Cultural Identity and Diaspora

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Hall, a sociologist, a cultural theorist, and political activist in his essay, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” (1996), argues on how crucial a role the emerging new form of cinema is. Labelled in the Caribbean as “Third Cinemas” play in promoting the Afro-Caribbean cultural identities: the hybridity and difference that comes with the Diaspora. The role of the “Third Cinemas” reflects not only what is already a reality, but produces the representation that continuously establishes the people in third world countries as new subjects against their representation in the Western world.

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The mission is to give the “blacks” of the Diaspora—the post-colonial subjects—a voice. Using this discussion, it addresses issues such as identity, cultural practices and production.

Cultural identity is a piece of work that fails to be completed and is always in process. The discussion of cultural identity is broken into two ways of thinking, one being cultural identity as something that unifies or as the cultural practices shared amongst a certain group of individuals (393).

This understanding reflects the historical experiences and cultural norms that are shared that make those in the Caribbean as a solidified unit, even through the division and changes in their history. This oneness is what the Black Diaspora must find. The second point is with all the similarities, there are also differences within the identities (394). Without the focus on what the Caribbean has overcome and created, there is no ease in speaking of the Caribbean identity as a singular experience or identity. There are disconnections that make up the Caribbean distinctive identity.

It is these fractions that provides the true meaning of the trauma that came from colonialism experience.

The three presences, that of African, Europe and America explain the differences in the cultural identity of those in the Caribbean. The identity of Africa is from a place of oppression and repression; of Europe is from the teachings of colonialism and imperialism; of America is a confrontation of culture and as a possibility of a beginning. The combination of the three allowed for a new appearing in the New World (398-401).

In the newly emerging form of cinema in the Caribbean islands, the history of the past, has to apply to the relationship of the present to bring forth a new future and a new cultural identity. The modern black cinemas, reflect and recognize the different parts and histories of their culture, the one that came before and the current which makes it possible for the construction of the points of identification of Afro-Caribbean cultural identities. Hall’s tone assumes a highly educated audience familiar with theories not only of the history of the people who descend from Africa and identity as Afro-Caribbean, but of the sociological and psychological aspect as well.