Locating the Dialogical Self in the Age of Transnational Migrations, Border Crossings and Diasporas

Abstract

We begin by outlining that the dialogical self may be conceived from the point of view of the self- fuland the self- lessperspectives. Both these perspectives of self-work involve different assumptions about what should be the starting point of the I-position of the dialogical self. These assumptions need to be made explicit because they provide the key to explaining how Ipositions get transformed in the process of entering into a dialogical relationship with the other. Furthermore, we argue that in order to explain how dialogue occurs, and how the I-positions are organized and reorganized by the individual, a developmental framework may be necessary. We believe that the dialogical model is extremely relevant in the age of transnational migration and diasporic cultures. However, the challenge, for the theory of a dialogical self, is to explain how individuals living with hybridized and hyphenated identities in borderland cultures and diasporic communities coordinate their incompatible and often conflicting cultural and personal positions.

Identity and acculturation: The case of naturalised citizens in Britain

“…This theory is appropriate for studying acculturation as it is concerned with how different or conflicting identity positions can be negotiated in times of globalisation and increased human mobility (Hermans & Kempen, 1998). Indeed, this theory has been extensively used by Bhatia and Ram (2001, 2009Bhatia, 2002) to discuss acculturation as an ongoing process of negotiation between identity positions. This paper suggests that in order to shed further light to processes of acculturation, we need to consider the broader societal or 'transpersonal' dimension (Grossen & Salazar Orvig, 2011) which frames identity dialogues and provides stability to the self by linking the self to particular communities.…”

“…This can lead to multivoicedness and identity hybridity (Bell & Das, 2011), so that acculturation is not just a process of moving from one culture to another, but is rather a process of appropriating several cultural positions within one's sense of self (Bhatia & Ram, 2001.…”

La construction identitaire chez l’adolescent de parents migrants. Analyse croisée du processus identitaire

“…Elles ont lieu sur différents fronts : milieu scolaire, monde de la maison, univers de la langue, pratique culinaire, etc. Cette fluctuation entre diffé -rentes voix montre que l'identité se construit à travers le mé lange et le mouvement des cultures (Hermans, 2001b (Bhatia et Ram, 2001b ;Hermans, 2003). Un mélange entre différentes voix culturelles est également possible, donnant naissance à une nouvelle voix dite hybride (Hermans et Kempen, 1998).…”

On the Constitution of ‘Self’ and ‘Mind’

“…The self is seen as 'continuous with culture' (Hermans, 2001), but the internal politics of culture (Squire, 2000), the social location of the person and the multifaceted, power-imbalanced societal system (of which culture is but one constituent) generally are not part of the theoretical frame, a crucial limitation of those accounts (Falmagne, 1998(Falmagne, , 2000. One exception is the 'postcolonial' approach 3 of Bhatia (2002) and Bhatia and Ram (2001), who consider the self in the concrete context of historical relations of colonization, racialization, displacement and diaspora, and who stress the cultural and psychological contradictions and complexities of individuals belonging to diasporic communities, contradictions putatively addressed through dialogical negotiations between multiple I-positions. In their account, however, the 'self' remains compartmentalized along the lines of Mullin's composite self, perhaps an inevitable feature of dialogical models.…”