Notes on: Hall, S. (1991)
Old and new identitites, old and new
ethnicities. In A. King (Ed) Culture,
Globalization and the World System.
Hampshire: Macmillan.
Dave Harris
He wants to reconsider relations between global
and local to inaugurate a 'more open-ended and
contingent cultural politics' (41) [that
free-floating intellectuals can take part in] ,
which raises questions about the subjects of
politics and their identities, and the issue of
identity and difference.
Identity is now important in British
(cultural) politics. Not the traditional
coneption though as in the 1960s. This leads to
'never-ending theoretical work' (42). New
theoretical discourses now interlock. So do new
practices [convenient]
The old logic of identity took the form of the
Cartesian subject which was the ground of action.
There is a more recent psychological discourse of
the self as 'continuous, self-sufficient,
developmental, unfolding, inner dialectic', never
fully accomplished. 'The logic of the language of
identity is extremely important to our own self
conceptions' [for academics] because it addresses
the notion of the true self and thus is 'a kind of
guarantee of authenticity' (43). [Then a bit about
the guarantees of such notions of identity, they
also lead to understandings of self other
individual society and so on which 'helps us, I
would say, to sleep well at night… One of the main
functions of concepts is that they give us a good
night's rest', because they provide stability
within all the discontinuities and constant
change.
He is going to 'sort the ideas into place very
quickly by using some names as reference points'
[although he could of course 'discuss this very
elaborately']. The Cartesian notion of the subject
was criticised by Marx [who might have 'slotted
in' women] banging on about making history in
conditions which are not of their own choosing,
pointing to historical practices within which
subjects operate, among which they are not the
authors — 'a profound historical decentring in
terms of social practice'.
Then there was Freud pointing to the unknowns of
psychic life [the analysis here is carried by a
kind of conversational style, speaking for Freud]
and the role of the unconscious. Then there was
Saussure and linguistics pointing out that
language was there before we were and we only
speak by positioning ourselves in discourses
[again made up quotes], which made us think about
the relation between language and truth. This is
what modernity is like although it is not itself
modernity which has a longer history — it is
modernity 'as trouble… modernity as a problem'
(44).
There were other 'enormous historical
transformations' including 'the relativization of
the ...Western episteme', and the 'displacement of
the masculine gaze'. All these provide problems
with the notion of identity. There has also been
'a fragmentation and erosion of collective social
identity' especially the 'great collective' ones
which used to unite us — class, race, nation,
gender and the West. These were stabilised by
long-range historical processes,
industrialisation, capitalism, urbanisation and
the world market, the emergence of the public
civil sphere and the identification between the
West and modernity.
Let's address class. It was once the 'main locator
of social position', locating us in grids and
groups, linking to material life through the
economy, providing the code used to read each
other and understand each other. There is also
collective action which would unlock politics.
None of the collective identities disappeared but
none of them is 'any longer, in either the social,
historical or epistemological place where they
were' (45). They are not homogeneous but have
inner differences, contradictions, segmentations
and fragmentation is. They are no longer stable,
totalising, no longer a key to positions or a
'code of identity'.
Perhaps they never quite functioned like that and
there is never decisive historical evidence any
more than there is for something like 'the organic
community'. That was also 'just always in the
childhood you have left behind' (46), based in
'historical nostalgia going on in… retrospective
reconstructions'. They were always reconstructed
more homogeneously and as more unified than they
ever were. Again, no one thinks they affect the
present as much.
This question of erosion and fading and 'lack of
comprehensive explanatory power' is what has gone.
They are no longer '"master concepts"'
[unreferenced, like a lot of this]. Some things
can still be explained in terms of class after
recognising complexity, yet 'there are certain
other things it simply will not or cannot,
decipher or explain', because there is 'increasing
social diversity and plurality'.
Doesn't this abolish identity altogether? However,
theoretical work shows that 'the moment the
concept disappears through the left-hand door, it
returns to the right hand window, but not in quite
the same place' (47). Subjectivity and the subject
is still important [indispensable, people like
Giddens have argued, to explain change, if only in
the form of the bricoleur]. The languages of
feminism and of psychoanalysis, for example have
repositioned the notion of the subject although he
'does not want to go through the argument' and can
only do it 'programmatically'.
Identities are never completed, subjectivity is
always in process of formation. It always means
'the process of identification' identifying
sameness, although always through ambivalence,
splitting, for example, one and the other, and
this attempt to expel the other is 'always
compounded by the relationships of love and
desire', one major difference from conceptions of
the 'Others who are completely different from
oneself' (48). This other belongs inside us, 'the
self as it is inscribed in the gaze of Other'
[looking glass self], and this breaks the old
boundaries, including those whose 'histories
cannot be spoken'. 'There is no other history
except to take the absences and the silences along
with what can be spoken. Everything that can be
spoken is on the ground of the enormous voices
that have not, or cannot yet be heard' [how on
earth can this be done?].
We can see this doubled discourse 'in the ranges
of given text', for example in Fanon Black
Skin, White Masks — where a white child
calls him a Black man and so he realises that this
is how he is composed as an other. [Huge
generalisation follows] 'the notion that identity
in that sense could be told as two histories… Is
simply not tenable any longer in an increasingly
globalised world. It is just not tenable any
longer'.
People like him arrived in England in the 1950s
but have 'been there for centuries… Symbolically',
in the sugar in the cup of tea, via the sugar
plantations, and the tea plantations, in the very
symbol of English life a cup of tea. 'There is no
English history without that other history' [of
the colonies] (49). Identity is not just to do
with 'people who look the same, feel the same,
call themselves the same', but is a process, and
narrative 'always told from the position of the
Other'. It is not something about which stories
are told, 'it is that which is narrated'. He is
going to illustrate this as a story. Generally,
identity is never 'sealed or closed' it is
always 'written in and through ambivalence and
desire'.
For example we know lots about sexual difference,
including from Derrida and the two meanings of differance.
That disturbs our understanding and lies between
two French verbs. Thus 'language depends on
difference', but the new ground is 'the extent to
which "differ" fades into "defer"' (50). It's not
binary and draws attention to 'anomalous sliding
positions in every process' even in sexuality.
What about identity and the dangers of 'infinite
postponement of meaning'? Unfortunately, Derrida's
politics has been uncoupled from his theory
especially in America. What we get is 'enormous
proliferation of extremely sophisticated, playful
deconstruction which is a kind of endless academic
game'. Academics enjoy it. Politics, by contrast
'requires the holding of the tension between that
which is both placed and not stitched in place…
Positionality and movement… Not playing with
difference… But living in the tension of identity
and difference' [surprised didn't talk about
bending the twig or holding both ends of the
chain].
Meaning 'in any specific instance depends on a
contingent and arbitrary stop, the necessary
break' (51). To say anything involves such a stop,
something 'contingent… Positioning. It is the cut
of ideology which across the semioses of language
constitutes meaning'. It is necessary just to get
into that game. He has experienced graduate
students who enjoyed French theory but ended up
being unable to say anything. Real meaning
involves 'a wager… A bet on saying something'. You
have to be positioned even if you want to take it
back and unposition yourself subsequently. 'There
is no other way that is the paradox of meaning'.
We cannot think only of difference and not
relations and 'the arbitrary over-determined cut
of language which says something which is
instantly opened again' [at last] we must not
'lose hold of the two necessary ends of the chain
to which [sic] the new notion of identity has to
be conceptualised'.
This raises the issue of politics and whether
there might be 'a general politics of the local'
to combat globalisation which occludes all
differences. He thinks there is no general
politics, but he will tell us about some local
politics, cultural politics, and the formation of
the Black diasporas in England.
For the first generation, the intention was to go
back home, but by the 70s it was clear they were
going to stay and then they encountered the
politics of racism. The main reactions involved
'"Identity Politics One"' (52), where a defensive
collective identity was constructed to combat
racism, to find an alternative having been blocked
to an English identity, a search for roots. The
language of home was being spoken, and histories
retold. This was 'imaginary political
re-identification, reterritorialisation and
reidentification', but it was central to counter
politics. The obvious result was 'the category
Black' (53).
He was lower-middle-class in Jamaica. Although 98%
of the Jamaican population is Black or coloured,
they did not call themselves Black: there were 15
different shades of brown and dark brown and it
was common to grade women according to the
different shade of skin, 'the most complicated
colour stratification system in the world'. Social
status was a matter of grading quality of hair,
physiognomy, shade. This shows that Black is not
about colou but is 'a historical category, a
political category, a cultural category', created
equivalence. He heard it for the first time in
civil rights as a political category, an attempt
to reverse negative symbolism and re-articulate
it. It was a most profound cultural revolution in
Jamaica. Marley stood for Black and he was able to
legitimate different political parties. His mother
'as a good middle-class coloured Jamaican woman,
hated all Black people'.
He has had all sorts of identities — immigrant,
for example, which he finally realised and grew
into. Then he realised he was Black, and had to
talk his son into that identity. It's not just a true
self emerged, rather that the identification was
learned. The notion of Black was important in the
antiracist struggles of the 70s, to cover anyone
in the huge wave of migration, including Asians.
Asking for specifics like which island people came
from was seen as divisive, and then 'the enemy was
ethnicity' and multiculturalism, something exotic
(55).
That moment of the struggle is not gone away, but
a collective Black identity has not simply
replaced all the others. There are silences as
well, like the specific experiences of Asians.
Some Black people did not identify. Some of the
other dimensions that positioned individuals were
ignored and that helped 'reconstitute the
authority of Black masculinity over Black women'
leading to a long silence which militant Black men
would not break. There are also positionings in
class terms, similar work, similar forms of
deprivation. Blackness is therefore complex not
entirely positive, and although it helps defeat
marginalisation, there are costs in the essentialising
it.
We are all 'composed of multiple social
identities' and we can be located in 'multiple
positions of marginality and subordination' (57).
We need a war of position [sigh]. This might be
difficult because no one knows conduct one. There
are no guarantees and identifications are not
stable. Things are not good just because Black
people do them. There is an effect of history
which has to be 'narrativized' (58). The recovery
of oral testimonies for example has been important
in history but we should not see them as 'just
literally the truth'. 'There is no guarantee of
authenticity' [take that you counterstory
enthusiasts].
We are always 'in the strategy of hegemony'. It is
important to realise that Gramsci did not mean
complete incorporation, or the destruction of
difference. Rather hegemony is 'the articulation
of differences which do not disappear'. People
know their position. They know there will be no
state where false consciousness disappears. They
also know that 'if they engage in another project
it is because it has interpolated [sic] them,
hailed them and establish some point of
identification with them' (59) [even a radical
Black academic one?]. Current politics is
increasingly able to 'address people through the
multiple identities which they have' even if they
are contradictory and locate people differently.
This is a politics conducted 'in the light of the
contingent'. It is 'the only political game that
that locals have left at their disposal'.
There is no point waiting for a politics of
manoeuvre, a unity of all the locals to roll back
the tide of the global in one great activity. It
is a dream and we have to enter the world of
contradiction and politics. Luckily ''some of the
most exciting cultural work' is being done like
that, by young Black men and women in England, who
speak from being Black, Caribbean, and British,
and reject the Thatcherite notion of Englishness
and contest the old notion of Blackness as
essential. They write poetry, make films and paint
[sounds like an echo of Willis
here], and this is 'the most important work in the
visual arts'.
For example My Beautiful Laundrette 'is
the most transgressive text there is' (60) because
the two Black central characters are also gay, and
one is white and the other brown. One has an uncle
who is a Pakistani landlord opposing Black people.
'This is a text that nobody likes', because there
are no positive images. The writer acknowledged he
was in a difficult moral position but claimed that
he was describing a position that will 'arise more
and more' in Britain, and his is 'a serious
attempt to understand', unsentimental. Hall sees
it as imaginative writing that gives 'a sense of
the shifts and difficulties within our society as
a whole'. (61) Oppressed groups must not just
accept themselves as occupying enclaves, to be
invisible or marginalised.
[Responses to questions from the audience]
These questions are also universal and global as
well as local, 'there is always an interpretation
of the two', but confronting at the global level
is not making much headway compared to counter
movements at the local level. However, these are
not easy to connect up. Ecology might try to
establish itself as a single base of politics as
an alternative political game compared to
ethnicity. However, localised resistance even
though unable to connect up offers a greater
'purchase on the historical present' (62). You can
work at more than one level, there is 'a
continuous dialectic between the local and the
global'. The issues he has addressed really turn
on boundaries and who is inside or outside, and
the collapse of the old sense of knowing where you
fitted compared to the new sense of unfinished
plurality.
It is the politics that shifted. The revolutionary
class subject never appeared, and revolutionary
classes in the past, including the bourgeois
class, often acted before they were fully formed
anyway. Perhaps it will come? However, that might
make it difficult if 'you are really trying to be
politically active' (63). You can't rely on
history which is not going to make everything
right. Maybe you are waiting for the wrong thing.
Perhaps the theory or the narrative is wrong. At
least we must realise there are no guarantees and
we must 'conduct politics contingently…
positionally'. As a practical issue, deciding
whether to support the miners' strike, for
example. The miners' leader said there was unity
but this was the wrong politics. We can't play
that game any more, just so we can sleep at night
and claim some heroic defeats. We need to win just
a few, just a little, break with the past if it
keeps you in place. [So what the fuck did he do?]
Can politics be rebuilt? Will 'exclusivist,
solidified, ego identified consciousness' persist?
The prospects are not good 'because the left is
still stuffed with the old notion of identity,
which is why I am thinking about it' [so this is
his self appointed role]. The old identities will
not return to the stage. There is a new game. We
can get some clues — the old GLC was 'very
pre-figurative' although it cannot be repeated.
The groups and movements which were brought
together and still retained their differences but
had a conversation, not a nice polite conceptual
one, more like 'an absolutely bloody unending row'
(65), negotiating differences in the open. Some
possibilities were shown. One group has to take on
the agenda of the other and alliances have to be
formed without assuming that it should take on
identities. Priorities have to be established, and
'that is the sound that one is waiting for', not a
return to the old politics in the old parties.
Thatcherism has had an effect of making the old
politics impossible, and, of course it destroyed
the GLC. Thatcherism is better at mobilising
different minorities and articulating differences,
playing on differences, condensing different
identities, presenting some unitary politics,
claiming to represent the majority of the British
people. Instead we have to pursue a politics of
positionality that maintains difference. In a way
'my own view is that no one understands Gramsci
better than Mrs Thatcher' although she has never
read any (67) whereas we read Gramsci and we do
not know how to do it.
I do not think there is a category called humanity
or indeed the global outside 'varieties of
articulated particularities'. Instead what we have
is 'the self presentation of the dominant
particular' (67). It would be dangerous to
identify the global with the lowest common
denominator notion of humanity. There is no basis
to mobilise people. The global is 'the hegemonic
sweep at which a certain configuration of local
particularities try to dominate the whole scene'.
This process is universal in quotation marks, the
hope to be universal.
'And at the very moment, there I am. I remain
Marxist' (68). Just at the moment where the
discourse seems to be closed 'at the moment when
you know it is contradictory' 'something is just
about to open that out and present a problem.
Hegemony, in that sense is never completed. It is
always trying to enclose more differences within
itself'. This is not a matter of making
differences into similarities, but organising them
under some larger project — the traditional family
depends on larger economic and political
development. No one has to be a replica[ for
successful hegemony] , but to be naturalised,
universal and closed, requires ' its boundaries to
be coterminous with the truth, with the reality of
history', but that is the very moment which always
escapes it — 'something had better be escaping
it'.
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