STUART HALL’S “DIASPORA IDENTITY” AND

CARIBBEAN POETRY

Sudipta Mukhopadhyay
Roll No. 723
Batch 44

A Thesis Paper
Submitted to the Department of English
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Course E 305
“African and Caribbean Literature in English”

In the Department of English at

JAHANGIRNAGAR UNIVERSITY, DHAKA

On 17 July 2018
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Abstract
Stuart McPhail Hall, FBA (1932 – 2014) was a Jamaican-born cultural theorist,
political activist and Marxist sociologist (Encyclopædia). He worked on different ideas of
contemporary cultural studies. He also widely discussed notions of cultural
identity, race and ethnicity, particularly in the creation of the politics of Black diasporic
identities.
The objective of this paper is to present a critical analysis of Stuart Hall’s idea of
“Diasporic Identity” and locating the practice of this idea in Caribbean poetry. This paper is an
attempt to answer a few questions – what diaspora is, and what “diasporic identity” means;
what definition of cultural identity Hall provided in his work; how Hall located the idea in
Caribbean and other contexts, and what his standing was regarding this idea; what Caribbean
poetry is; and if Caribbean poetry holds Hall’s idea of diasporic identity and what treatment
this idea gets in this tradition.
The first part of this paper will define diaspora and diasporic identity in brief. In the
second part it will put effort on understanding the definitions of cultural identity provided by
Stuart Hall. It will also try to understand Hall’s description of diaspora identity, particularly
the Caribbean identity after knowing the etymology of the term “Caribbean”. The third section
will briefly explore Caribbean literature and poetry. Finally, this paper will study a few notable
works of some Caribbean poets and try to locate Hall’s idea of diasporic identity in them.
The general theme of this paper is the diasporic identity of Caribbean people and its
recognition in Caribbean poetry.

Keywords: Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Diaspora, Diasporic Identity,
History of the Caribbean, Caribbean Identity, Caribbean Poetry, Derek Walcott,
Edward Kamau Brathwaite.
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Introduction
Stuart McPhail Hall’s works show that growing up in the pigmentocracy of the colonial
West Indies, where he was of darker skin than much of his family, had a profound effect on his
views of the world. He had interest in Caribbean history and literature as a student, which might
have also influenced his career. He wrote “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, his one of the
influential essays in 1990. In this essay, Hall talks about cultural identity and the idea of
“diasporic identity”. To exemplify this idea, he chooses the notion of Caribbean identity and
shows how different “presences” influence this. He advocates hybridity of Caribbean black
people and their cultural practices. Many Caribbean poets have attempted to reimagine the
experience of diaspora and their hybrid identity in their works, which are relatable to Hall’s
concept.
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1. Diaspora and Diasporic Identity

The word “diaspora” is derived from the Greek verb “diaspeiro”, meaning “to scatter
or disperse about”, where “dia” means “between, across” and the verb “speiro” means “I
scatter” (Liddell and Scott, 2007). Hence in ancient Greece the term “diaspora” meant “to
disperse” (OED). A diaspora is a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate
geographic locale.
According to Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, “Diasporas, the voluntary or forcible
movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions, is a central historical fact of
colonization. Colonialism itself was a radically diasporic movement, involving the temporary
or permanent dispersion and settlement of millions of Europeans over the entire world”
(2007:61).
The word “identity” means “The fact of being who or what a person or thing is” (OED).
“Diasporic Identity” means the identity of diasporic people. A corporate, communal, or shared
diasporic identity is defined by the relationships between the dispersed; distance from one’s
motherland generates a sense of loss (Dutta-Bergman & Pal, 2005; Liao, 2005). The diasporic
experience tends to focus on a collective memory of a lost homeland, childhood, cultural
identity due to the trauma of forced dispersion (Naghibi, 2009).

2. History of the Caribbean: Stuart Hall’s Definition of Cultural and

Diasporic Identity
The history of human settlement in the Caribbean islands dates back to mid-sixth
millennium BC (Rouse 1992:63). After different stages of repopulation, these islands were
invaded by European colonizers. And this laid the foundation of Caribbean Identity, the notion
that Stuart Hall focuses on to discuss cultural and diaspora identity.

2.1. The History and Etymology of Caribbean

At the time of the European arrival, the islands were populated by three major
Amerindian indigenous peoples. The Tainos lived in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, and
the Leeward Islands; the Island Caribs in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboneys in western
Cuba (Rouse 1992:63). These people spoke both Carib and Arawakan languages.
As described in the Encyclopædia Britannica, in 1492, Christopher Columbus, under
the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, landed on the island of Hispaniola (today
divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic). He claimed the region for Spain and
established the first settlements in 1493. Beginning in the 1620s and 1630s, non-
Hispanic privateers, traders, French and English buccaneers and settlers established permanent
colonies and trading posts on islands neglected by Spain. The development of agriculture in
the Caribbean required a large workforce of manual laborers, which the Europeans found by
taking advantage of the slave trade in Africa. The Atlantic slave trade brought African slaves
to British, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas, including the
Caribbean. Slaves were brought to the Caribbean from the early 16th century until the end of
the 19th century.
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The term “Caribbean” was coined right after the European invasion of the islands. The
region takes its name from the indigenous people called in English Carib, from Spanish Caribe,
which comes from a word in the Arawakan language group (probably Taino) meaning human
being. Many critics and theorists are of opinion that this term promotes the history of slavery,
racism, European colonization and the plantation system.

2.2. Stuart Hall on “Cultural Identity”, “Caribbean Identity” and “Diaspora Identity”
Stuart Hall provides two definitions of “cultural identity” in his essay.
In the first definition, cultural identity is “a sort of collective ‘one true self’… which
many people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common.” (qtd. In Hall 223). In this
view, cultural identity provides a “stable, unchanging and continuous frame of reference and
meaning” (223) through the ebb and flow of historical change. Therefore, blacks living in the
diaspora need only “unearth” their African past in order to discover their true cultural identity.
While Hall appreciates the positive impact this first view of cultural identity has had in
the postcolonial world, he proposes a second definition of cultural identity which he views as
superior. This second view “recognises that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are
also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or
rather – since history has intervened – ‘what we have become.’” (225) In this view, cultural
identity is not a fixed essence rooted in the past. Instead, cultural identities “undergo constant
transformation” throughout history as they are “subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history,
culture, and power”. Thus, Hall defines cultural identities as “the names we give to the different
ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.” In other
words, for Hall cultural identity is “not an essence but a positioning” (226).
Taking the terms from Aimee Cesaire and Leopold Senghor, Hall describes “Caribbean
identity” in terms of three distinct “presences”: 'Presence Africaine,' 'Presence Europeenne,'
and 'Presence Americain' (230). 'Presence Africaine' is the "unspeakable 'presence' in
Caribbean culture" (230). According to Hall, the African presence, though repressed by slavery
and colonialism, is in fact hiding in plain sight in every aspect of Caribbean society and culture,
including language, religion, the arts, and music. For many black people living in the diaspora,
Africa becomes an “imagined community”, to which they feel a sense of belonging
(232). However, Hall points out that there is no going back to the Africa that existed before
slavery, because Africa too has changed. Secondly, Hall describes the European presence in
Caribbean cultural identity as the legacy of colonialism, racism, power and exclusion. Unlike
the 'Presence Africaine,' the European presence is not unspoken even though many would like
to be separated from the history of the oppressor. However, he argues that Caribbean and
diasporic peoples must acknowledge how the European presence has also become an
inextricable part of their own identities. Lastly, Hall describes the American presence as the
“ground, place, territory” where people and cultures from around the world collided (234). It
is, as Hall puts it, “where the fateful/fatal encounter was staged between Africa and the West,”
and also where the displacement of the natives occurred (234).
Because diasporic cultural identity in the Caribbean and throughout the world is a
mixture of all these different presences, Hall advocates for a “conception of ‘identity’ which
lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity”. According to Hall, black people
living in diaspora are constantly reinventing themselves and their identities by mixing,
hybridizing, and “creolizing” influences from Africa, Europe, and the rest of the world in their
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everyday lives and cultural practices. Therefore, there is no only specific cultural identity for
all diasporic people, but rather a multiplicity of different cultural identities that share both
important similarities and important differences, all of which should be respected.

3. Caribbean Literature and Poetry

The term “Caribbean Literature” is generally accepted for the literature of the various
territories of the Caribbean region. The literature of the Caribbean has no indigenous tradition.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite talks about Caribbean literature in the Encyclopædia Britannica:

The pre-Columbian American Indians left few rock carvings or inscriptions

(petroglyphs), and their oral traditions did not survive 16th-century Spanish
colonization. The West Africans who replaced them were also without a written
tradition, so for about 400 years Caribbean literature was an offshoot and imitation
of the models of the colonial powers—Spain, France, Great Britain, and the
Netherlands. Caribbean writers, however, were not unaware of their environment.
The letters and speeches of Toussaint-Louverture, the Haitian general and liberator,
indicate that from at least the end of the 18th century the Caribbean was conscious
of its cultural identity… The British Caribbean, developing its national literature
after 1945, made its own contribution in the folk dialect novel: Vic Reid’s New Day
(1949)… and V.S. Naipaul’s Mystic Masseur (1957) and A House for Mr. Biswas
(1961)… Paradoxically, Anglophone Caribbean development was formally
conservative, working toward an “open” rather than an autochthonous, or
indigenous, expression in the work of C.L.R. James (Trinidad) and the poetry
of Derek Walcott (St. Lucia). In the novels of Wilson Harris (Guyana), the
Symbolist and Surrealist techniques of the Modernist movement reappear; and the
poetry of Edward Brathwaite (Rights of Passage [1967], Masks [1968], Islands
[1969]) attempts to reassert the place of Africa in the Caribbean.

(Brathwaite 2010)

“Caribbean Poetry” comprises any form of poem, rhyme, or lyric that derives from
the writers of the Caribbean diaspora (qtd. in Baugh 227). Two major poets of this tradition are
Derek Walcott (1930-2017), the 1992 Nobel-laureate for literature, and Edward Kamau
Brathwaite (born 1930). The next section will take account of some of their poems which are
supposed to hold the ideas of diaspora and diasporic identity, or the Caribbean identity.

4. Diasporic Identity in Caribbean Poetry

“A Far Cry from Africa” (1962), an early poem of Derek Walcott, focuses on the
conflicted feelings of the poet who has a mixed racial lineage. This poem express the general
feeling that resonates with most of the Caribbean people. The title can be read both literally
and idiomatically. Literally, it can mean “being far from Africa and being sad”, and “a cry from
Africa that is heard in the distance”. Idiomatically, it implies “distant and different from Africa”
(Todd 24). In the poem, Walcott tries to come to terms with his identity by revisiting history;
it entails recounting the painful colonial past. The past is painful not only because of the
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brutalities of colonization but also because the poet shares his lineage with both the colonizer
and the colonized. The central question asked in the poem is:
“I who am poisoned with the blood of both

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?” (26-27)

Walcott evokes the Mau Mau rebellion of Kenya and holds both the Europeans and the
Kenyans responsible for the bloodshed. He is critical of the colonial discourses based on
statistics and laws that justify the killing of the Kenyan people. However, he can neither turn
away from his English identity, nor from his African ancestry. He finishes the poem with a
series of questions:
“…how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?” (29-33)
Frantz Fanon theorizes this psychological conflict as Negrophobia in Black Skin, White
Masks. According to Fanon, the black man “lives an ambiguity that is extraordinarily neurotic”
(169). In the black man’s “collective unconscious,” being black means being “wicked,
spineless, evil, and instinctual,” the opposite of being white (169). In “A Far Cry from Africa,”
therefore, Walcott confronts this psychological conflict but the paradoxes in his identity remain
unresolved because the central question is never answered.
Walcott’s first epic-length poem Another Life (1973) contains some elements of
Caribbean history – how the new generation may learn the history of their ancestors from the
sea. In chapter 22, set at Rampanalgas, Walcott watches his son and two daughters at play.
Each is “a child without history, without knowledge of its pre-world,” and in this is “like his
father” (Walcott qtd. in Breslin 185). Breslin adds, “The children have a vague sense of their
past as a fusion of diverse races and origins (Margaret Walcott is part East Indian, part Afro-
Caribbean, while Derek Walcott, as his poetry often reminds us, has African, English, and
Dutch ancestry)” (185). Walcott writes:
“That child who puts the shell’s howl to his ear,
hears nothing, hears everything
that the historian cannot hear, the howls
of all the races that crossed the water,

the howls of grandfathers drowned” (CP, 285)

These lines probably try to describe the past sea-journey of the forefathers to the
Caribbean from different parts of the world. “This heritage is too tangled and extensive to be
made articulate, unless through poetry; the shell is an “intricately swivelled Babel” (CP, 285)
that speaks in a confusion of all languages. The past survives only as a primal knowledge
beneath the level of language and memory… [b]ut the memories have been transferred to the
sea and shore, which are the abode of an eternal present” (Breslin 185-86).
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Edward Brathwaite seems to be concerned with diaspora identity more than Walcott.
His one of the major works is The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973). This book contains
many elements of the diaspora history and diaspora identity. There are references to Africa,
middle passage, Caribbean and the USA and so on. A short study of some of the poems will
help to understand Brathwaite’s stand for diaspora identity.
The poem “New World a-Comin” is the second part of “Work Song and Blues”, the
opening section of Brathwaite’s long poem Rights of Passage. Nana Wilson-Tagoe attempts a
critical approach of this poem:

It evokes the experience of the Middle Passage, exploring both the shock of the
slaves’ encounter with the white slaver and the devastation and possibilities of their
traumatic movement from Africa to the New World. This dual view of the Middle
Passage is a characteristic both of Brathwaite’s poetry and of contemporary West
Indian poetry as a whole. The experience of the Atlantic crossing generally
functions as a symbol of displacement and loss… in “New World a-Comin” the fact
of dispossession, of being wrenched from landscape, community and tradition,
becomes both the ‘silence’ of defeat and a journey of possibilities… Like defeat and
destruction in the desert they are symbolized by dumbness:

Soft foot

to soft soil

of silence:

We met in the soiled

tunnel of leaves…

(The Arrivants, p. 9)
(104)

The drama of the Middle Passage is concluded in the second section of the poem. The
paradox of the ‘chained’ and ‘welcoming’ port projects a sense of the future and reflects the
slaves’ hopes of a new inheritance, of new and interesting combinations of past, present and
future experience (105):
“… new soils, new souls, new
ancestors…
… the pride of our ancestors mixed
with the wind and the water
the flesh and the flies…”
(The Arrivants, p. 11)

“Folkways” (p. 30) is the second part of the second section “Spades”. It relates to the
earlier poem. Wilson-Tagoe says, “…it dramatizes the failure of the first slaves’ hope of a
continuity and of a creative mixing of past, present and future experiences…Its background is
the United States city, and the voices are the voices of urban Blacks, a generation removed
from the first slaves and already distanced from them in experience, vision and speech patterns”
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(105). Though the voices have failed to gain any mixed experience, this poem uses creolized
English which is a result of hybridization. Stuart Hall has talked about this process in his
discussion.
“Bosompra” (p. 136) is the first part of the fifth section “Crossing the River” of Masks,
the second poem of this book. The title of this poem is a reference to the river Pra in Ghana,
which marks the boundary between the Fante and the Asante peoples. It marks an important
transition in Brathwaite’s relationship to his ancestral world and to history. Stuart Hall wrote
that for many Black people Africa had become an “imagined community” to which they felt a
sense of belonging, and his this statement finds success in “Bosompra”. This poem marks a
transition because it reveals the difference between memory and history, between dream and
reality. It is structured in such a way that “its explorations shift between the present experience
of the returning New World Negro and the poet’s examination further back in time, of cultural
failure in Africa” (Wilson-Tagoe 105). He makes a “journey in space and time, a journey which
unlike of his slave ancestors begins from the sea and progresses inland into the forest regions
around Kumasi, the heart of ‘Akan’ land, the central city of the Asante Empire… In the poet’s
agony of homelessness and exile” (105):
“You there on the other
bank, walking away
down the slope,

can you hear

can you hear me?”
(The Arrivants, p. 136)

Brathwaite’s desperate question wonder if a link still exists between the returning
‘exile’ and his kinsman in Africa. The fact of there being “no real contact and no answers to
his questions reflects the ambiguity of the exile’s situation in Africa and reveals at the same
time the frightening reality of the wounds of history.” (qtd. in Wilson-Tagoe 105-6)
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Conclusion
Stuart Hall, as a Jamaican-born, was aware of his long-lost ancestry. His experience is
more or less similar to the Caribbean poets discussed here. They all suffered from a dilemma
with their hybrid identity and searched for the history of diaspora, slavery, suffering,
sublimation, reconstruction, and cultural hybridization. As a cultural theorist Hall felt the
necessity to make the world recognize the mixed racial and cultural identity of his nation, so
he researched and wrote “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” to achieve his goal. On the contrary
the Caribbean poets (Walcott and Brathwaite) put effort to do the same with their poetic talent.
Their poems reflect their experience of diasporic identity – the concept popularized by Hall.
Again, Hall read these poems which influenced him to carry on his work. So, they fulfill their
purpose to re-identify themselves from their own position and perception.
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