Week 10 Questions (Espinal)

 In “Who Needs Identity?” Hall argues that we should consider identification as a discursive process “as a construction, a process never completed” (2). I understand that this discursive process is constructed from different factors that converge with each other, however, we are also aware that discourse can be something strategically arranged, such as the political-ideological discourses constructed from a hegemonic power like the state. Studying identity as a state discourse is productive because the state has resources to publish books, create and disseminate images, etc. How can we understand the identity of marginalized spaces, or as Spivak proposes, subaltern spaces?

In “The Global, the Local, and the Return of Ethnicity,” Hall discusses the possible outcomes of national or collective identity in a globalized context. How can we encompass all global influences within local identity expressions?