Two Worlds, Two Identities: or me going off on the whole idea of multiculturalism

Inma Zanoguera
Jul 10, 2017 · 5 min read

After my sixth year of tertiary education in America, and as I do each summer, I came home for the holidays. One month in, I am just now settling down emotionally and culturally. It takes a while to get habituated to a country/culture/language after so long a period outside of it, even if that country is the one that saw your birth.

Today I finally felt like an “insider” again, for no other reason than perhaps it’s been long enough. This is who I am, after all — I am Mallorquina, born and raised. How silly it sounds said in English. It’s as though language itself is telling me: “Why are you trying to reconcile two such different personalities? You are one person here, another person there — deal with it. Why do you even write in English anyway?”

Cultural identity is multifaceted, ever-morphing, ever-fluctuating… even more so in the age of globalized communication and of so many lives lived transnationally.

My African roots make me look like a foreigner among my fellow Mallorcan people, who are for the most part Caucasian, or at any rate whiter-looking than me, whatever that means. To that, add in a most fateful plot twist that happened in my life at age 17: I moved to America. Now, when I come back, not only do I look foreign, I also have foreign habits. This could hardly be any different! After all, ages between 17 and 23 are crucial in the formation of one’s identity, and I spent those in the Great American Midwest. I by no means define myself as American, but it cannot be denied that part of me is American.

It sounds like multicultural paradise. How wonderful! Two cultures in one person, and a mixed-raced person at that! I do not disagree — it is wonderful, and fun, and beautiful… sometimes. Other times it is confusing. And I am mad that it should be so.

My experience is by no means unique: many of us carry this or that multiethnic, multicultural package with us — a very interesting exotic attraction, to be sure, but one that can be frustrating for the subject trying to make sense of it all.

The problem is there is no adequate language for it. There is no vocabulary to be employed for us to explain the complexity our experiences to ourselves and to others. In an attempt not to drawn in this sea of confusion as we try to consolidate our various identities, we turn to the oversimplification of ourselves and our stories so as to fit in the larger narrative. We borrow terms. We accept the ones given to us by others who do not necessarily understand the many facets of our experience.

There is one term in particular that makes me shiver. The so-called “third space.”

This super hipster term basically implies that some of us, because of the complexities of our cultural experience, reside in a sort of third space, living out a life which is neither the us of then (before we embarked on a journey outside of home and into a new culture), nor the us of now (embodying different aspects of different cultures). “Third spaces” means we live in between, or even completely aside, these two cultures. I suppose they picture us living in a dimension where two worlds have mixed and morphed to accommodate our self-identification needs. It comes as an organic assumption that we have fabricated a world entirely of our own, a tailored time-space realm that serves as an alternative to having to choose one identity over the other.

Well, I don’t like your “third place” term. One could hardly find a more alienating name to describe what in my opinion is actually a very beautiful life experience, not in spite of it being “outside of the norm,” but because of it.

This analogy of an alternative space is well-intentioned, but by categorizing us in this way, it perpetuates the problem of “othering.”

Lack of sensitiveness aside, the concept of third spaces simply fails to describe a reality much more complex than the process of dismissing two concepts in favor of a blended third. In fact, the whole concept of identity gives me the creeps when I think about how we commonly understand and use it. Identity as we know it is an over-simplified, and therefore fundamentally detrimental, concept. Even those who define themselves as immutable members of one particular culture may have other sides of their identity that do not fit into binary social constructs. Humans are simply complex and fluid, as uncomfortable as that may sound to our limbic brain, prone to fear anything unknown. This oversimplification of course does not stem from the pure malice of people. It comes from the very basic human need to categorize.

To put strangers in a box.

[black] [white] [brown] [women] [man] [good] [bad] [barça] [madrid],

and so on and so forth ad a ridiculous infinitum.

Cultural identity is no different. You may be given a specific cultural identity at birth that makes you feel at home from that day on. Good for you if that’s the case. But for a handful of us that sounds short of unrealistic. Some of us may choose to identify with one aspect of our experience — culture A or culture B, trying very hard to suppress the other in an attempt (perhaps a subconscious one) to make it easy for society at large to place us within a comprehensible context:

Hi, welcome, this is my box. As you may see, its sides are all neatly connected… yes, yes, a very circumscribed identity, this of mine! No room for doubt, no room for fluidity — everything in perfect order.

For others, though, it becomes a matter of principle to refuse to subscribe to such notions. Some of us have realized that dividing ourselves up in two in order to avoid disturbing simple-minded people simply did not pay off in the end.

Thank you but no thank you, I’ll pass on the offer.

In fact, I will pass on any offer that involves splitting up myself in a number of pieces so as to identify and pick out the “best one,” a single candidate that I will employ as “that which defines me.” No matter how many cultures or languages or possible places of origin other may assume about me, my identity is still valid. Regardless of the fact that I am not easily identifiable as this or that.

Why can’t I simply be what a human is meant to be — multifaceted, inherently complex, and deeply, deeply flawed? Oh, that’s right, so that you stranger have a better time identifying my qualities as a person, decide whether you like me or not, whether you can trust me, whether you’ll choose the empty seat next to mine in the bus or a different one.

As the world becomes scarier, divides more pronounced, and opposites further still, it seems as though there’s less room for expressions of identity that do not conform with the norm.

I refuse to subscribe to that.

I need better vocabulary. I need better metaphors. I need more open-minded dialogue. I need better stories that define the beautiful flaws, complexities, different sides and stories, discourses, characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and peculiarities of the human experience. In sum, I need a narrative that reflects the whole of human experience as complex but inclusive, and not some singled-out prosthesis of a term that in the end accomplishes nothing but further “othering” all non-traditional identities.

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