Research Proposal as it stood December 2006

Performing Layers of the Self: How does the metropole provide a space in which essentialist constructs of identity are policed, transgressed and ultimately transcended?

“In the world through which I travel I am endlessly creating myself.” (Fanon, cited in Read, 1996: 134 )

At a time when national identities are fading into insignificance and ethnic identities are being asserted violently within Europe’s borders, the postcolonial cities of the world constitute spaces of cosmopolitanism, where different cultures and ethnicities rub shoulders and interact. The perpetual influx of migrants infuses cities, such as London or Paris, with a cultural vibrancy and pluralism, thus transforming established notions of location, identity and culture. Symptomatic of modernity, in this poststructuralist condition we find ourselves locked into an endless process of reconstruction and reinvention of the self. The research that I propose to undertake concerns the performativity of these hybridised identities, in particular through the use of costume, in the mundane realm of the everyday metropolitan space. How we perform our metamorphosing selves and how, as Judith Butler (1990) describes, the enacting of identities, in fact, brings those identities into being.

In order to further comprehend post-essentialist concepts of selfhood, it seems necessary first of all to reflect upon and interrogate a homogenising notion of identity underlying liberalism. In ‘Peau Noire, Masques Blancs’ (1956), Fanon demonstrates the power of the racial binary to fix, which found the colonised imprisoned into ‘a crushing objecthood.’ I am particularly interested in the influence of the French mission civilisatrice on contemporary Caribbean society. This colonial project reduced the black subject to an empty vessel, in need of civilisation and a masque blanc. Through this process of internalisation of Western values and French culture, we are forced to question to what extent the Other is rendered complicit in their own situation? Reflecting on my own experiences living on the island of Martinique, I intend to address the existence of a split identity crisis, which still persists in the French Caribbean region today. My focus turns inevitably to an examination of the ‘enlightened’ Caribbean evolués, returning to the island after being formally educated in the metropole and a condition which is, nowadays more commonly referred to as the ‘oreo cookie syndrome.’

Such complex performances of crossing, overlapping identities will be crucial in shaping both my research and practice. Homi Bhabha’s writing on mimesis and the fluidity of binary systems of power is of particular relevance to my practice, which will comment on the ease of which one can currently adopt, impersonate and reshape required identities from the comfort of one’s own home. Trapped by the contradictory nature of globalisation, the modern citizen is implicated in a form of ‘corporate multiculturalism’. I am particularly concerned with how cultural values are espoused and reappropriated in this transnational age, not only interrogating the aforementioned psychological condition of donning a masque blanc but also the cultural relevancy of adopting a masque noir.

Historically, this instability of difference relates to white blackface minstrel performances of the nineteenth century. However, in our globalised present such border-crossings are far more nuanced and complex. In the urban hubs of cities such as Paris, for example, a new generation of white ‘apocalyptic youth’ are on the hunt for renewed spirituality. These neo-tribal groups engage in what Gómez-Peña refers to as ‘post-industrial pow wows’, which he goes on to describe as “crosscultural performance rituals inspired by ‘ancient rites’ – collective drumming, aficionado performance art and pop ‘anarchist’ politics.” (2005:62) Within this crossover culture, notions of what we perceive to be ‘local’ and ‘global’ are disturbed and markers of cultural difference become softened and blurred.

This stylized hybridity appears in stark contrast to the reality of hybrid postcolonial subjects. Today, in the wake of 9/11, the rhetoric of cultural tolerance is visibly breaking down. As state policy shifts from the celebration of difference to an anxious call for assimilation, the racial Other (whether citizen or immigrant) is under renewed pressure to integrate him/herself into society. Are we thus regressing, returning to the domain of old colonial binaries? Considering the current crisis of multiculturalism, ‘new imperialism’ and the rise of the French right, I intend to examine the way in which borders are constructed, negotiated and transcended within the metropolitan space. Focusing on last year’s social unrest in the banlieues of Paris, the final part of my research will look at the reconstruction and reinvention of the self in the midst of disintegrating projects of multiculturalism.

Cultural theorists, Paul Gilroy (1993) and Stuart Hall (1992), argue the importance of music, performance, movement and the inscription of bodies through dress and style as ‘sites of pleasure’ and identity formation in the black diaspora. With this in mind I shall endeavour to explore further the performativity of such ‘sites of pleasure’. Whilst acknowledging the multiple and contradictory forces at work within the fashion system, I plan to focus on the cultural signifiers of dress which are endlessly being problematised, reinscribed and transcended in the creation of truly modern subjects. How vestimentary codes are adopted and refashioned, simultaneously emphasising the social and historical peculiarity of the construction of identity and the constant debate between cultural plurality and a fixed, rooted sense of self. The course of my argument seems to repeat itself as the relevance of Fanon once more becomes apparent in the present day. According to Fanon, both blacks and whites must deal with the psychic trauma of everyday exchanges. A dynamic which is still very much relevant today and an experience Isaac Julien describes as ‘the violence of everyday life’.

Within the context of the banlieues, I am interested in the creative recombining and reconfiguration of costume and gesture in identity performances and how these forces might potentially constitute a means of resistance and transformation. How the way we dress, the music we choose to accompany our daily rituals and our creations of street vernacular contribute to the staging of our hybrid personae and in the case of the banlieues become oppositional strategies. It is precisely these “neglected modes of signifying practices like mimesis, gesture, kinesis and costume”, to which Gilroy refers ( 2004:137), that will inform my own practice. In consideration of the research I have outlined above, I thus far anticipate the project to be an excavation of complex subject formations and an ethnographic investigation into the perpetual performance of multiple, overlapping identities, in which we are all involved.