Identity traditionally assumed a stable subject. Hall identifies 4 decenterings in Western thought.
- Marx: conditions of identity are outside of our context
- Freud: the unknown unconscious/the self cannot be entirely known
- Saussure: the self is confined by language
- Postcolonialism: “Western rational thought…suddenly appears to be just another episteme.”
Fragmentation of social identity as part of the postmodern experience. Mass upheavals in the ‘supposed’ stable identities (gender, class, race). We have to reconceptualize identity in the diverse and pluralized situation. History is key–“History changes your conception of yourself. History is a part of the story of the self.” Hall’s son has to “learn to tell himself the story of his past” in order to own his full ethnicity. Narrative is necessary for ethnicity.
Literature Study Guide 