The Question of Cultural identity - Stuart Hall
Hall, Stuart. “The Question of Cultural identity.” Modernity An Introduction to Modern Societies, edited by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson, 1st Edition, Blackwell Publishers, 1996, pp. 595-634
“The question of ‘identity’ is being vigorously debated in social theory. In essence, the argument is that the old identities which stabilized the social world for so long are in decline, giving rise to new identities and fragmenting the modern individual as a unified subject. This so-called ‘crisis of identity’ is seen as part of a wider process of change which dislocating the central structures and processes of modern societies and undermining the frameworks which gave individuals stable anchorage in the social world.” 596
“Cultural identities – those aspects of our identities which arise from our ‘belonging’ to distinctive ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, and, above all, national cultures.” 596
“modern identities are being ‘de-centred’; that is, dislocated or fragmented.” 596
“This fragmenting the cultural landscape of class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and nationality which give us firm location as social individuals. These transformations are also shifting our personal identities, undermining our sense of ourselves as integrated subjects.” 596-597
“This loss of a stable ‘sense of self’ is sometimes called the dislocation or de-centering of the subject. This set of double displacements – de-centering individuals both from their place in the social and cultural world, and from themselves – constitutes a ‘crisis of identity’ for the individual.” 597 GOLD USE THIS IN ESSAY!!!!
Also points out that identity is only an issue when it is in crisis
Three concepts of identity:
1 – Enlightenment subject: “the human person as a fully centred, unified individual”, “The essential centre of the self was a person’s identity.”, “very ‘individualist’” 597
2 – sociological subject: “reflected the growing complexity of the modern world and the awareness that this inner core of the subject was not autonomous and self-sufficient, but was formed in relation to ‘significant others,’ who mediated to the subject the values, meanings and symbols – the culture – of the worlds he/she inhabited.” “identity is formed in the ‘interaction’ between self and society.” 597 Bridge between the personal and public; “The fact that we project ‘ourselves’ into these cultural identities, at the same time internalising their meanings and values, making them ‘part of us,’ helps to align our subjective feelings with the objective places we occupy in the social and cultural world.” 598
3 – Post-modern subject: “conceptualized as having no fixed, essential, or permanent identity.” “formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us” “It is historically, not biologically, defined. The subject assumes different identities at different times” “The fully unified, completed, secure, and coherent identity is a fantasy. Instead, as the systems of meaning and cultural representation multiply, we are confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible identities, any of which we could identify with – at least temporarily.” 598
“In the modern world, the national cultures into which we are born are one of the principal sources of cultural identity. In defining ourselves we sometimes say we are English (…). These identities are not literally imprinted in our genes.” 611
“national identities are not things we are born with, but are formed and transformed within and in relation to We only know what it is to be ‘English’ because of the way ‘Englishness’ has come be represented, as a set of meanings, by English national culture.” 612
“A nation is a symbolic community and it is this which accounts for its ‘power to generate a sense of identity and allegiance’” 612 (quoting someone else)
“A national culture is a ” 613
As Benedict Anderson (1983) has argued, national identity is an ‘imagined community’” 613
How is the narrative of the national culture told?
Narrative of the nation – histories, literature, media, popular culture
Emphasis on origins, continuity, tradition
Invention of tradition – a set of practises, certain values, norms of behaviour
Foundational myth – a story which locates the origin of the nation, the people
The idea of a pure, original people
“Europe has no nations which are composed of only one people, one culture or ethnicity. 617
“It is even more difficult to try to unify national identity around race; first, because – contrary to widespread belief – race is not a biological or genetic category with any scientific validity.” 617
After talking about race: “National identities do not subsume all other forms of difference into themselves and are not free of the play of power, internal divisions and contradictions, cross-cutting allegiances and difference. So when we come to consider whether national identities are being dislocated, we must bear in mind the way national cultures help to ‘stitch up’ differences into one identity.” 618
“in modern history, national cultures have dominated ‘modernity’ and national identities have tended to win out over other, more particularistic sources of cultural identification.” 618
Consequences of globalization on cultural identities: 619
“National identities are being ”
“National and other ‘local’ or particularistic identities are being by the resistance to globalization”
National identities are declining but identities of hybridity are taking their place”
