilized, around which we can organize our identities and our sense of belongingness. And there is a sense that modern nations and people cannot survive for long and succeed without the capacity to touch ground, as it were, in the name of their cultural identities. (Hall 282)
If a
In his article "Negotiating Caribbean Identities," Stuart Hall attempts to relay to the reader the complications associated with assigning a single cultural identity to the Caribbean people. Even though the article is intended by the author to represent the Caribbean people as a splicing of a number of different cultures, the processes Hall highlights are noticeable on an individual scale in the main character of Jamaica Kincaid's novel, Annie John. Annie John's quest for self-identification leads her on a path strikingly similar to the one Hall describes. From Annie's journey, the reader might be able to glean what Hall hopes to instill in his own readers when he writes, "What I want to suggest is that despite the dilemmas and vicissitudes of identity through which Caribbean people have passed and continue to pass, we have a tiny but important message for the world about how to negotiate identity" (Hall 281). This message is clearly visible in Kincaid's novel if read along with Hall's article as a quest for Caribbean identity. Hall's first order of business is to explain how vital the origin of a people is to finding identity. In the following quote he explains that culture is the foundation of identity:
But the discourse of identity suggests that the culture of a people is at root a question of its essence, a question of the fundamentals of a culture. Histories come and go, peoples come and go, situations change, but somewhere down there is throbbing the culture to which we all belong. It provides a kind of ground for our identities, something to which we can return, something solid, something fixed, something stabilized, around which we can organize our identities and our sense of belongingness. And there is a sense that modern nations and people cannot survive for long and succeed without the capacity to touch ground, as it were, in the name of their cultural identities. (Hall 282)
If a
Cited: Berrian, Brenda F. "Snapshots of Childhood Life in Jamaica Kincaid 's Fiction." Arms Akimbo. Janice Lidell and Yakini Belinda Kemp, ed. Gainesville: UP Florida, 1999. 103-116. Caton, Louis F. "Romantic Struggles: The Bildungsroman and Mother-Daughter Bonding in Jamaica Kincaid 's Annie John." MELUS 21.3 (1996): 125-142. Hall, Stuart. "Negotiating Caribbean Identities." Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology. Gregory Castle, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 280-292. Hoving, Isabel. "Jamaica Kincaid is Getting Angry." In Praise of New Travelers: Reading Caribbean Migrant Women 's Writing. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001. 184-237. Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Lima, Maria Helena. "Imaginary Homelands in Jamaica Kincaid 's Narratives of Development." Callaloo 25.3 (2002): 857-867. Murdoch, H Adlai. "Severing the (M)Other Connection: The Representation of Cultural Identity in Jamaica Kincaid 's Annie John." Callaloo 13.2 (1990): 325-340. Reichardt, Ulfried. "The Culture of the African Diaspora." Diaspora and Multiculturalism. Monika Fludernik, ed. New York: Rodopi, 2003. 287-328.