ABSTRACT
Stuart Hall has written that cultural identity is not a ‘fixed essence . . . lying unchanged outside history and culture’, and is ‘not [a] once-andfor-all . . . to which we can make some final and absolute Return’, but is ‘constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth . . . made within the discourse of history and culture’ and hence cannot be simply defined or ‘recovered’ like some lost, authentic being (in Rutherford 1990: 226). To grapple with the idea of cultural identity, therefore, is to examine the lines and discourses of its construction and to recognise the existence within it of many meanings. As the introduction suggested, the USA is a place where different identities mix and collide, an assemblage, a multiplicity, constantly producing and reproducing new selves and trans - forming old ones and, therefore, cannot claim to possess a single, closed identity with a specific set of values. Some Americans, however, prefer the notion of identity to be hegemonic, fixed and clearly sur rounded by distinct boundaries and definitions. For example, some would care to think of white, male and heterosexual as the standard measure of ‘American ness’, with a deep respect for the flag and a strong sense of regional identity, say, to the South or to Louisiana or Boston. However, these are ideological positions that are not shared or representative of the nation as a whole; indeed, no set of beliefs or values can be, and this is precisely the point. Instead, America has to be interpreted or ‘read’ as a complex, multifaceted text with a rich array of different characters and events, within which exist many contesting voices telling various and different stories. And as with any such text, there are internal tensions, dramas and contradictions which contribute, indeed, constitute what might be called its identity.
