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Identifying Identities - Thelma

In “The Global, the Local, and the Return of Ethnicity,” Hall argues that globalization can both contest and dislocate dominant identities of national culture. He substantiates Anthony McGrew’s definition and explains that globalization is a process that operates on a global scale and cuts “across national boundaries, integrating and connecting communities and organizations in new space-time combinations making the world in reality and in experience more interconnected”(630). How does globalization continue (or fail) to contest these imagined national identities?

I am also interested in Ang's question about consenting to a particular identification or subject position. Is there a difference between self-identification or being thrusted (hailed?) into identity categories if these identities still set the same stage for our encounters with people, the nation, the world? It blows my mind how identity, when expressed through language, can both fuel a fire, but also fail to express the dynamism and plurality of our personal identities, families, communities, etc.

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