|
|
postcolonial moment. It is always shifting, transitory, and it is never the same or in the same place at the same time. Stuart Hall writes,
This endeavor is possible through decolonization and interpolation: “A common strategy of postcolonial self-assertion has been the attempt to rediscover some authentic precolonial cultural reality in order to redress the impact of European imperialism” (Ashcroft 2). Culture, just like identity, is never fixed or stable. It has a life of its own—it is transformative and transitory. Therefore, according to Ashcroft and Madan Sarup, no colonized subject can completely lose his past. Instead, it has been transformed through a process of syncretism that adapts aspects of the culture of the colonizer to change it and allow the colonized to cope with his new life (Ashcroft 2). Ashcroft adds that adapting and accepting the colonizer’s culture has altered both groups and transformed the initial colonialist form of domination to reflect aspects of the culture of the colonized.
To understand identity, one must be aware of the problematic roots of trying to define it, which is why an interpretation is necessary. This interpretation will depend on the needs, experiences, and environment of the individual. Hall adds, “We should not, for a moment, underestimate or neglect the importance of the act of imaginative rediscovery which this conception of a rediscovered, essential identity entails” (393). So the search to reconstruct one’s identity can be classified as an “imaginary