Communities form identity relationally only through encounter with an other

Evidence

Communities negotiate “difference” through a borderline process that reveals the hybridity of cultural identity: they create a sense of themselves to and through an other. Reed’s metaphoric boundary between black and white communities, cannot then be assumed as a binary division. And black or minority intellectuals committed to an antiseparatist politics of community have no option but to place themselves in that dangerous and incomplete position where the racial divide is forced to recognize - on either side of the color line — a shared antagonistic or abject terrain. It has become a common ground, not because it is consensual or “just,” but because it is infused and inscribed with the sheer contingency of everyday coming and going, struggle and survival. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2678

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates identity formation as a borderline negotiation process rather than a binary division, with the ‘abject terrain’ as the shared ground.
• XREF: Echoes the boundary-transgression themes in A Visit From The Goon Squad and the identity negotiation in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. — connects to: Championing community inadvertently strengthens exclusionary bonding over inclusive bridging ties — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1443; Relational identity replaces legitimacy with pure contingency — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 350; Identity is constituted through social action and language rather than merely reflected in behavior — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 19 (+4 more)