These past two weeks, we’ve obviously covered several broad and differing topics: the notion of the Self/Other, and race relations. In discussing these, I think of my own relationship with my consciousness of being, and in thinking about defining (from our last unit) and the international spectrum (our upcoming unit), these factors of my being (spatially, temporally, existentially, etc.) affect how I see myself, how others see me, and my idea of who I should/shouldn’t/can/couldn’t/would/wouldn’t be. Race (especially) has given me a lot to think about the the last few weeks.
These thoughts manifest in something known as the hyphen, an abstract concept built upon the symbol joining two words with the assumption that in combination, they hold one meaning. In transcultural rhetoric and discourse, the hyphen is literally the symbol between, for example, Chinese and Canadian in the term Chinese-Canadian. However, it is also a figurative space, or threshold, that separates one’s identity from one’s body. I’ve done some thinking previously about this idea, and I will try my best to summarize. Though based on my own experience, I believe this form of “being” can be applied to many people living in the West.
I suppose it might be easy to think that this is a mind/body split, but I feel like it yields a more dysphoric end between body, identity, and environment. Only within the self-other recognition does the hyphen exist because it acknowledges the blend of two “others” into one “self”, and this recognition – this struggle – is what characterizes the hyphenated individual. The hyphenated individual must balance their unbalanced, tri-partite selves in which all parts are just as important as, but not equal to, the whole.
The importance of the recognition of others in relation to the self is the reason why the hyphenated individual cannot be the self Kierkegaard formulates (as the self is only in relation to its own self). Kierkegaard would probably argue that it is the self, not the other, that we must pay attention to, but we cannot ignore that our transcultural identity is comprised of multiple parts informed by things outside of us.
Furthermore, we utilize language to place constraints on people, on identity, and on experience and existence (as I have argued in my last blog post). I have neither been wholly Chinese nor wholly Canadian. I’m too Canadian to be Chinese – too engulfed by the myth of the west, too concerned with individuality, sexuality, and so on – but I’m also too Chinese to be truly Canadian despite being born here. Moreover, my body and my actions are further categorized into either feminine or not feminine enough. The state of hyphenation, of being Chinese-Canadian, is a state of constantly being informed by either side of the hyphen. This limbo state – this in-between state – is something that is both foreign and familiar, and not knowing how to navigate it causes havoc and misery.
How, then, can the hyphenated individual be an individual if it is so important to recognize the other in their attempt to recognize themselves? One must understand what it means, socially, to be Chinese, Canadian, and Chinese-Canadian, as our language has structured them. Chinese-Canadian does not merely mean the sum of what it means to be Chinese and Canadian, separately. In the term ‘Chinese-Canadian’, both the words ‘Chinese’ and ‘Canadian’ split away from their socially constructed meanings and converge to form an entirely new understanding – a new form of being. And because there is no “real” way to be Chinese or Canadian, there is thus no “real” way to be Chinese-Canadian, even if to be Chinese-Canadian is to be constantly informed by two sides. Canadian is Canadian, Chinese-Canadian is Chinese-Canadian: Chinese-Canadian is neither Chinese nor Canadian; it entails neither Chinese-ness nor Canadian-ness – it entails otherness, in-between-ness.
The hyphenated individual is both themselves within the understanding of the other AND other to themselves, and the contradictory nature of this allows the individual to find a messy, chaotic sense of self within the clash between understanding and acceptance – it is a unique, lived experience. The hyphenated individual is informed by others, and because of this, they have the most room to recognize the space the hyphen creates through self-reflection, and therefore themselves as an agglomeration of that manifested space. This is constant and ever-changing, as the two sides of the individual are always informing and reacting to the hyphen, and the hyphen is always informing and reacting to the two sides, but are neither resolved nor resigned to any ‘part’ of the self.
Hi Melissa!
Thank you for your insightful post on “the hyphen” and hyphenated identities, especially in the context of Chinese-Canadians. I found it particularly interesting when you mentioned that “only within the self-other recognition does the hyphen exist because it acknowledges the blend of two ‘others’ into one ‘self’…”. While I had previously approached hyphenated identity in a way that definitely addressed the struggle of figuring out one’s social, political and/or cultural location, I had never considered the fact that the two “selves” were in fact two “others”. I often contemplated ideas surrounding an imposed self, a “true” self, a hybrid self, a constantly changing sense of self, etc., so I found it really interesting that the self can also be argued to be two others.
I appreciate the food for thought! Great post. 🙂
Melissa, I really like the way you thought about this and it makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, I don’t have a hyphenated identity unless you count my last name but I really wouldn’t, but I find your way of thinking to make a lot of sense in the readings we have done regarding Mexican-American identity, and the challenges of straddling the line between assimilation and remaining true to one’s family or roots. I thought your recognition of a tripartite identity, as opposed to a duality of identity, clarified the picture quite a lot, and your comments about the intrinsic otherness and in-between-ness made a lot of sense as well, and it’s definitely interesting to think about in terms of those other identities which are often seen as a blend of two others. Thanks for sharing.