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Transworld Identity

The term transworld identity is often discussed in the discipline of philosophy as an individual's identity across possible worlds. This is rooted in the idea that a person's identity exists in more than one possible world, including the world in which he or she currently lives, which is referred to as the actual world. According to the philosopher David Lewis, there is no objective difference in status between an actual world and a possible world. The possible world is a place similarly “real” to an actual world and the difference in one's identity in either world is one of interpretation. Lewis, for instance, suggests that the playwright Bertrand Russell could be a playwright in his actual world, but a philosopher in a possible world. Russell could inhabit simultaneously the identity of a playwright and a philosopher depending on when, where, and by whom he was being perceived. This entry discusses transworld identity as an individual's coexistence in multiple possible worlds, relying on a few key concepts from postcolonialism and the related area of cosmopolitanism.

The Process of Identification

Interpretive researchers are interested in trans-world identity because it implies an understanding of identity as a process that is dynamic, unstable, and constantly in emergence in temporally distinct spaces and geographies. Recently, academic discourse on identity has shifted from discussions about the self as a stable entity to the self as a socially produced subject that, as Stuart Hall points out, is neither simple nor stable. Referring to it as a structure that is split, Hall proposes that identity can be many things at many different times as a “process of identification.” Our selves are influenced to a great degree by people with whom we choose to identify and this can mean that we can simultaneously reside in different worlds.

Such approaches to identity have become commonplace in postcolonial and cosmopolitan studies where scholars have focused their attention on transworld identity in related ways. Postcolonial theory is a term that refers to cultures—in the Americas, Africa, and Asia—affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present. Postcolonial theorists are interested in examining how the colonial epoch affected education; language; geographic borders; religion, institutional, and governmental structures; and cultural values; and how these influences are lived and indeed embodied by individuals in the present. This theory makes complex any simplistic understanding of identity, especially among individuals born and raised in postcolonized countries or those who moved to the colonial metropoles after decolonization movements. Hybridity and liminality are two identity-specific concepts that are central to postcolonialism.

Multiplicity

Homi Bhabha defined hybridity as the condition of identity of persons who live between colonial pasts and postcolonial presents. Bhabha identifies three spaces along which a postcolonial identity may be understood. The first space is identification with the colonizer. The second space is identification with the colonized. The third space is where a postcolonial identity resides because the postcolonial identifies with yet feels outside of first and second space identifications, thereby residing in an in-between or liminal third space. For instance, for a person from India, which is a former British colony, identity could reside in-between Englishness and Indianness—a third space that is neither here nor there but in-between. Hybridity exemplifies the complex and multiple ways that people are located within contingent realities and affiliations.

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