I agree with Hall in what I see are his two uses of identity throughout "Who Needs Identity", being decentered discursive becoming and the subject's interpellation of position in multiple discourses. The subject's discursive interpellation I find to be the more intriguing of the two for the reasons Hall cites but also for more specific reasons having to do with the elements of discourse and language which are more formal and are traced but not fully articulated in this piece. Namely, beyond the issue of semantics and the relationality of words to meanings both in history and in the present moment, the models of language we always reconstitute and re-ossify through every utterance hold particularly importance in regards to how we constitute and reproduce the subject as a supposed unity.
For example, when we think of the phrase "I am..." we have not only the semantic level which produces meaning but other elements of linguistic structure such as syntax which impart the phrase with the capacity of meaning-making, often to the same extent as the semantics of the particular words present. Hall's coverage of the semantics of subjectivity is extensive and well articulated, however, I want to focus on one process which must necessarily undergird the semantic elements of the discursive subject which is metonymy. Discursive interpellation is the way in which the self-objectified subject metonymizes themselves with a particular discursive object, often through the ascription of position in a category or categories constructed in a (or multiple) discursive body[ies]. An example phrase would be something like "I am an English Student". The copular verb in this phrase ("am" or "to be") acts as the connective tissue which linguistically allows for the object of myself ("I") to be substituted for the subject complement of "English Student", one which is normatively singular due to the expectation of the indefinite article "an" which presupposes singularity but also generality. The presence of the article in the above phrase indicates an objectified category with which I am being substituted (I am one of a type), however, the presence of an article is not required for this substitution to occur as is shown in cases where only the copula is present between subject and subject complement (ex. "I am rich", "I am poor", etc.). I bring this up as to emphasize the copular verb (particularly "to be") as one of the primary agents which allows for the metonymy necessary for Hall's model of discursive subjectivity.
However, what one has to recognize is that the copula does not just exist as an explicit metonymizing force in particular utterances, but is necessarily a phantom substitution always occurring as per the rules of grammar. Think back to the phrase "I am..." above. The "I" in this case is not just a representational sign for my interpellated position as a subject but is also quite literally the manifestation of the subject of the sentence as per grammatical structures. I am not just substituted by the object the copula metonymizes me with, but I am always already the sentence subject as an object of grammar and thus always re-objectifying myself at the very least on a sentence structure level as a grammatical or linguistic object. This is the phantom copula, the haunting of "to be". Whenever identifying myself, I will always have to be the subject of the sentence both semantically and grammatically. The historical progressions of semantics will always be as equally potent in meaning-making as synchronic grammatical objects.
This analysis fails to even fully articulate other issues at hand in concerns to the way that the standardization of utterance can engage in a semantic prescriptivism even through ostensibly non-semantic linguistic elements such as syntax. Imagine the above "I am..." as "Am I..." for a moment. Despite providing no punctuation in this phrase (barring the ellipses to indicate the omission of a hypothetical subject complement or predicate), it would not be unreasonable for the average subject to presume "Am I..." as the beginning of a question due to utterances surrounding questions of self-identification usually being constructed with the verb "to be" as the first word which in some sense gives it primacy in the context of the sentence.
It is obvious that this granular of an analysis (as sparse and scattered as it may be here) is impractical for analyzing every moment or utterance of identifications. This begs the question, however, what responsibility do we hold as scholars to understand our models of language and how such models preconfigure certain outcomes of utterance such as self-identification? As per my description of the subject always already being objectified as the sentence subject, is the structure of our language the force which always has us presupposing identitarian unity? Is language in this regard a problem, something from which we must escape? Perhaps, are there ways to play with language to avoid certain essentializing pitfalls?
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