What does it mean to have a fractured identity? At a first pass, we might say it means having many parts to one’s personality, many sources of ideals, many drivers of action. Take our good friend Ken, for example. He’s a philosopher, but also a sports fan, a parent, a some-time foodie, and all kinds of other things. That might not seem like a problem, but there are going to be times when those identities come into conflict—when he might have to choose between, say, watching a World Series game and going to a meeting in the philosophy department.

尽管如此，肯恩可能会说这里并没有真正的冲突。(我知道如果欧冠决赛在比较文学学院的教师会议上上演，我会怎么做。对不起,同事!)肯要做的就是把这些部分划分成等级。做一个哲学家要胜过做一个吃货，做一个父母要胜过做一个哲学家，等等。看来还是没有问题。

但如果你在一个国家长大，现在生活在另一个国家呢?举个完全随机的例子，你是一个现在住在美国的英国人，喜欢格雷伯爵茶和他的班尼迪克蛋，而且他的口音说不通?

You might argue that this, ahem, totally hypothetical person doesn’t seem in great distress about being both a Brit and an American. Our expat Brit doesn’t have to choose between cricket and baseball; he can enjoy them both. Maybe his life is even richer as a result. Ralph Ellison’s narrator put this sentiment beautifully inInvisible Man“现在我知道了……所有的生命都是分裂的，只有在分裂中才有真正的健康。”因此，做两件事总比做一件事好。你有很多弦，你的角色有很多方面。

Of course, you might think that a person like this is deprived of a sense of identity thanks to the multiplicity within. But in fact that very multiplicity can serve as a kind of identity. The hypothetical person I’m thinking of has a hyphenate identity; he’s a “British-American.” Or maybe he’s what Anthony Appiah would call acosmopolitan. He’s a person of many parts. That itself is an identity.

All of that seems promising, but something important is still missing: namely,belonging. We want our sense of identity to do many things for us. We want it not just to help us make choices, or to help us understand and accept ourselves, but also to help us feel like we’re part of a group, something larger than ourselves. And it’s not clear that cosmopolitanism can always do that.

Maybe the hyphenate identity could work, belonging-wise, for the British expat—he can hang out with his fellow British-Americans, and bring tea and scones to a baseball game—but I don’t think it’s going to work for all displaced individuals. Take, for example, someone of African descent living in Martinique. Her ancestors didn’t choose to go there; they were taken there. And they were taken there as slaves. She herself has been brought up speaking French and learning about French culture, the language and culture of her oppressors. Surely the fracturing is far more grievous in this case. And surely the issue of belonging is vastly more fraught.

Here’s where the philosopher Edouard Glissant—himself a Martiniquais—has something really important to add to the discussion. His proposal was that people in this situation seek for ways tosynthesize他们不同的身份。他写道，就像马提尼克岛上所说的克里奥尔语是法语和非洲语言的完美结合一样，生活在马提尼克岛上的人也可以把自己视为法国和非洲文化的完美结合。这种“克理奥尔化”创造了一种新的混合身份，它似乎可以给我们提供我们想从身份中得到的一切:行为指南、归属感和对我们是谁的感觉。

我认为这是一个非常美丽和强大的想法。也就是说，我将以一个最后的警告来结束:如果这不是完全由我们决定的呢?在这篇文章中，我一直在说，似乎我们每个人都可以选择自己的身份，是单一的身份，是连字符的身份，是矛盾的非世界主义身份，还是克理奥尔身份。但这真的现实吗?

Take the case of mixed-race individuals, like Barack Obama or Zadie Smith—or, for that matter, our guest, Julie Lythcott-Haims, who has written powerfully about her own experiences in a new memoir. However such individuals may see themselves, they also have to contend in one way or another with the categories other people put them in. Other people project things onto them, expect things from them, maybe evendemandthings at times. At times these demands may feel rejectable; at times they may feel impossible to overcome; and at times they may even feel morally right, as when, for example, we witness violence against the African-American community going repeatedly unpunished.

当种族分裂与长期的压迫相结合时，杜波依斯所称的“双重意识”就不可避免了:被压迫者既会通过压迫者的眼睛看到自己，也会通过自己的眼睛看到自己。这可能是最糟糕的骨折了。我不确定这个问题可以通过单方面选择一个种族来解决，或者综合它们，或者今天是这个，明天又是另一个。我想也许我们要先修复我们的社会。