Naturalized racial labels perform their own silencing of hybrid identities

Evidence

At the same time, it is worth recalling the awkward fact that the “naturalization” of the descriptive term “black” for the whole of the Caribbean, or the equivalent, “Afro-Caribbean” for all West Indian migrants abroad, performs its own kind of silencing in our new transnational world. The young Trinidadian artist Steve Ouditt has lived and worked in the US, England, and what he describes as the “Sucrotopia” of Trinidad. He describes himself as “a post-independence American/English educated Christian Indian Trinidadian West Indian Creole male artist,” whose work—in written and installation form—“navigates the difficult terrain between the visual and the verbal.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 860

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the same ‘naturalization performs silencing’ argument Hall makes about identity categories generally — connects to the construction-of-the-Other theme in Islamophobia theory, where homogenizing labels erase internal difference. — connects to: The legal self-identification requirement for ethnic groups constitutes self-racialization — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 57; Adjectives and predication can reorient racial labels into negotiated identity categories — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 54
• SEED: Ouditt’s self-description is a ready-made example for an essay on how diasporic subjects resist imposed singular labels through self-nanning practices.
• QUESTION: What exactly ‘silencing’ Ouditt’s case performs — and whether self-descriptive strings like his are a real alternative or just more position-taking — is worth pressing.