Theories of Cultural Identity
The theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualising an international culture, based not
on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of cultures hybridity. It is the
inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of
polarity and emerge as the others of our selves Bhabha, 1994: 56. The third space concept elucidates that the new hybrid culture emerges
from it. The perspective in seeing the colonizer and colonized is no longer a binary relationship but rather creating an entity that contains “otherness” of
ourselves. The identity of a hybrid is no longer cocooned within the boundaries of two separated polars the colonized and the colonizer.
As Bhabha argues that ahybrid is not only “double-voiced and double- accented”but is also “double-languaged” for in it, there are not only and not even
so much “two individual consciousnesses, two voices, two accents, as there are doublings of socio-linguistic, consciousnesses, two epochs that come together
and consciously fight it out on the territory of the utterance”Bhabha, 1994:58. As an hybrid individual, one uses not only two voices or two accents but
alsotwo languages. This occurance happens because the individual has not only two consciousnessess, but also there are dual socio-linguistic, consciousnesses,
and two periods of time within their identity which constantly fight each other to be enunciated.
On the other hand, an individual might struggle against the domination of the colonizer through resistance. Elleke Boehmer states that the goal of the
colonized is to go against the domination of the colonizer. It is said that the colonized might take “the approximation and assimilation” or later more radically,
they become “reversal and resistance to the colonizer as the reaction to the dominant culture Boehmer, 2005: 165. It means that the colonized might be be
able to assimilate or take the stance of opposition; resisting the influence and identity of the colonizer.
In concordance with Boehmer, Bill Ascroft in his book, Postcolonial Transformation, says that resistance is a refusal to be absorbed, to be influenced
by the dominating power, and altering them into tools to express their own deeply held identitiy and cultural being Ascroft, 2001:20. The colonized enacts
resistance by rejecting the influence of the colonizer whether it is hegemony or identity-changing. Instead, they transform their action into strengthening their
own “identity” and “cultural being.”