The Dilemma of Framing Caribbean Diasporic Identity

Abstract

Identity is commonly considered to be an umbrella term that embraces different aspects of human nature such as culture, gender or race, and which also varies from one historical period or specific location to another. This concept concerns how individuals define themselves in relation to others in order to either be part of a group or to distance themselves from it. Identity is a process that is in continuous change and transformation. For this reason, a clarification regarding the approach to identity that is going to be applied to the key concept of this research, Diasporic Marvellous Realism, is needed before going on to analyse the literary works themselves.In some of his ground-breaking studies, Stuart Hall highlights the global and particular evolutionary nature of the term 'identity'. Hall is an important referent when discussing the ascription of a certain cultural identity to an individual and when pondering the experiences shared by a group of people. Cultural identity is conditioned by history and this is why Hall differentiates between two alternatives: the first refers to the shared culture of a group of people: i.e. to similarities within a group and its members' collective history; the second depends on the differences that a group of people establishes with respect to another group or on the discontinuities that shaped the history of that given group. In commenting on this classification, Hall refers to we as opposed to we become,1 which is a general characteristic of cultural change and, in particular, of Caribbean cultural identity: one in constant transformation. These cultural experiences rest, in many cases, on the hidden histories that have played a critical role in the emergence of many of the most important social movements of our time.2 According to this, cultural identity depends on what a group of people share but also on what makes them unique. Following this approach, identity in contemporary diasporas will be considered here as the result of the dialogue of power and resistance that is conducted between different points in friction. Notably, there is an ongoing conflict between past and present in any dealings with postcolonial diasporas due to the trauma experienced by those who suffered (directly or indirectly) from the trauma of colonization.The term 'cultural identity' is usually taken to be a generic concept that assigns a set of characteristics to a given community. Of these attributes, the capital identity-defining elements 'race' and 'ethnicity' are commonly used to divide society into different groups; however, they are not synonyms. As indicated above, race as a colonial construct aimed at establishing power-relations and subjecting peoples to imperial interests. The refinement of categories of racial difference, for instance - indio, mestizo, criollo - played a crucial role in the discourse on new races after the arrival of the Spanish in the Americas.3 Racial identity is externally ascribed with manipulative intent, whereas ethnicity relates to a shared cultural heritage or tradition. Milton Yinger lists three conditions for ethnic groups to be identified in the full sense:a segment of a larger society is seen by others to be different in some combination of the following characteristics - language, religion, race and ancestral homeland with its related culture; the members also perceive themselves in that way; and they participate in shared activities built around their (real or mythical) common origin and culture. 4Notwithstanding these straightforward indices, racial and ethnic biases are highly complex and need to be constantly redefined, with ethnic identity changing from one place to another or from one historical period to the next. It is not the same to be a member of a black community in Bradford and in Brooklyn, and obviously, this ethnic identification is unavoidably linked to the formation of the subaltern subject, forced to internalize her/his own self as the Other. …