ETHNICITY, RACE AND NATION This chapter will be concerned with ethnicity, race and nationality as forms of cultural

identity. These are regarded as discursive-performative constructions. That is, ethnic, racial and national identities are contingent and unstable cultural creations with which we identify. They are not universal or absolute existent things. A. Race and Ethnicity In this chapter, race refers to alleged biological and physical characteristics, the most obvious of which skin is pigmentation. These attributes, frequently linked to intelligence and capabilities, are used to rank racialized groups in a hierarchy of social and material superiority and subordination. These racial classifications, constituted by and constitutive of power, are at the root of racism. a. Racialization Racialization or race formation encompasses the argument that race is a social construction and not universal or essential category of biology or culture. Races do not exist outside of representation but are formed in and by it in a process of social and political power struggle. In Britain, America and Australia the historical formation of race is one of power and subordination so that people of colour have occupied structurally subordinate positions in relation to every dimension of life chances. British Afro Carribeans, African-Americans and Australian Aboriginal peoples have occupied lower paid, less skilled jobs, have been disadvantaged in the housing market, at school and in media and cultural representations. In this context, racialization has been inherently racist for it involves forms of social, economic and political subordination which are lived through the categories and ideology of race. b. Different Racism The meaning or race differs over time and across space. For example, it has been argued that the new racism in Britain relies not on biological discourses of superiority, as in South African apartheid, but on cultural differences which exclude black people from being fully a part of the nation. In addition, the meaning of race differs between America and Britain. In Britain, the relatively homogeneous white character of the in situ population was disturbed is disturbed in the 1950s by the arrival of migrants from Carribean and Indian sub-continent, making questions of national identity a crucial category through which racialization operated.

However, west has argued that the history of the modern United States begins with the dispossession and genocide of Native American peoples and continuous through the long history of slavery. Thus, questions of race are posed at the very inceptions of the US in ways which are more long standing, but less concerned with nationality, than in Britain. c. The Concept of Ethnicity Ethnicity is a cultural concept centered on the sharing of norms, values, beliefs, cultural symbols and practices. Ethnicity is formed by the way we speak about group identities and identify with the signs and symbols which constitute ethnicity. Ethnicity is a relational concept concerned with categories of selfidentification and social ascription. What we think of as our identity is dependent on what we think we are not. Consequently, ethnicity is best understood as a process of boundary formation constructed and maintained under specific socio-historical conditions. However, the concept of ethnicity is without its problems of usage and it remains a contested term. d. Ethnicity of Power Ethnicity is constituted through power relations between groups. It signals relations of marginality, of the center and the periphery, in the context of changing historical forms and circumstances. Here, the centre and the margin are to be grasped through the politics of representation. Discourses of the ethnic centrality and marginality are commonly articulated with those of nationality. B. National Identities The modern nation-state is a relatively recent invention, for most of the human species have never participated in any kind of state nor identified with one. The nation state, nationalism and national identity as collective forms of organization and identification are not naturally occurring phenomena but contingent historical cultural formations. The nation state is a political concept which refers to an administrative apparatus deemed to have sovereignty over a specific space or territory within the nation state system. National identity is a form of imaginative identification with the symbols and discourses of the nation state.

a.

Narratives of Unity Cultures are not static entities but are constituted by changing practices and meanings which operate at different social levels. Any given national culture is understood and acted upon by different social groups, so that governments, ethnic groups and classes may perceive it in different ways. Representations of natural culture are snapshots of the symbols and practices which have been foregrounded at specific historical conjunctures for particular purposes by distinctive groups of people. National identity is a way of unifying cultural diversity. That unity is constructed through the narrative of the nation by which stories, images, symbols and rituals represent shared meanings of nationhood. Narratives of nationhood emphasize the traditions and continuity of the nation as being in the nature of things along with a foundational myth of collective origin.

b.

The Imagined Community National identities are intrinsically connected to, and constituted by form of communication. For Anderson (1983), the nation is an imagined community and national identity a construction assembled through symbols and rituals in relation to territorial and administrative categories. According to Anderson, the mechanized production and commodification of books and newspapers, allowed vernacular languages to be standardized and disseminated and providing the conditions for the creation of a national consciousness. The processes of print capitalism thus fixed a vernacular language as the national language and made possible a new imagined national community.

C. Diaspora and Hybrid Identities Diaspora focuses attention on travel, journeys, dispersions, homes and borders in the context of questions about who travels, where, when, how and under what circumstances. Diaspora is a relational concept referring to configurations of power which differentiate diasporas internally as well as situate them in relation to one another. a. The Idea of Diaspora According to Gilroy (1997), the divided network of related peoples which form the diaspora is one characteristically produced by forced dispersal and reluctant scattering. Diaspora is focused less on the equalizing, proto-democratic force of common territory and more on the social dynamics of remembrance and commemoration defined by a strong sense of the dangers involved in forgetting the location of origin and the process of dispersal.

b.

Types of Hybridity There are two types of hybridity, structural and cultural hybridation. Structural hybridity refers to a variety of social and institutional hybridity and cultural hybridity which ranges from assimilation, through form of separation to hybrid that destabilize and blur cultural boundaries.

D. Race, Ethnicity, Representation Representation involves questions of inclusion and exclusion and as such is always implicated in questions of power. Dyer (1977) points us to a useful distinction between types and stereotypes. Types act as general and necessary classificatio of ns persons and roles according to local cultural categories. While stereotypes are regarded as vivid but simple representations which reduce persons to a set of exaggerated, usually negative characteristics. Types are instances which indicate those who live by the rule of society and those whom the rules are designed to exclude. Stereotypes concern those excluded from the normal order of things and simultaneously establish who is us and who is them. Thus, stereotyping reduces, essentializes, naturalizes and fixes difference. E. Postcolonial Literature Postcolonial literature is that works produces by the peoples of former European colonies. While the term postcolonial might refer to literature produces after colonialization, it is taken here to include the colonial discourse itself, that is, the world both during and after European colonization. Postcolonial theory explores postcolonial discourses and subjectivity, power, subalterns, hybridity and creolizations. F. Domination and Subordination Domination and subordination is a relationship which occurs not only between nations or ethnic groups but also within them. The emphasis on ethnicity in postcolonial theory literature can mask the power relation of gender. G. Hybridization and Creolization The hybridyzation and creolization of language, literature and cultural is a common theme of postcolonial literature and theory marking a certain meeting of minds with postmodernism. Creolization stresses language as a cultural practice and the inventions of new modes of expressions particular to itself.