Of the many topics covered in our discussions of Gilroy’s “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity,” I found the relations of nations, citizens, and ethnicities to race and our ideas of cultural identity to be the most fascinating, especially how concepts which seem very similar can have greatly different definitions. As we discussed in class, I was really interested in how people, especially those transplanted in the Atlantic slave trade define themselves and their personal history. For example, I would argue it is impossible to truly change one’s nation, because the idea of nation is essentially the same as one’s homeland, so even if a person were to move abroad for any reason, they could not change the fact of their nation of origin, which is tied to their cultural identity forever. However, the issue also arises in terms of ancestral homeland, contrasted with each person’s country of origin. Going forward in the course, I am interested in seeing how black writers and artists reckon with their split heritage, as both ancestors of Africa but also residents of modern America.
Furthermore, the ideas of citizenship and to a lesser extent ethnicity are more flexible and susceptible to change than nationality because they have to do more with self-representation and choice than the pre-determined nature of nationality. For example, if I were go to Ireland, I would maintain my American nationality, but I could choose to become a citizen and more broadly adopt its distinct “ethnicity” and cultural identity. Gilroy asserts in his piece that this sort of fluctuating citizenship and and cultural representation is very much a possibility, which also ties into the cultural notions of memory and performance from the Roach article. I believe this mixture of chosen and unchangeable facets of our cultural identity gets to the core of Gilroy’s article, as he believes race is a fiction which we actualize in cultural practices and interactions. Again, I am very interested as the semester goes on to learn more about the representation of one’s own culture and identity, as well as accepting and using those facets of personality, such as natioinality and homeland, which cannot truly be changed in order to somehow change or alter our ethnic identities as a whole.
I think ethnicity is such an interesting category of identity. I certainly agree that ethnicity is different than country of origin, nation, or ancestral homeland. These things are fixed even if people are unaware of where their family originated. However, ethnicity is something different. On one hand, I agree with John that ethnicity is changeable. I recently read about peasants in Central Europe who switched from German ethnicity to Czech ethnicity and vice versa dependent on the privileges assigned to the specific ethnicity. I think society’s acceptance of one’s identity is also interesting. On one hand, I don’t know that society needs to accept one’s ethnicity. Sometimes you can just pass and society is none the wiser. Yet, if I were to learn Finnish and go to Finland, I don’t know that I would ever be able to consider myself part of the Nordic ethnicity. Which, of course, returns to the question of what determines one’s belonging to an ethnicity.
I was also very interested in this discussion point from class on the definitions of words such as race and ethnicity and how we determine what groups we belong to. I definitely agree with the point that ethnicity and citizenship seem to be more flexible than ideas such as race. However, perhaps changing your belongings isn’t as easy as we had originally thought in our discussion. Using John’s own words, “For example, if I were go to Ireland, I would maintain my American nationality, but I could choose to become a citizen and more broadly adopt its distinct “ethnicity” and cultural identity.” This seems straightforward enough and may work in theory, however, I think that there is more to it than just a simple decision to adopt the new ethnicity. There are concerns on whether the society that one would be adopting the sense of identity from would accept them to begin with. If an ethnicity doesn’t consider you to be a part of it, where do you go from there? A great example of this would be in relation to Prof. Kinyon’s story about her troubles with getting into Ireland and the question of whether her husband’s parents were “Irish Irish.” So, the question that I am posing is whether, in actuality, one has the choice to freely change something such as their ethnicity.