Transitions of Culture and Identity - Essay Example

Transitions of Culture and Identity Introduction The concept of identity is an evolving part of the situated existence of a person within the world. According to Dubey (2008), the concept of identity can be defined as “a persistent sameness with one’s self (self-sameness), and persistent sharing of some kind of essential characters with others” (p. 118). The way in which a culture expresses its sameness within its members becomes changed for an individual when they decide to live within a foreign culture. The paintings that I have been doing express the sorrow, hope, joy and pain of displacement from an the original culture of the Caribbean to the culture of Britain. They embody the conflict within the cultural heart over the possible abandonment of the original culture, the call of that culture to be true to its traditions, and the hope with which the new adventure to a new land holds. Identity and Culture The connection between identity and culture is intrinsic in that the way in which an individual is socialized, through roles and behavior patterns and linked to the culture in which they are raised. While physical ethnic patterns may seem to link people within a racial capacity, true linkage is found within the acculturation that occurs through exposure to ideologies, traditions, and social patterns (Thomas and Schwarzbaum 2006, p. 66). When people of one culture move to another, several possible outcomes can be possibly expected; there is little adaptation and their new environment is neither accepted nor are they accepted within it, they adapt to a level where they retain their culture while finding a way to fit into the new culture as well, or they leave their culture behind, adopting the ways of the new culture and becoming an integrated part of society. While it is not good to remain on the outside of the environment where one lives, it is also sad when individuals completely abandon the culture of their birth in favor of a new homeland. Proctor (2003) quotes James Clifford who said that “Once traveling is fore grounded as a cultural practice then dwelling too, needs to be reconceived” (p. 12). The concept of traveling has redefined the ways in which home is an influence. As well, the difference between where one declares to be home and where one has traveled must be defined in order to situate the way in which one’s culture will be expressed. The difference depends on the identity that one decides to live within. If one has been raised on a Caribbean Island and has then moved to Britain, the question of identity has no real relevance to the official and legal place of residence (Siegel 2004, p. 131). If one is a member of the Caribbean culture, they feel the rest of their life that they are a traveler. In contrast, it is possible to abandon the beliefs and traditions of home and to decide to adopt British traditions in order to fully integrate. Most often, it is somewhere in-between. The questions then becomes: Where does the naturalized culture stop and the adopted culture begin? What now defines the identity? The attachment to the concept of home is married to the concept of the fear of homelessness. The need for home is as much about the fear of not having a home as it is about the existence of the dwelling itself. The problem with being ‘homeless’ is more than just not having an adequate roof and a place to put one’s things, but it is a sense of disconnection, the existence without roots and foundation. To be ‘home’ is to be in a place where one belongs, but to be homeless is to be within a space where there is not real social connection to the world. According to Procter (2003), “the emotional and cultural preoccupation in home and housing (is) an investment that was heightened by the fear of homelessness. To leave ‘home’ for Britain was not simply an issue of departure or travel: it also involves a fraught territorial struggle over local space” (31). Home is about the space in which one lives and how it connects one to the others who dwell within the same cultural space. Gilroy reminds us that the terms race, ethnicity, nation and culture are not interchangeable(Mishra 2006, p. 53). Those who consider themselves members of ’Black Britain’, are defined by terms in which they prescribe attributes to those concepts in order to create an identity. Gilroy is quoted in Solomon (2002) as saying “The assimilation of blacks is not a process of acculturation but of cultural syncretism…Accordingly, their self-definition and cultural expressions draw on a plurality of black histories and politics. In the context of modern Britain, this has produced a diaspora dimension to black life” (p. 142). The nature of the ‘black’ experience that is that it has been twisted, bent and undone through the influence of Western imposed cultures that have invaded, inhabited, and scattered the many cultures from which came origination. Proctor (2000) states that “Culture is not a final property of social life. It is a dynamic, volatile force. It is made and remade and the culture of the English fragments of the black diaspora is a syncretic, synthetic one” (p. 316). Mercer (1994) quotes James who says that there are more than three million blacks in Britain and that there are full generations who will are born in the nation, but who will never fully be a part of the culture because of their visibly different heritage (p. 1). The cultural conflict that occurs when a home land is left for a new place in which to dwell becomes linked to the search for identity. The visual ‘likeness’ of one person to another becomes an abrupt line over which the identity will have a difficult time crossing in order to come into harmony with the need to belong. In the process, the heritage culture from which the family originated may slip away, leaving the identity of the individual with a fluidity that has no foundation. Campt (2005) quotes Gilroy as saying that “The dynamic cultural syncretism is central to the relations between Black cultures in the ways that communities such as Black Britain draw on the ‘raw materials’ of Black communities elsewhere” (p. 172). He goes on to say that “In particular, the culture and politics of black America and the Caribbean have become raw materials for creative processes which redefine what it means to be black, adapting it to distinctively British experiences and meanings. Black culture is actively made and remade” (p. 172). The Caribbean culture is made up of a group of people whose heritage begins in the transportation of African slaves to the islands where they were subjected to the Westernization of their heritage, an “incomplete process of interculturation” in which “we remain part creole, part colonial, seeking many ancestral conclusions” (Paul and Braithwaite 2007, p. 25). The use of the triptych mirrors the three step cultural conceptualization of home, from the beginnings when there was Africa, to the transplantation to the islands where colonialism influenced the evolution of the traditions of the culture, to the final destination in this trilogy of Britain, home to many of those who took the ancestors and made them ’homeless’ until they developed their diaspora of culture, from which it scatters further against the wall of the Western world. In creating the first three paintings that would contribute to the definition of my cultural experience as having come from one place that is influenced by colonialism, then transported to the land from which the colonists originated, a triptych was formed in which the foundation of my thoughts on the sadness, hope, and richly guarded diversity of experience that is involved in integrating those cultures is expressed. The first painting that I did was the middle of the set, the center that connects the origins of the Caribbean culture to the hope of a new world in which to further develop the identity. The use of the triptych allows for a feeling of transition, the number three representing the trinity of the Caribbean black experience. The center panel hosts a man with a guitar, a messenger to those who have ‘fallen’ from their heritage, a siren’s call to those who have abandoned their culture, pleading with them to listen to the inner voice of their ancestors. The first panel reveals the past, the rooted foundation of the Caribbean culture in the guise of a god who slips his mask to look directly towards those who would walk away from him towards a new culture in which the old ways would no longer help to form the identity. The painting conveys the human relationship to his need, the need he has to be recognized in order to have power (Kirsch 2005). This is symbolic of the need a culture has to be practiced in order to exist. The third panel reveals a woman, her clothes inspired by the colonialism of the Caribbean, her back to the viewer as she walks towards a future that is new, the pots in the fore ground representing her culture from which she walks away. Her hem is lifted slightly as she is abandoning her heritage, her life bound to the movement of her feet as they point away from her culture and towards a new land. This collection is symbolic of my thoughts upon my culture, both my past and my present. Single paintings include multi-media work of painting and fabric, the fabric symbolic of the African background from which the Caribbean heritage is built. One piece has the torso of at woman, disembodied from her head, with this her identity lost despite her connection through the warm greens of her body that represent the lush vegetation of the Caribbean Islands. The woven African inspired fabrics represent the integration of the woven cultures. The identity of the ’traveler’, the individual who seeks a new home, who risks the possibility of being ’homeless’, is defined within the interwoven collage of homeland color and new found hope. No one goes towards a new future in despair, but hope is the esoteric glue that binds the ’traveler’ to his or her new home, from which a new culture is born through the combination of traditions that will evolve into a new identity. It is tragic when a culture is abandoned because of the influences of a new home. In the third panel of the triptych wears the color lavender, a departure from the colors of the rest of the work, suggesting that she has changed and is not quite a part of the existing framework of her originating culture. However, I end the piece with a sense of hope, a longing for a success within the new culture that will allow for the peace within which hope resides to be a part of the new identity, the conflicts resolved and a sense of self in balance with the old and the new. References Campt, Tina M. 2005. Other Germans Black Germans and the politics of race, gender, and memory in the Third Reich. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. Dubey, A. P. 2008. Modernity and the problem of cultural identity. New Delhi: Northern Book Centre. Hawley, John C. 1989. Critical studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kirsch, Jonathan. 2005. God against the gods: the history of the war between monotheism and polytheism. London: Penguin Compass. Mercer, Kobena. 1994. Welcome to the jungle: new positions in black cultural studies. East Sussex: Routledge. Mishra, Sudesh. 2006. Diaspora criticism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Paul, Annie, and Kamau Brathwaite. 2007. Caribbean culture: soundings on Kamau Brathwaite. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press. Procter, James. 2000. Writing black Britain, 1948-1998: an interdisciplinary anthology. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press. Procter, James. 2003. Dwelling places: postwar black British writing. Manchester [u.a.]: q\ Manchester Univ. Press. Siegel, Kristi. 2004. Gender, genre, and identity in womens travel writing. New York: P. Lang. Solomos, John, and Les Back. 2002. Racism and society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Thomas, Anita Jones, and Sara Schwarzbaum. 2006. Culture and identity: life stories for counselors and therapists. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. Read More