Stuart Hall's Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Ouahani Nasr-edine
A Paper about Stuart Hall’s article:
Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Stuart hall talks about the crucial role of the “Third Cinemas” in promoting the Afro-Caribbean cultural identities, the Diaspora hybridity and difference. Hall argues that the role of the “Third Cinemas” is not simply to reflect what is already there; rather, their crucial role is to produce representations which constantly constitute the third world’s peoples as new subjects against their representations in the Western dominant regimes. Their vocation is to allow us to see and recognize the different parts and histories of ourselves. They should provide us with new positions from which to speak about ourselves.
Stuart Hall provides an analysis of cultural identities and what they stand for, their workings and underlying complexities and practices. Hall argues that cultural identities are never fixed or complete in any sense. They are not accomplished, already-there entities which are represented or projected through the new cultural practices. Rather, they are productions which cannot exist outside the work of representation. They are problematic, highly contested sites and processes. Identities are social and cultural formations and constructions essentially subject to the differences of time and place. Then, when we speak of anything, as subjects, we are essentially positioned in time and space and more importantly in a certain culture. These subject positions are what Hall calls “the positions of enunciation” (222). Hall talks about cultural identity from two different, but related, perspectives. First, he discusses cultural identity as a unifying element or as the shared cultural practices that hold a certain group of people together and second, he argues that as well as there are similarities, there are also differences within cultural identities. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss these two sides of cultural identities.
In the first sense, cultural
A Paper about Stuart Hall’s article:
Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Stuart hall talks about the crucial role of the “Third Cinemas” in promoting the Afro-Caribbean cultural identities, the Diaspora hybridity and difference. Hall argues that the role of the “Third Cinemas” is not simply to reflect what is already there; rather, their crucial role is to produce representations which constantly constitute the third world’s peoples as new subjects against their representations in the Western dominant regimes. Their vocation is to allow us to see and recognize the different parts and histories of ourselves. They should provide us with new positions from which to speak about ourselves.
Stuart Hall provides an analysis of cultural identities and what they stand for, their workings and underlying complexities and practices. Hall argues that cultural identities are never fixed or complete in any sense. They are not accomplished, already-there entities which are represented or projected through the new cultural practices. Rather, they are productions which cannot exist outside the work of representation. They are problematic, highly contested sites and processes. Identities are social and cultural formations and constructions essentially subject to the differences of time and place. Then, when we speak of anything, as subjects, we are essentially positioned in time and space and more importantly in a certain culture. These subject positions are what Hall calls “the positions of enunciation” (222). Hall talks about cultural identity from two different, but related, perspectives. First, he discusses cultural identity as a unifying element or as the shared cultural practices that hold a certain group of people together and second, he argues that as well as there are similarities, there are also differences within cultural identities. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss these two sides of cultural identities.
In the first sense, cultural