Originally, drawn from genetics to characterise an end product created out of the mixture of two species (Stross, 1999; Baaz and Palmberg, 2001), in colonial discourse, the term hybridity has often a derogatory connotation because it is imbued in nineteenth-century eugenicist and scientific-racist thought (Young, 1995). Pieterse argues that hybridity is often held as inauthentic because it problematises boundaries (2001: 220). However the problematic associations with this term did not prevent academics celebrating it as the conceptual apparatus for eradicating essentialist notions of culture.
The term ‘hybrid’ became popular in discussions of ‘globalisation’, multiculturalism, cultural criticism, and postcolonial theory since the 1990s (Brah and Coombes 2000:1). Post-colonial studies emerged as a reaction to the fixity of identities within the binary colonial thinking. For instance, hybridisation receives further development in Bhabha’s (1994) notion of ‘third space’ with regard to cultural exchange. Bhabha’s ‘third space’ is an ambivalent site where cultural meaning and representation have no ‘primordial unity or fixity’ (1994: 21) and ‘enables Other positions to emerge’ (Bhabha in Rutherford, 1990: 211). Bhabha argues that the new hybrid constructions contain multiple voices, practices and feelings and set up ‘new structures of authority, new political initiatives’ (1990: 211). Thus the third space is not a physical space but a ‘separate space’ through which ‘newness enters the world’ (Bhabha, 1994: 227). It opens up ‘the negotiation of contradictory and antagonistic instances’ (Bhabha, 1994: 25) and becomes a space of complex negotiations, where polarities are blurred and different discourses emerge continuously.
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...rom here and there, now and then (Werbner, 2004: 897).
Thus in relation to the diaspora, hybridity is not seen as a mixture or impure but celebrated ‘as a kind of superior cultural intelligence owing to the advantage of in-betweeness, the straddling of two cultures and the consequent ability to negotiate the difference’ (Hoogvelt, 1997: 18). Papastergiadis argued that hybridity is ‘not the combination, accumulation, fusion or synthesis of various components, but an energy field of different forces’ (1997: 258).
Hybridity is not the solution, but alerts us to the difficulty of living with differences as argued by cultural theorist Ien Ang (2003: 8). Similarly, hybridity has been a key part of this new modelling which is entwined within the coordinates of migrant identity tackling differences and linking the host connections as agreed by cultural theorist Rita Felski
In the article, “Multiculturalism: Battleground or Meeting Ground,” Takaki starts out addressing the difference in philosophy between him and Woodward when it comes to cultural diversity. Woodward strongly disagrees with Takaki when it comes to the topic of cultural diversity. They both are seeing issue threw two difference lens. Woodward attacked Takaki on the issue when Woodward reviewed Takaki’s “Iron Cages: Rave and Culture in Nineteeth-Century America” book in the “New York Review of Books,” saying it was too narrow in focus (Takaki, n.d). Woodward rebuttal was that the book did not contain any balance, and should have touched on “national issues” to have that balance and not just the American south. Woodward even said that Takaki was
Seeing through a multicultural perspective. Identities, 19(4), 398. doi:10.1080/1070289X.2012.718714. Steven, D. K. (2014). The 'Secondary'.
Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition uses the motif of doubles to emphasize the differing views society has on characters of different races, despite their similarities in other aspects of lifestyle.
These days, many migrants gather together and make their own small place to hold their cultures. Because their cultures are more a blend of multiple cultures rather than a traditional, they are different each other. However, even though a mixed culture seems like a unique non-traditional, it is as same as one strong culture. In the story, Culture is Ordinary, Raymond William says, “every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning” (93). I have visited Little Saigon, Westminster where was a little town for Vietnamese immigrants. This little society has built unexpected strong identities by creating many Vietnamese business stores and other cultural materials. Little Saigon people have built and shaped their own strong mixed cultures and identities by accepting new observation and learning of American and other Asian different cultures.
In Magali Muria Tunon’s dissertation Enforcing Boundaries: Globalization, State Power and the Geography of Cross-border Consumption in Tijuana, Mexico, she uses the phrase “hybrid identities” to describe a group of people whose culture is a mixture of traits from two different cultures. In the quote above, Tunon provides an example of a hybrid identity by naming Tijuanenses, inhabitants of the Mexican city of Tijuana, as people who developed hybrid identities. She describes how Tijuanenses regularly crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, which is located near Tijuana, and entered the U.S. in order to shop. This constant trade and communication with Americans caused Tijuanenses to grow familiar with American customs. Tunon claims that Tijuanenses eventually stopped considering American “material culture” as foreign since it was such a ubiquitous part of their daily lives (97). This acceptance of American society led Tijuanenses to adopt certain parts of American culture and combine them with Mexican principles, creating a new hybrid identity. Thus, Tunon defines a hybrid identity as a “distinct local identity” that is formed
describe hybridism, which he explains as “ The sterility of two pure species, when first crossed &
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
The first way describes cultural identity as a shared culture by many people; a culture is like a collective self. As he further argues that cultural identities always highlight the same practices of past which give people stability, unshifting and constant frames of reference and meaning beneath the shifting divisions and shifting in their actual history (6). Hall shares his personal experience of immigration in Minimal Selves (1987) that when he thinks about identity, he got to know that he has always felt that he is a migrant amongst the foreigners. Similarly Lahiri’s fiction is autobiographical she explains her sorrows as a migrant and suffering in a foreign
Multiculturalism vs Assimilation America is a place where many cultures and races co-exist, so there are many different opinions and beliefs. Of course there is bound to be tension and misunderstandings, which unfortunately escalates (in some cases) into violence that we hear about in the media. So what is the solution? Should we all assimilate to one standard or should we recognize our individual cultures and consider ourselves multicultural? The answer is not an easy one to define.
...s, his biological father is a departing colonist. The passage on page 211 clearly demonstrates Saleem’s hybrid identity. He relates hybridity to history by entailing the hetreogeneity of memory. “Memory’s truth because memory has its own special kind” . For Saleem, his memory provides a search for the truth, rather than many truths.
Multiculturalism in the World – What Japanese Companies Can Learn From Australian Enterprises? Globalization—the world we never spend a day without hearing it nowadays. Many countries all over the world have become globalized in the blink of an eye, and Japan is no exception. Several companies have already taken steps to make themselves “globalized”; for instance, Toyota not only hire foreign employees but also put a lot of effort in training their employees to become active in international occasion by many measures such as teaching company’s philosophy during training session and sending them to University of Pennsylvania to study on the company’s expenses. Moreover, countless foreign companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group
Lemert, C. C. (2010). After Modernity. Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings (4th ed., pp. 453-454). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Hybrid can be defined as "mixed ancestry" As a word; "hybrid" carries denotations of the physical as well as the metaphysical. In Down second Avenue, Mphahlele examines both a hybrid society, that being South Africa 1930- 50 as well as its composite sub-societies, extensively hybrid within themselves. Mphahlele's awareness of having a mixed ancestry is rooted in more than one dichotomy. His rural identity is opposed to his urban identity, his vocation as a teacher/academic is opposed to his employment as a messenger boy, his introspective nature opposed to his being member of a gang. His acute understanding of South African society is ironic in his feeling liberated in departing from it. It is in hybridity that Mphahlele's identity resides.
It would be nice to allow people to adhere to their own styles, but doing that excludes them from the already existing nation’s practices. On the other hand, requiring immigrants to completely conform to society, will result in taking away all of their beliefs. According to Malik, “‘multicultural’ has come to define both a society that is particularly diverse, usually as a result of immigration, and the policies necessary to manage such a society” (22). With the immigration that European nations have faced, there is undoubtedly diverse culture present, but the policy aspect of that multicultural definition still needs to be redefined in order to create a balance between diversity and inclusion within
Hybridity and National Identity in Postcolonial Literature. Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community—the nation. Postcolonial studies are the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out—to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen.