Abstract:
Since the onset of postcolonialism in South Africa, cultural diversity was brought on by the political decline of cultural borders, mass-media infiltration, technological advancement and the disposition of postmodernism’s assemblage of eclectic characteristics. Within postmodern postcolonialism, cultural conditions such as diaspora, nomadism and cosmopolitanism contributed to a sense of global citizenship. As such, postcolonialism and its cultural fusion promoted a new multi-cultural, hybrid culture. In this mini-dissertation it is argued that identity is a reflection or a simulation of the social surroundings in which one exists. Just as the individual’s identity becomes a product of his/her surroundings, elements of the individual’s identity manifest within cultural spaces. Within this simulation in a hybrid and multi-cultural space, personal identity becomes a fragmented and splintered concept, which is a subconscious reaction to the diversities in the individual’s cultural surroundings; moreover, the diversity in culture also contributes to constructing a more adaptable identity from these fragments. A growing feeling of Ubuntu or tolerance for differences and oppositions that develops in multi-cultural space contributes to the argument that cultural spaces become diverse and hybrid in a postmodern eclectic era. To overcome the fragmentation in identity, the postcolonial individual unintentionally formulates a hybrid, or fusion in identity by relating to different aspects that one finds in one’s surroundings. Identity becomes a fluid concept and is ever-changing to adapt to the multiplicities of contemporary postcolonial culture. This fluidity in identity is sub-consciously achieved by adopting psychological thought processes like Nomadism and Proteanism. The process of formulation of a new eclectic and fluid identity becomes more important than the identity in itself. Therefore, the ability to have a fluid and adaptable identity becomes more important than exclusivity in one’s identity. The establishment of this fluidity in identity is not a conscious decision, but merely an autonomic process of metamorphosis that enables the postcolonial individual to maintain identity, even though his/her identity cannot be fixed.
