(Reading time: 10 – 15 minutes)
While shopping at the local supermarket the other day I bumped into an old friend from high school whom I hadn’t seen in a while. We engaged in small talk – the typical conversational fare for these contexts – and she asked whether I was still teaching. I replied in the affirmative. She wanted to know where and so I named the Jewish high school at which I currently work. She appeared slightly taken aback and said: “Oh, but I heard you have to be highly eh-jyoo-kate-ed (she elongated the syllables exaggeratedly) to work in that school.” “Well, you kind of do,” I replied. She looked at me quickly, then mumbled something about having heard (“oh, right”) that I had taken some ‘coursework’ in ‘education’ for my teaching. We eventually took leave of each other with friendly good-byes, but the conversation lingered in my mind for a while and I did what I often do when my past intersects with the present, I ruminated on it…
I received my educational grounding at a provincial Hasidic school. In all the important ways, it gave me a great start in life. My ultra-orthodox religious education provided me with a moral code – so I don’t have to make up the rules as I go along; it shaped my worldview – one that helps me find meaning in everyday life; and it honed my spiritual sensibilities – a valuable asset in a world that is largely spiritually deprived. I will admit, however, that it did not prepare me for the academic world. In fact, the principal of the very first school I applied to, though clearly impressed by my more recent academic achievements, homed right in on what she considered my weakest point. She asked me, quite bluntly, how I intended to overcome the limitations of a Hasidic education? I explained to her that I didn’t see it as a matter of overcoming, but of integrating. After all, the best parts of me were formed during that segment of my life: my love of learning, my work ethic, my deference to those more knowledgeable and experienced than myself – these are not exactly attributes I want to overcome. Because of these positive influences and experiences I identify strongly with the Hasidic culture. It is who I am.
But it is not only who I am (as many of my friends and colleagues are only too happy to point out). The vast majority of women in my circles don’t drive, yet I do; I dress modestly, but my clothes lack some of the distinctions that would place me firmly in the Hasidic category; and, of course, there’s the matter of my being, as my high school friend articulated it, so ‘eh-jyoo-kate-ed’. My Hasidic alma mater did not prepare its students for a future in higher education. I know of only two or three fellow graduates who went on to get college degrees. In becoming the person I am today I have had to look beyond some of the messages I had ostensibly absorbed.
Who am I?
Perhaps what I describe feels vaguely familiar to you. Maybe you’re a Chinese-American, a Dominican Jew or a Muslim convert. Maybe you too have a split identity. Perhaps you also owe allegiance to a variety of groups that have shaped your character, but who appear, on the surface, to embody opposing stances. Maybe you struggle with feelings of both affiliation and ambivalence towards several ethnicities. I know what it feels like. My Jewish Hasidic identity, and my solidarity with this cultural group, is strong. But I am aware that I also embody ‘difference.’ I cherish Hasidic values, but remain wary of some of its tendencies: its insular practices, its unwillingness to engage in conversation with modernity, and its resistance to pluralism. But even as I struggle with the dissonance between these parts of myself, I take comfort in the knowledge that I am not alone in this struggle. Hyphenated identities are becoming the norm and an ability to negotiate multiple selves is something few of us can now afford to be without.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), statesman and influential writer of the French Renaissance (who I have no doubt would have been a most compelling blogger, had he lived in this Internet age!), may have been the first person to speak about identity as a process rather something innate or fixed. He introduces this notion at the start of his classic essay On Repentance:
The world is but a perennial see-saw. (…) Constancy itself is nothing else but a languid rocking to and fro. I am unable to stabilize my subject: it staggers confusedly along with a natural drunkenness. I grasp it as it is now, at this moment when I am lingering over it. I am not portraying being, but becoming: not the passage from one age to another (…), but from day to day, from minute to minute. I must adapt this account of myself to the passing hour. I shall perhaps change soon, not accidentally but intentionally. This is a register of varied and changing occurrences, of ideas which are unresolved, and, when need be, contradictory, either because I myself have become different, or because I grasp hold of different attributes or aspects of my subjects.
In a radical departure from the 16th century perspective of the nature of being, Montaigne captures the fluidity of human identity. He refuses to catalogue himself or his subjects, recognizing that the concept of self may change from day to day, from moment to moment.
The notion of mutability becomes all the more relevant, even crucial, in a postmodern era in which hyphenated identities abound. It is no longer convenient, nor realistic, to draw solely on traditional categories of race, nationality, or gender. Increasingly, we find ourselves engaged in reconciliatory efforts between seemingly incompatible cultural worlds, if only to make sense of our personal identities. And managing them is not always easy, or graceful. Kamala Visweswaran, professor of anthropology and Asian studies, explains: “The hyphen enacts a violent shuttling between two or more worlds.” More and more, the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ both take up residence within the same individual, forcing him to maintain an ongoing dialogue between the many voices of his multiple selves.
Centuries after Montaigne, poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler revolutionized the field of gender studies by describing a similar notion of the self. Identity, Butler argued, is not something we are born into, but something we enact (often unintentionally) through our dress, behavior, and speech. This expanded view of identity opened up new areas of study for linguists, among other scholars, with the awareness that language does not simply reflect identity, but that oral interaction can itself be an important site for identity construction. Two linguistics who have embraced this notion, Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, argue that identity is emergent and shaped on a number of different levels. They propose a framework for analyzing naturally occurring talk to locate the multiple identities managed by individuals in different contexts and with different conversational partners.
These new theoretical frameworks for language and identity have yielded some fascinating insights. Consider a 2010 study conducted by Oraib Mango of Arizona State University, which investigates how a group of Arab-American women use language to position themselves as Arabs, as Americans, and as individuals, during a focus group discussion. Mango found that these women, in the context of a conversation about prejudices and stereotypes, alternated between expressions of solidarity and affiliation with regard to the larger Arab culture (e.g., the use of inclusive terms such as ‘we’ and ‘us’ when discussing Arabs and Middle-Eastern Americans), and a language of ambivalence and uncertainty (e.g., making distinctions between ‘Iraqi’, ‘Middle Eastern’, ‘Christian’, ‘American’ and ‘Arab American’; showing evidence of hesitation when labeling themselves; and saying things like ‘I am an American but I am not so’). Mango notes the constant shifting in stance among these women, highlighting the complex management of the participants’ multiple selves.
The above study, and others like it, suggests that the speech patterns of individuals and groups not only reflect personal identity and attitude towards the ‘other,’ but are also utilized strategically to manage multiple identities, and possibly to reconcile opposing roles. For my Master’s thesis (link coming soon) I reviewed recent literature on language and Jewish identity and found evidence of a similar dynamic among religious American Jews. Through my readings I discovered that identity among all Jewish groups – from the insular Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn to the Modern Orthodox Jews of Broome County, NY – is indeed becoming less static, and that distinctively Jewish language is often used as a tool for self-definition and self-presentation.
As a linguist (or a wannabe!) I am fascinated by these studies. But on a more personal level, they tell me that my ‘identity crises’ may not be all that unique. In fact, cultural hybridization may render me less the exception and more the ‘rule’.
I hope you will comment and share your thoughts and/or experiences.
References:
Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2005). Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach. Discourse Studies 7(4-5): 585 – 614.
Mango, O. (2010). Enacting solidarity and ambivalence: Positional identities of Arab American women. Discourse Studies 12: 649 – 664.
Visweswaran, K. (1994). Fictions of feminist ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
For Montaigne’s On Repentance I used M. A. Screech’s translation (2004 Penguin edition).
Confessions of a Cultural Hybrid 