Something of Myself

Fragments of an email.

The following is a part of an email conversation which I thought was worthy enough to put up in my blog - on the issue of contemporary British identity and the language needed to express the same:

Reading James Procter; brilliant stuff on history of Black-British identity and the concept of diaspora and the "identity of becoming"(that's Stuart Hall)....enjoying it to the hilt. Sometimes I feel that whatever I got to say has already been said in some way or the other. This of course sounds frustrating but makes it all the more challenging because i know that there is something that is still to betapped. just dont know what! [...]

I wonder (to come back to my research area) what kind of a language one needs to adopt to express Black-British identity? African-American identity? Hyphenated identities? Just as much as it is politically incorrect to say "nigger" its the same if one said "whitey". But which one stings more? We then go back to history, dont we? And then we ask - well, who wrote this bloody history? Victors? Aah, now its time to re-write it then?! From whose point? Sorry i am just getting carried away! [...]

Identity of becoming...sorry i should have explained. I meant an identity of becoming another identity...like a West Indian - he arrives in London for the first time ever; looks for a "circus" when he hears of a place called "picadilly circus." The way the entire displacement shakes the very roots of his selfhood; with time he settles down, has a job and a family. And then he starts assimilating himself to what he thinks is Britishness. In other words he negotiates his identity, his history with the place he is in. How does one dothat? Is it enforced or do we do it naturally? Do we need tointegrate? How successful can that integration be? That's what i meant- the process of becoming what you are not (and perhaps what you never imagined you could be). Or perhaps the process of becoming another person... i dont know! [...]