Introduction: The bicultural self

Abstract

At times the self may be bicultural only in ideas and thought, for the individual lacks the opportunity to actual live biculturally. Very recent immigrants who are barely learning the language of the new country, and have yet to fully understand social cues and the deeper nuances of the language and social customs of the new country would fall into this category. Indeed, the chapter on becoming musically bicultural is an example of the bicultural self as ideas and thoughts, and we could extend Simmel's analogy to include, in this case, living musically in one world while socially restricted by segregation from living in some of the situations which provided the creative fuel for the world from which one is excluded. It is in this same sense that millions of teenagers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America may experience Black American musical culture hip-hop and rap, and attempt to sing, dress, and act as if they are in an environment similar to the ones they have seen in American movies and videos. Their bicultural selves are rooted in images and are fed by their youthful imagination, but the social structural background where theses, at least some of them, middle class youth, play out the drama of rap and hip-hop reside in the bicultural self as idea and thought. In a Kantian mode, also may be Schopenhauerian, it might be suggested that the idea and thought always precede the actual doing or living.

Citation

Dennis, R.M. (2008), "Introduction: The bicultural self", Dennis, R.M. (Ed.) Biculturalism, Self Identity and Societal Transformation (Research in Race and Ethnic Relations, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0195-7449(08)15001-2