Constructing Identity, Positioning History

One thing, among many, that stood out to me in reading the readings for tomorrow’s class was the way in which what the author describes (through a very historical voice that assumes some sort of authorial neutrality that I question) is a disruption of identity binaries. For example, in chapter two she describes the debate as to whether Israelites emerged from within from outside of Canaanite society which raises interesting questions about the ways in which these two groups were perhaps more alike than different. She also spends a significant amount of time discussing the ways in which the Israelites were not all monotheistic in the way that we understand and define contemporary Judaism. She describes more sharing between the religions that I found interesting.

As I was reading these chapters this week, I was also reading Stuart Hall’s “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” and found a number of interesting parallels regarding the question of how we even understand and articulate the idea of identity. I should note that Hall was born and raised in a lower-middle class family in Jamaica and has lived his adult life in England in “the shadow of the black diaspora” (p. 223).

He writes, “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production’, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall, p.222).  He complicates the very notion of us having a one true self or being a one people, which for me is demonstrated by the hybridity and layered nature of the historical nature described by Armstrong.

However, Hall also writes “Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (p. 225).  For me, this raises questions as to how we respond to a text like that of Armstrong. How do I position myself in relation to such a history. Do I see it as uncovering a truth or is it equally constructed, positioned? I appreciate the active way in which Hall describes our relationship to the past as one of positioning rather than simply receiving.