Anomaly as a Possible Solution to the Dilemma between Totalism and Individualism in Identity Politics

In Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Stuart Hall struggles to reconcile the two great traditions regarding men as common total beings and individual characteristic beings. The two methodologies clearly show their pros and cons. The former, dogmatic dealing of Caribbean diaspora as the pure descendants of the ‘Africa’ continent, surely consolidates and empowers the specific group of people, but simultaneously disregards the ‘minor’ difference among them. The latter, radically constructive view, clearly criticizes the foggy existence of ‘commonness’ or ‘continuity’ among the people and embraces the precious uniqueness, but this way essentially fails to form a community and arouse a rebellion against the dominant rules.

Finding the ideal solution between these two answers, which is fairly analogous to dealing with criticism of Nietzschean against Marxist, or Foucauldian against Barthesian views, is not just a theoretical problem but a practical one of the day. If we admit that contemporary minorities are suffering and have to be liberated, we need to construct an urgent and concrete strategy. At this point the problem becomes totally political; How can one de- and re-construct the old regime effectively and efficiently? Hall’s suggestion turns our eyes away from the solidified past to the amorphous future. He asserts that the two hostile views can have a common ground, not in the narrative they have made, but in the one in which they will synthesize imaginatively.

His strategy is not playing the game of hide-and-seek of signifier ‘Africa’ to any predetermined signified but generating the novel anticolonial signified to dwell on. Of course, this new meaning does not rise from the absence of any predetermined meaning; We need to produce the anomaly by unexpectedly mingling existing words. He quotes Derrida’s usage of ‘differance’(229), a combination of ‘differ’ and ‘defer’, as a reservoir of triple or more meanings: the new word conserves the ‘traces’ of pre-existing nuances and engenders unexpected bonuses. But how can it be actually performed? Let us imagine a simple case.

The word queer was first used to mean ‘homosexual’ in the late 19th century; when used by heterosexual people, it was originally an aggressively derogatory term. By the late 1980s, however, some gay people began to deliberately use the word queer in place of gay or homosexual, in an attempt,[…,] to deprive it of its negative power.

Oxford Dictionary of English, USAGE of queer

I am gay and queer: in some sense. I feel sexual and romantic intimacy towards males, and heterosexuality takes up the majority in contemporary society. However, I am not, or don’t want to be, a ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ person: in some other sense. I am usually depressed — not ‘gay’, and I want to be accepted by society — not ‘queer’. Protesters of the twentieth century ‘differated,’ in the Derridean sense, the words from the original closed meanings to open possibilities. Even though they had almost nothing in common, they conglomerated by saying that they are, or ‘would like to be’, a “queer”; and they differated both themselves and the very meaning of the word. I also enunciate “I am gay,” to defer the conclusive meaning of the word and differ myself and the society. Of course, the derogatory nuance carved in the word will not be eliminated, and it will be impossible to earn a complete victory if we all follow this strategy. However, by continually producing and revisioning auxiliary meanings that are defined in the dictionary, the ‘differance’ will gradually emancipate the oppressed, making the world more and more complex, and thus beautiful. The journey of humanity will never end.