Instead of advocating for an endless slide of identities, Cablinasian works effectively as a marker of a racialized identity if its users momentarily stop its movement and claim identities… |
Instead of advocating for an endless slide of identities, Cablinasian works effectively as a marker of a racialized identity if its users momentarily stop its movement and claim identities, while retaining their original reflexivity. In two parallel arguments, cultural critics Stuart Hall (1996) and Candice Chuh (2003) advocate for an understanding of race as fiction, while simultaneously accepting the strategic “closure” of identity for political projects. This approach differs from conventional identity politics in its temporality. Rather than claim an essential, stable, and unitary community identity, these identities are contingent, flexible, and porous. Certainly, this transforms traditional notions of racial politics based on an unwavering allegiance to a particular racial identification, but it also makes for a more inclusive and descriptive rather than prescriptive politics.
LeiLani Nishime, “The Case for Cablinasian: Multiracial Naming From Plessy to Tiger Woods,” Communication Theory, Volume 22, Issue 1 (February 2012): 105.
Tags: LeiLani Nishime