MIXED IDENTITY, DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS, AND MULTIPLE BELONGINGS: NAVIGATING THE FRACTURED SELF IN POSTCOLONIAL AND DIASPORIC CONTEXTS

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of mixed identity through the twin theoretical lenses of W.E.B. Du Bois's double consciousness and contemporary postcolonial frameworks of multiple belongings. Drawing on philosophical, sociological, and literary scholarship, the study argues that mixed identity emerging from intersecting axes of race, culture, nationality, gender, and illness produces a condition of divided loyalties that fundamentally destabilizes the unified subject of Western Enlightenment thought. Through close engagement with Du Boisian theory, Fanonian psychoanalysis, Gilroy's Black Atlantic, Homi Bhabha's third space, and empirical postcolonial literature, this paper maps the terrain of double consciousness from its origins in African American experience outward toward a universal framework applicable to diaspora communities, postcolonial subjects, and any individual occupying plural identity positions. The paper further argues that while double consciousness carries psychic costs, it also bestows critical insight and the capacity for transformative politics. Rather than seeking resolution in assimilation or separation, mixed identity subjects may inhabit the creative tension of their multiplicities to forge new cultural possibilities.