Black political identity is historically constructed and always positional, never essential.

Evidence

What, then, does one do with the powerful, mobilizing identity of the black experience and of the black community? Blackness as a political identity in light of the understanding of any identity is always complexly composed, always historically constructed. It is never in the same place but always positional. One always has to think about the negative consequences of the positionality. You cannot, as it were, reverse the discourses of any identity simply by turning them upside down. What is it like to live, by attempting to valorize and defeat the marginalization of the variety of black subjects and to really begin to recover the lost histories of a variety of black experiences, while at the same time recognizing the end of any essential black subject? — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 252

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘positionality’ of identity — that blackness is never fixed but always situated and historically composed.
• XREF: Connects to Bhabha’s hybridity and the broader poststructuralist critique of essential identity; also resonates with Butler’s performativity of identity.
• ADDENDUM: The positional, non-essentialist view of identity parallels the logic angle in ‘Grafting & Growth’: just as grafting denies pure roots, positional identity denies a pure essential subject.