The Sameness of Difference

"Performances tend to reveal, whether the performers intend to or not, the intricately processual nature of relationships of difference...Performances provide the ways and means whereby a 'Free-born people' can be formed. "(Roach 76). Joseph Roach wrote, in Cities of the Dead, about the evolution of cultural performativity through the examination of the Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans. Roach makes the point that culture finds ways of presenting itself, even when oppressed or in a minority. People will find a way to maintain their heritage. I cannot speak to this directly, as I am in a dominant society with very few traditions. With no personal religious or hereditary cultural traditions in my life, I find it hard to connect with what Roach discusses. The melting-pot of America has always seemed, to me at least, to be a wasteland of half-remembered scraps of culture. I have always been jealous of my friends of varying colors who had traditions that were upheld by their families and had been so for generations. My traditions were formed when my parents married. Part of this cause is the very issue of the melting-pot. I had a very angry and slightly drunken verbal argument with an Irishman in a pub in Cork City, Ireland about American tourists' insistence on claiming Irish nationality. I tried to explain to him that Americans don't tend to have a heritage past a few generations so many claim their ancestry to connect with that greater sense of culture. He, of course, was terribly offended. I was shocked at his insensitivity. Obviously, being Irish is cool. Why would you deny someone a tiny part of that? Especially when being American only takes us back so far, whereas being Irish can take you back to before the expansion of the Roman Empire. I am also reminded of a conversation I had with a friend on a train in Boston about the meaning of 'queer' as it applied to the term 'LGBTQ'. As a heterosexual woman, sympathetic and also drawn to the gay aesthetic, I considered myself 'queer' and therefore a part of the term. She, a recently uncloseted lesbian, was greatly offended at my attempt to align myself with her new culture. I wasn't a part of it and could never understand it because I was on the outside. In retrospect, I see myself once more craving a greater, more discernible, culture than the one my WASPy upbringing provided. I question what Roach would say to my case, as I feel I have no culture to speak of that resonates outside of my own life, and yet I have created cultural connections for myself. Are these my Irish tribal influences grasping for a new tribe to call my own as Roach might suggest, or am I suffering from an existential crisis because of my lack of culture? Is this just a #firstworldproblem because I'm excited to wear a Sari at my friend's wedding and jealous that I don't get a four-day celebration too? Does participating in culture make you a part of the culture, or do you need an I.D. badge and a password to truly belong?