Interstitiality, Authenticity, Postmodernity

Abstract

In the previous chapter I have discussed the ways in which interstitial identities resulting from diasporic contexts pose several challenges in terms of semiotics and taxonomy. I now propose to turn to another consequence of the existence of interstitial identities: the fact that they have recently emerged as forces which redefine national identity in the countries where they are to be found. In recent years, their nonconformity with existing definitions of national identity has become hard to ignore; so have the dissenting voices which have started to challenge openly the limits and parameters of Englishness, such as that of Andrea Levy and her rather daring claim that ‘[i]f Englishness doesn’t define me, then redefine Englishness’1 (Levy in Jaggi, 1996, 64). Writers like Levy or Kureishi have not only voiced the claims of disenfranchised minorities to become integrated into the national definition of identity. They have also stressed the need to interrogate the very definitions of identity inherited from the nation state and to rethink the way land/ race/language/culture have been aligned. It is in this sense that Kureishi calls for ‘fresh ways of seeing Britain’: It is the British, the white British, who have to learn that being British isn’t what it was. Now it is a more complex thing, involving new elements. So there must be a fresh way of seeing Britain and the choices it faces: and a new way of being British after all this time. (Kureishi, 1986, 38) KeywordsNational IdentityJewish IdentityAsian ImmigrantGeneration ImmigrantCritical IdentityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.