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Creative Maltese in Parallel » Part 4
Part 4: Multidimensional identity in creative Maltese nationals abroad According to Akhtar(1995), these lines (opposite) from the poem The Immigrant Jew by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, capture the essence of “psychic fracturing” that immigrants tend to experience in their move from one place to another. He explains that the immigrant can be caught between the past and the present, thereby going through a “temporal discontinuity in the self-experience”. Akhtar(1995) explains that this emergence of a “hybrid identity” is a result of a mixture of culture shock and a mourning over loss. In this study I refer to this “hybrid identity” as a multidimensional identity. Some participants refer to it as added “layers” of identity. The idea of a multidimensional identity is that a person creates several different versions of themselves according to places he/she visits, people he/she meets and cultures he/she accustoms his/herself to. There are of course links between these identities, especially when a person migrates to a country that has historical ties to his/ her country of origin, but even if this is not the case, humans tend to look for similarities in the unrelated. This is why these “layers” become different “dimensions” of one whole identity, stemming from the same source, but going in different directions. Dr. Debono gave me an example of how someone can adopt a multiple identity according to particular circumstances. She refers to a person who left Mali and who had
a very difficult journey to Europe. She explains that this person now holds a very successful position in Europe. He has not only adapted, but he has done his best to immerse himself within the culture without ignoring aspects of his past experience when he represents himself. “Identity is very much linked to the representation of oneself. When he speaks to me, he’s very careful to not project himself as an African, he presents himself as a successful European. I’ve seen him with his African friends, and there even his body language changes a lot, so there’s also this idea that identity is fluid and is not fixed. It can change during a lifetime intentionally or not, but also you can have multiple identities at the same time.” (Dr.Daniela Debono, Video-call Interview, 2018). Francois Cheng, as quoted by Akhtar(1995) in A Third Individualisation: Immigration, Identity and the Psychoanalytic Process describes this circumstance quite eloquently, “...the immigrant lives in two linguistic worlds, pronouncing his own name in two different ways, and switching with relief to his mother tongue once the workday is over. However, such aching polyglottism adds to the splitting of selfrepresentations.” (Francois Cheng, 1985, as quoted by Akthar, 1995).
