Where do I belong?: Narrating collective identity and translocational positionality

Abstract

This article argues that the concept of `identity' is of limited heuristic value and proposes that it may instead be more useful to deploy the notion of narratives of location and positionality for addressing the range of issues normally thought to be about collective identity. Location and positionality (and translocational positionality) are more useful concepts for investigating processes and outcomes of collective identification — that is, the claims and attributions that individuals make about their position in the social order of things, their views of where and to what they belong (and to what they do not belong) as well as an understanding of the broader social relations that constitute and are constituted in this process. This enables a complete abandonment of the residual elements of essentialization retained even within the idea of fragmented and multiple identities so favoured by critics of unitary notions of identity. The article will draw on research into the ways in which experiences of `race' and ethnicity were articulated in the narrations produced by British-born youngsters of Greek Cypriot background.