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22 □ Cultural Identity
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and Diaspora
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Stuart Hall
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A new cinema of the Caribbean is emerging, joining che company of che other 'Third
< ª
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"' ....
Cinemas'. It is related to, but different from, the vibrant film and other forms of
visual representation of che Afro-Caribbean (and Asian) 'blacks' of the diasporas
a, ..
• • ::r
of che West - the new post-colonial subjects. Ali these cultural practices and forms
O·
a: of representacion have che black subjecc ar cheir centre, putting the issue of cultural
a,
::? identity in question. Who is chis emergent, new subject of che cinema? From where
<loes he/ she speak? Pracrices of representation always implicare ch·e positions from
i
m
zn
which we speak or write - the positions of enunciation. What recent rheories of
m enunciation suggesr is that, though we speak, so to say 'in our own name', of
oa ourselves and from our own experience, nevertheless who speaks, and che subject
e
~ who is spoken of, are never identical, never exactly in the same place. Identicy is not
i.... as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity
,... asan already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we
-1
o shou1d think, instead, of identity as a 'production' which is never complete, always
in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representarían. This view
problematises the very authority and authenticity to which che term 'cultural
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identity' lays claim.

We seek, here, to open a dialogue, an investigation, on the subject of cultural
:, •• H
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e: z
identity and representation. Of course, the 'I' who wrices here muse also be thought
~
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.... of as, itself, 'enunciated'. We all write and speak from a particular place and rime,
-e
:z: ..
> n
from a history and a culture which is specific. What we say is always 'in conrext',
,...
,...i¡ positioned. I was born into and spent my childhood and adolescence in a lower-
middle-class family in Jamaica. I have lived all my adult life in England, in che
z'
....
H'
'
-e ;
shadow of the black diaspora - 'in the belly of che beast'. I write against che
n
e: background of a lifetime's work in cultural studies. If che paper seems preoccupied
,... ..
-1 with the diaspora experience and its narratives of displacement, it is worth
¡¡;'
m' remembering that ali discourse is 'placed', and che heart has its reasons.
e:,, '
.,,
H'
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m,
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From J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference, Lawrence & Wishart:
1
London, 1990, pp. 222-37.
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392
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 Cultural Identity and Diaspora 393

There are at least two different ways of thinking about 'cultural identity'. The .&rst
vztity posicion defmes 'cultural identity' in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective
'one true self, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed
'selves', which people wich a shared history and ancestry hold in common. Within
che terms of chis definition, our cultural identities reflect the common historical
experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as 'one people', with stable,
unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath che shifting
divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history. This 'oneness', underlying all che
other, more superficial differences, is the truth, the essence, of 'Caribbeanness', of
the black experience. It is chis identity which a Caribbean or black diaspora must
discover, excavare, bring to light and express through cinematic representation.
Such a concepcion of cultural identity played a cótical role in ali post-colonial
struggles which have so profoundly reshaped our world. It lay at che centre of che
vision of che poecs of 'Negritude', like Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor, and of
my of the other 'Third
n and other forms of
the Pan-African policical project, earlier in the century. It continues to be a very
cks' of the diasporas powerful arnd creacive force in emergent forms of representation amongst hitherto
d pracrices and forms marginalised peoples. In post-colonial societies, che rediscovery of this identity is
often the object of what Frantz Fanon once called a
g _theissue of cultural
cmema? From where
te the positions from passionate research ... directed by the secret hope of discovering beyond the misery
.at recent theories of of today, beyond self-conternpt, resignation and abjurarion, sorne very beautiful and
splendid era whose existence rehabilitares us both in regard to ourselves and in regard
our own name', of
to others.
aks, and che subjecr
place. Idemity is not
· rhinking of idencity New forms of cultural practice in these societies address themselves to chis project
·s then represem, we far the very good reason that, as Fanon pues it, in the recent pase,
er co?1plece, always
:nrat1on. This view Colonisation is not satis&ed merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the
th e term 'cultural native's brain of ali form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past
of oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it. 1
subjecr of cultura]
use also be thoughr The question which Fanon's observarion poses is, what is che nature of chis
lar place and time 'profound research' which drives che new forms of visual and cinernatic
lw ,. ' representation? Is it only a matter of unearthing that which che colonial experience
· ays tn contexr',
scence in a lower- buried and overlaid, bringing to light che hidden continuities it suppressed? Or is
n England, in the a quite different practice entailed - not che rediscovery but che production of
Write against the identity. Not an identity grounded in the archaeology, but in the re-telling of che
;eems preoccupied pase?
ienr, it is worrh We should not, for a moment, underestimate or neglect the importance of the act
reasons. of imaginative rediscovery which chis conception of a rediscovered, essential identity
entails. 'Hidden histories' have played a critica! role in che ernergence of many of
vrence & Wishart: the most important social movements of our time - feminist, anti-colonial and anti-
racist. The photographic work of a generation of Jamaican and Rastafarian artists,
or of a visual artist like Armet Francis (a Jamaican-born photographer who has lived
394 Stuart Hall

in Britain since the age of eight) is a testimony to the continuing creative power of
this conception of identity within che emerging practices of representation. Francis's
photographs of the peoples of The Black Triangle, taken in Africa, the Caribbean, ,-
"· ,:
che USA and the UK, attempt to reconstruct in visual terms 'the underlying unity
of the black people whom colonisation and slavery distributed across the African
diaspora'. His text is an act of imaginary reunification.
Crucially, such images offer a way of imposing an imaginary coherence on the
experience of dispersa] and fragmentation, which is the history of ali enforced
diasporas. They do this by representing or 'figuring' Africa as the morher of these
different civilisations. This Triangle is, after all, 'centred' in Africa. Africa is the
name of the missing term, the great aporía, which lies at the centre of our cultural
idemity and gives ita meaning which, until recently, ir lacked. No one who looks
ar these textura] images now, in the light of the history of transportation, slavery
and migration, can fail to understand how the rift of separation, the 'loss of
identity', which has been integral to the Caribbean experience only begins to be
healed when these forgotten connections are once more set in place. Such texts
restare an imaginary fullness or plentitude, to set againsr the broken rubric of our
past. They are resources of resistance and identity, with which to confront the
fragmented and pathological ways in which that experience has been reconstructed
wichin the dominant regimes of cinematic and visual representation of che West.
There is, however, a second, related but differenc view of cultural identity. This
second position recognises that, as well as the man y poincs of similarity, there are
also critica! points of deep and significant difference which conscituce 'what we really
are'; or rather - since history has incervened - 'what we have become'. We cannot
speak for very long, with any exactness, abouc 'one experience, one identity',
without acknowledging its other side - che ruptures and disconcinuities which
consritute, precisely, the Caribbean's 'uniqueness'. Cultural idencity, in chis second
sense, is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being'. It belongs to the future as much
as to the past. It is not something which already exiscs, transcendíng place, time,
history and culture. Culcural idencities come from somewhere, have histories. But,
like everything which is historical, chey undergo constant transformation. Far from
beíng eternally fixed in sorne essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous
'play' of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in mere 'recovery' of
the pase, which is waiting to be found, and which when found, will secure our sense
of ourselves into eternity, idenrities are the names we give to che different ways we
are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratíves of the past.
It is only from this second position that we can properly understand the traumatic
character of 'the colonial experience'. The ways in which black people, black
experiences, were positioned and subject-ed in the dominant regimes of
represencation were che effects of a critica! exercise of cultural power and
normalisacion. Not only, in Said's 'Orientalist' sense, were we constructed as
different and other within the categories of knowledge of che West by those regimes.
They had the power to make us see and experience ourselves as 'Other'. Every
regime of representation is a regime of power formed, as Foucault reminds us, by
 Cultural Identity and Diaspora 395

1mg creative power of the fatal couplet 'power/knowledge'. But chis kind of knowledge is interna!, not
Jresentation. Francis's externa!. It is one thing to position a subject or set of peoples as the Other of a
tfrica, the Caribbean dominant discourse. It is quite another thing to subject thern to that 'knowledge',
'h
t e under!ying unity, not only as a matter of imposed will and domination, by che power of inner
ed across the African compulsion and subjective con-formation to che norm. That is the lesson - the
sombre majesty - of Fanon's insight into the colonising experience in Black Skin,
ary coherence on the White Masks.
story of all enforced This inner expropriation of cultural identity cripples and deforms. If its silences
; the mother of these are not resisted, they produce, in Fanon's vivid phrase, 'individuals without an
Africa. Africa is the anchor, without horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless - a race of angels'. 2
:entre of our cultural Nevertheless, chis idea of otherness as an inner compulsion changes our conception
L No one who looks of 'cultural identity'. In chis perspective, cultural identity is nota 6.xed essence at ali,
tnsportation, slavery lying unchanged outside history and culture. It is not sorne universal and
1ration, the 'loss of l':" transcendental spirit inside us on which history has made no fundamental mark. It
~e only begins to be is not once-and-for-all. It is not a fixed origin to which we can make sorne final and
in place. Such texts absolute Return. Of course, it is nota mere phantasm either. It is something - not
Jroken rubric of our a mere trick of the imagination. lt has its histories - and histories have their real,
,ich to confront che material and symbolic effects. The pase continues to speak to us. Bue it no longer
s been reconstructed addresses us as a simple, factual 'pase', since our relation to it, like che child's
ration of che W ese. relation to the mother, is always-already 'after the break'. lt is always constructed
ltural idencity. This through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the points of
similarity, there are identification, che unstable points of identification or suture, which are made, wíthin
itute 'what we really the discourses of history and culture.Notan essence bue a positioning. Hence, there
iecome'. We cannot is always a politics of identity, a politics of position, which has no absolute
~nce, one identity', guarantee in an unproblematic, transcendental 'law of origin'.
sconcinuicies which This second view of cultural identity is much less familiar, and more unsettling.
itity, in this second If identity does not proceed, in a straight unbroken line, from sorne fixed origin,
' the furure as much how are we to understand its formation? We might think of black Caribbean
mding place, time ,
' identities as 'frarned' by two axes or vectors, simultaneously operative: the vector
:-iave histories. Bue, of similarity and continuity; and the vector of difference and rupture. Caribbean
nmation. Far from identities always have to be thought of in terms of che dialogic relacionship between
= to the conrinuous these two axes. The one gives us sorne grounding in, sorne continuity with, che pase.
1 mere 'recovery' of The second reminds us that what we share is precisely che experience of a profound
ill secure our sense discontinuity: the peoples dragged into slavery, transportation, colonisation,
: different ways we migration, carne predominantly from Africa - and when that supply ended, it was
of the past. temporarily refreshed by indentured labour from che Asian subcontinent. (This
,tand the traumatic neglected fact explains why, when you visit Guyana or Trinidad, you see,
ack people, black symbolically inscribed in the faces of their peoples, che paradoxical 'truth' of
nant regimes of Christopher Columbus's mistake: you can fmd 'Asia' by sailing west, if you know
!tural power and where to look!) In che history of the modero world, there are few more traumatic
ve construcced as ruptures to match these enforced separations from Africa - already figured, in the
: by those regimes. European imaginary, as 'the Dark Continent'. But the slaves were also from different
as 'Other'. Every countries, tribal communities, villages, languages and gods. African religion, which
J!t rerninds us, by has been so profoundly formative in Caribbean spiritual life, is precisely different
396 Stuart Hall

from Christian monotheism in believing that God is so powerful that he can only
be known through a proliferation of spiritual manifestations, present everywhere in
the natural and social world. These gods live on, in an underground existence,
in the hybridised religious universe of Haitian voodoo, pocomania, Native
pentacostalism, Black baptism, Rastafarianism and the black Saints Latín American
Cacholicism. The paradox is that it was the uprooting of slavery and transportacion
and che insertion into che plantation economy (as well as the symbolic economy) of
the Western world chat 'uniJied' these peoples across cheir differences, in the same
moment as it cut them off from direct access to their past.
Difference, therefore, persiscs - in and alongside continuity. To rerurn to che
Caribbean after any long absence is to experience again the shock of the 'doubleness'
of similarity and difference. Visiting the French Caribbean for che firsc time, I also
,.-:-¡
..
saw at once how different Martinique is from, say, Jamaica: and this is no mere ·'1~,·;<'
.·.•·:
difference of topography or climate. It is a profound difference of culture and
history. And the difference matters. It positions Martiniquains and Jamaicans as
both the same and different. Moreover, the boundaries of difference are continually
repositioned in relacion to different points of reference. Vis-a-vis the developed
Wesc, we are very much 'the same'. We belong to the marginal, the underdeveloped,
the periphery, the 'Other'. We are at the outer edge, the 'rim', of the metropolitan
world - always 'South' to someone else's El Norte.
At the sarne rime, we do not stand in che same relation of the 'otherness' to the
metropolitan centres. Each has negotiated its economic, political and cultural
dependency differently. And this 'difference', whether we like it or not, is already
inscribed in our cultural identities. In turn, it is this negotiation of identity which
makes us, vis-a-vis other Latin American people, with a very similar history,
different - Caribbeans, les Antilliennes ('islanders' to their mainland). And yet, vis-
a-vis one another, Jamaican, Haitian, Cuban, Guadeloupean, Barbadian, etc ....
How, then, to describe this play of 'difference' within identiry? The common
history - transportation, slavery, colonisation - has been profoundly formative. For
ali these societies, unifying us across our differences. But it does not constitute a
common origin, since it was, metaphorically as well as literally, a translation. The
inscripcion of difference is also specific and critica!. I use che word 'play' beca use che
double meaning of che rnetaphor is important. le suggests, on the one hand, the
instability, the permanent unsettlement, the lack of any fmal resolution. On the
other hand, it reminds us that the place where this 'doubleness' is mosr powerfully
to be heard is 'playing' within the varieties of Caribbean musics. This cultural 'play'
could not therefore be represented, cinematically, as a simple, binary opposition -
'past/present', 'them/ us'. Its complexity exceeds this binary structure of
representation. At different places, times, in relation to different questions, the
boundaries are re-sited. They become, not only what they have, at times, certainly
been - rnutually excluding categories, but also what they sornetimes are -
differential points along a sliding scale.
One trivial example is the way Martinique boch is and is not 'French'. It is, of
course, a department of France, and this is reflected in its standard and style of life:
 Cultural Jdentity and Diaspora 397

owerfuj thar he can on!y , fort de France is a much richer, more 'fashionable' place than Kingston - which is
ns, presenr everywhere in . not only visibly poorer, but itself ata point of transition between being 'in fashion'
i underground
. existence , in an Anglo-African and Afro-American way - for those who can afford to be in
oo, pocomarna, Native any sort of fashion at all. Y et, what is distinctively 'Martiniquais' can only be
ck Saims Larin American described in terms of that special and peculiar supplement which the black and
avery and transportation mulateo skin adds to che 're.finement' and sophistication of a Parisian-derived haute
1e _symbolic economy) of
couture: that is, a sophistication which, because it is black, is always transgressive.
d1fferences, in the same To capture this sense of difference which is not pure 'otherness', we need to deploy
the play on words of a theorist like Jacques Derrida. Derrida uses the anomalous
nuity. To return to the 'a' in his way of writing 'difference' - differance - as a marker which sets up a
,hock of the 'doubleness' disturbance in our sett!ed understanding or translation of the word/ concept. Ir sets
for the .first time, I also che word in motion ro new meanings withour erasing the trace of its other meanings.
:a: and this is no mere His sense of differance, as Christopher Norris puts ir, chus
ference of culture and
iains and Jamaicans as
remains suspended berween the two French verbs 'to differ' and 'to defer' (posrpone),
~er~n~e are conrinually borh of which conrribuce to its texrual force but neicher of which can fully capture it~
· 1s-a-v1s the developed meaning. Language depends on difference, as Saussure showed ... the structure of
11, the underdeveloped
' f , distinctive propositions which make up its basic econorny. Where Derrida breaks new
n ' o the metropolitan ground ... is in rhe excenr ro which 'differ' shades into 'defer' ... che idea that meaning
is always deferred, perhaps to chis poinr of an endless supplernenrarity, by the play of
f the 'otherness' to the signi&cation. 3
polirical and cultura]
:~ it or not, is already This second sense of difference challenges che fixed binaries which stabilise meaning
t1on of idenrity which and representation and show how meaning is never fmished or complered, bue keeps
~ery similar history, on moving to encompass other, additional or supplementary meanings, which, as
11nland). And yet, vis- Norris pues it elsewhere, 4 'disturb the classical economy of language and
1, Barbadian
' etc .... representation'. Without relations of difference, no representation could occur. But
encity? The common what is then constituted within representation is always open to being deferred,
)und]y formacive. For staggered, serialised.
does noc constitute a Where, then, does identity come in to chis in.Emite postponement of meaning?
!y, a translation. The Derrida <loes not help usas much as he might here, though che notion of the 'trace'
ord 'play' because che goes sorne way towards it. This is where ir sometimes seems as if Derrida has
,n the one hand, the perrnitted his profound theoretical insights to be reappropriated by his disciples inco
l resolution. On che a celebration of formal 'playfulness', which evacua tes them of their polirical
s' is most powerfully
meaning. For if signification depends upan che endless repositioning of its
;_ !his cultural 'play' differential terms, meaning, in any specific instance, depends on the contingent and
_bmary opposition - arbitrary stop - the necessary and temporary 'break' in the infinite semiosis of
mary structure of language. This does not detraer from the original insight. It only threatens to do so
}rene questions, the if we mistake this 'cut' of identity - this positioning, which makes meaning possible
:, at times, cerrainly - as a natural and permanent, rather than an arbitrary and contingent 'ending' -
: sometimes are _ whereas I understand every such position as 'strategic' and arbitrary, in the sense
that there is no permanent equivalence between the particular sentence we clase, and
Jt 'French'. It is, of its true meaning, as such. Meaning concinues to unfold, so to speak, beyond che
1 rd and sryle of life: arbitrary closure which makes it, at any moment, possible. It is always either
 Cultural Identity and Diaspora 399

:nt. There is whatever echnic background, must sooner or later come to terms with chis African
presence. Black, brown, mulatto, white - ali muse look Présence Africaine in the
< the positioning and face, speak its name. But whether it is, in this sense, an origin of our identities,
:::ast three 'presences' unchanged by four hundred years of displacement, dismemberment, transportation,
,
Presence A/ricaine
'
to which we could in any final or literal sense return, is more open to doubt. The
:e of all - the slidin~ original 'Africa' is no longer there. It too has been transformed. History is, in that
: moi:ient, the many , sense, irreversible. We must not collude with che West which, precisely, normalises
:_C~nbbean idenrity and appropriates Africa by freezing it into sorne timeless zone of the primitive,
tts .f:trst-world' sense unchanging past. Africa must at last be reckoned with by Caribbean people, but it
,he second, broader cannot in any simple sense be merely recovered.
It belongs irrevocably, for us, to what Edward Said once called an 'imaginative
ly silenced beyond geography and history', which helps 'che mind to intensify its own sense of itself by
as, in facr, presenr dramacising che difference between what is close to it and what is far away'. It 'has
rs, in the languages acquired an imaginative or Ílgurative value we can name and feel'. 7 Our
mnected from cheir belongingness to ic constitutes what Benedict Anderson calls 'an imagined
:her languages were community'. 8 To this 'Africa', which is a necessary part of che Caribbean
:tices and beliefs in imaginary, we can't literally go home again.
post-emancipation The character of chis displaced 'homeward' journey - its length and complexicy
directly in slavery - comes across vividly, in a variety of cexts. Tony Sewell's documentary archiva!
1ribbean culture. r; photographs, 'Garvey's Children: che Legacy of Marcus Garvey' tell che story of a
Caribbean cultural 'return' to an African identity which went, necessarily, by the long route through
d' • It is che ground- London and che United Scates. It 'ends', not in Ethiopia bue with Garvey's statue
-\frica' thac 'is alive in front of che Sr Ann Parish Library in Jamaica: not with a traditional tribal chant
but with the music of Burning Spear and Bob Marley's 'Redemption Song'. This is
n Kingston, I was our 'long journey' home. Derek Bishton's courageous visual and written text, Black
e diaspora, which .,.
,·
Heart Man - ·che story of the journey of a white photographer 'on che trail of che
,..
1sformations. Bue, promised land' - scarts in England, and goes, through Shashemene, che place in
1 or black (Africa
Ethiopia to which many Jamaican people have found their way on their search for
)r to others as, in the Promised Land, and slavery; but it ends in Pinnacle, Jamaica, where the first
ft was only in che Rastafarian settlements were established, and 'beyond' - among the dispossessed of
lable to che greac 20th-century Kingston and che streets of Handsworth, where Bishton's voyage of
historie moment discovery .f:trst began. These symbolic journeys are necessary for us ali - and
ne momenr, they' necessarily circular. This is che Africa we must return to - bue 'by another route':
what Africa has become in the New World, what we have made of 'Africa': 'Africa'
dd not be, made - as we re-tell it through politics, memory and desire.
1.pacr on popular What of the second, troubling, term in the identity equation - the European
the culture of presence? For many of us, this is a matter not of too little but of roo rnuch. Where
:::sor signifiers of Africa was a case of che unspoken, Europe was a case of chat which is endlessly
·rica of che New speaking - and endlessly speaking us. The European presence interrupts the
1 that led, in che
innocence of che whole discourse of 'difference' in che Caribbean by introducing che
s we mighc say, question of power. 'Europe' belongs irrevocably to the 'play' of power, to che lines
hor.
of force and consenc, to che role of the dominant, in Caribbean culture. In terms
it the privileged of colonalism, underdevelopment, poverty and the racism of colour, the European
e Caribbean, of presence is that which, in visual representation, has positioned che black subject
400 Stuart Hall

within its dominant regimes of representation: the colonial discourse, the literatures
of adventure and exploration, the romance of the exotic, the ethnographic and
travelling eye, the tropical languages of tourism, travel brochure and Hollywood
and the violent, pornographic languages of ganja and urban violence.
Because Présence Européenne is about exclusion, imposition and expropriation,
we are often tempted to locate that power as wholly externa] to us - an extrinsic -~:~
force, whose influence can be thrown off like the serpent sheds its skin. What Frantz
Fanon reminds us, in Black Skin, White Masks, is how this power has become a -~_rtl~,
/¡Y.
constitutive element in our own identities. -~
·- . '

~¡

The movements, che actitudes, che glances of che ocher fixed me there in che sense in ·1
which a chemical solucion is &xed by a dye. I was indignant; I demanded an T
3
explanacion. Nothing happened. I burst apare. Now the fragments have been puc j
together again by anocher self. 9

This 'look', from - so to speak - the place of the Other, fi.xes us, not only in its
violence, hostility and aggression, bue in the ambivalence of its desire. This brings
us face to face wirh the dominating European presence not simply as the site or
'scene' of integration where those other presences which it had actively disaggregated
were recomposed - re-framed, put together in a new way; bur as the sire of a
profound splitting and doubling - whar Homi Bhabha has called 'this arnbivalent
identi.fication of the racist world ... the "Otherness" of che Self inscribed in che
perverse palimpsest of colonial identity' . 10
The dialogue of power é'nd resistance, of refusal and recognition, with and against
Présence Européenne is almosc as complex as the 'dialogue' with Africa. In terms
of popular cultural life, ic is nowhere to be found in its pure, pristine state. It is
always-already fused, syncretised, with other cultural elernents. It is always-already
creolised - not losr beyond the Middle Passage, but ever-presenc: from che
harmonics in our musics to che ground-bass of Africa, traversing and intersecting
our lives ar every point. How can we stage chis dialogue so thac, fi.nally, we can place
it, withouc terror or violence, rather than being forever placed by ic? Can we ever
recognise irs irreversible influence, whilst resisring its imperialising eye? The enigma
is impossible, so far, to resolve. It requires che most complex of cultural stracegies.
Think, for example, of che dialogue of every Caribbean .filmmaker or writer, one
way or another, with che dominant cinemas and lirerarure of che West - che
complex relationship of young black British fi.lmmakers with che 'avant-gardes' of
European and American fi.lmmaking. Who could describe this tense and tortured
dialogue as a 'one way trip'?
The Third, 'New World' presence, is not so much power, as ground, place,
territory. It is the juncture-poinc where the many cultural tributaries meet, the
'empty' land (che European colonisers emptied it) where strangers from every other
pare of che globe collided. None of the people who now occupy the islands - black,
brown, white, African, European, American, Spanish, French, East Indian,
Chinese, Portuguese, Jew, Dutch - originally 'belonged' there. It is the space where
 Cultural Identity and Diaspora 401

scourse, the literatures' the creolisations and assimilations and syncretisms were negotiated. The New
the ethnographic and' World is the third term - the primal scene - where the fateful/fatal encounter was
chure and Hollywood · staged between Africa and the West. lt also has to be understood as the place of
i1 violence. _ many, continuous displacements: of the original pre-Columbian inhabitants, the
on and expropriation,'···, Arawaks, Caribs and Amerindians, permanently displaced from cheir homelands
il to us - an extrinsic ~ and decimated; of other peoples displaced in different ways from Africa, Asia and
; its skin, What Frantz Europe; the displacements of slavery, colonisation and conquest. lt stands for che
power has become a endless ways in which Caribbean people have been destined to 'migrare'; it is che
signifier of migration itself - of travelling, voyaging and return as fate, as destiny;
of the Antillean as che prototype of the modern or postmodern New World nomad,
there in the sense in continually moving between centre and periphery. This preoccupation with
nt; I demanded an movement and migration Caribbean cinema shares with many other 'Third
enes ha ve been put Cinemas', but it is one of our defining themes, and ic is destined to cross che narrative
of every fi.lm scripc or cinematic image.
Présence Americaine continues to have its silences, its suppressions. Peter Hulme,
:s us, not only in its in his essay on 'Islands of enchantment' 11 reminds us chat the word 'Jamaica' is the
~ desire. This brings Hispanic forrn of che indigenous Arawak name - 'land of wood and water' - which
imply as the site or Columbus's renaming ('Santiago') never replaced. The Arawak presence remains
~tively disaggregated today a ghostly one, visible in the islands mainly in museums and archeological sites,
but as the site of a part of che barely knowable or usable 'pase'. Hulme notes that it is not represented
led 'this ambivalent in the emblem of the Jamaican Nacional Heritage Trust, far example, which chose
;eJf inscribed in the instead che figure of Diego Pimienta, 'an African who fought for his Spanish masters
against che English invasion of the island in 1655' - a deferred, metonymic, sly and
in, with and against sliding representation of Jamaican identity if ever there was one! He recounts the
th Africa. In terrns story of how Prime Minister Edward Seaga tried to alter the Jamaican coat-of-arms,
pristine state. It is which consists of two Arawak figures holding a shield with five pineapples,
ft is always-already surmounted by an alligator. 'Can che crushed and extinct Arawaks represent the
_Jresent: from rhe dauntless character of Jamaicans. Does the low-slung, near extinct crocodile, a cold-
ig and intersecting blooded reptile, symbolise the warm, soaring spirit of Jamaicans?' Prime Minister
nally, we can place Seaga asked rhetorically. 12 There can be few political statements which so
)Y it? Can we ever eloquently testify to the complexities entailed in the process of trying to represenc
g eye? The enigma a diverse people with a diverse history through a single, hegemonic 'identity'.
cultural strategies. Fortunately, Mr Seaga's invitation to the Jamaican people, who are overwhelmingly
~er or writer, one of African descent, to start their 'remembering' by &rst 'forgetting' something else,
· the West - the got the comeuppance it so richly deserved.
: 'avam-gardes' of The 'New World' presence - America, Yerra lncognita - is therefore itself the
~nse and tortured beginning of diaspora, of diversity, of hybridity and difference, what makes Afro-
Caribbean people already people of a diaspora. I use chis terrn here metaphorically,
is ground, place, not literally: diaspora does not refer us to those scattered cribes whose identity can
c1taries meet, the only be secured in relation to sorne sacred homeland to which they must at ali coses
from every other return, even if it means pushing other people into the sea. This is the old, the
: islands - black imperialising, the hegemonising, form of 'ethnicity'. We have seen the fate of the
h, East Indian' people of Palestine at che hands of this backward-looking conception of diaspora -
the space where' and the complicity of the West with ir. The diaspora experience as I intend it here
402 Stuart Hall

is defmed, not by essence or purity, but by che recognltlon of a necessary

heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and
through, not despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are chose which
are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation
and difference. One can only think here of what is uniquely - 'essentially' -
Caribbean: precisely the mixes of colour, pigmentation, physiognomic type; che
'blends' of tastes that is Caribbean cuisine; the aesthetics of the 'cross-overs', of 'cut-
and-mix', to borrow Dick Hebdige's telling phrase, which is che heart and soul of
black music. Y oung black cultural practitioners and critics in Britain are increasingly
coming to acknowledge and explore in their work chis 'diaspora aesthetic' and its
formations in che post-colonial experience:

Across a whole range of cultural forms there is a 'syncretic' dynamic which cricically
appropriares elements from che master-codes of che dominanc culture and 'creolises'
them, disarticulating given signs and re-articulating cheir symbolic meaning. The
subversive force of chis hybridising cendency is most apparent at che leve!of language
itself where creoles, patois and black English decencre, desrabilise and carnivalise che
linguistic dominacion of 'English' - che nation-language of master-discourse - through
strategic inflecrions, re-accemuacions and other performative moves in semancic,
syntaccic and lexical codes.13

It is because this New World is constituted for us as place, a narrative of

displacement, that it gives rise so profoundly to a certain imaginary plentitude,
recreating che endless desire to return to 'lose origins', to be one again with che
mother, to go back to che beginning. Who can ever forget, when once seen rising
up out of that blue-green Caribbean, those islands of enchantment. Who has not
known, at chis momem, the surge of an overwhelming nostalgia for lose origins, for
'times pase'? And yet, chis 'return to che beginning' is like the imaginary in Lacan
- it can neither be fulfilled nor requited, and hence is che beginning of the symbolic,
of representation, the infinitely renewable source of desire, memory, myth, search,
discovery - in short, che reservoir of our cinematic narratives.
We have been trying, in a series of metaphors, to put in play a differem sense of
our relationship to che pase, and chus a different way of thinking about cultural
identity, which mighc constitute new points of recognition in the discourses of che
:; . ~:
emerging Caribbean cinema and black British cinemas. We have been trying to ~-
theorise identity as constituted, not outside bue within representation; and hence of
~·- .:
cinema, not as a second-order mirror held up to reflect whac already exists, but as
that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects,
and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak. Communities,
Benedict Anderson argues in Imagined Communities, are to be distinguished, not
by their falsity/ genuineness, bue by the style in which they are irnagined- 14 This is
che vocation of modern black cinemas: by allowing us to see and recognise the
different pares and histories of ourselves, to construct chose points of identification,
those positionalities we call in retrospect our 'cultural identities'.
 Cultural ldentity and Diaspora 403

1irion of a necess We must not therefore be content with delving into the past of a people in order to fmd
which Jives with aii coherent elements which will coumeract colonialism's attempts to falsify and harm ....
1tities are rhose. whi ,_ A national culture is not a folk-lore, nor an abstraer populism that believes it can
uough transfonnatio discover a people's true nature. A nacional culture is the whole body of efforts made
ueJ_y- 'essentially' : by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through
which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence. 15
1ys1ognomic type; th
~ 'cross-overs', of 'cut-
the heart and soul oí
Notes
\ritain are increasingly.
1ora aesrhetic' and its
l. Frantz Fanon, 'On nacional culture', in The Wretched of the Earth, London, 1963,
p. 170. [See also p. 37 above.]
2. ibid., p. 176.
:mic which critically 3. Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and practice, London, 1982, p. 32.
drure and 'creolises' 4. ídem, Jacques Derrida, London, 1987, p. 15.
Jolic meaning. The 5. Sruart Hall, Resistance Through Rituals, London, 1976.
he leve! of language 6. Edward Said, Orientalism, London, 1985, p. 55.
· and carnivalise the 7. ibid.
jiscourse - through 8. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and nse of
noves in semantic, nationalism, London, 1982.
9. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, London, 1986, p. 109.
10. Homi Bhabha, 'Foreword' to Fanon, ibid., pp. xiv-xv. [See also p. 116 above.]
11. In New Formations, 3, Winter 1987 .
.1ce, a narrative of 12. Jamaica Hansard, 9, 1983-4, p. 363. Quoted in Hulme, ibid.
iaginary plentitude, 13. Kobena Mercer, 'Diaspora culture and the dialogic imagination', in M. Cham and C.
one again with the Watkins (eds), Blackframes: Critica/ perspectives on b/ack independent cinema, 1988,
1en once seen rising p. 57.
ment. Who has not 14. Anderson, op. cit., p. 15.
for lost origins, far 15. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 188.
imaginary in Lacan
ing of the symbolic,
1 ory, myth, search, ,· :,

a differenc sense of
áng about cultural
1e discourses of che

.1ve been trying to

1tion; and hence of
·eady exists, but as
· kinds of subjecrs,
ak. Communities
distinguished, not'
:nagined. 14 This is
and recognise the
5 of idenrification
'