Week 13: Hybridity and Identity
This week the theme is hybridity and identity. Hybridity is a term taken from biology (hybrid breeds/strains) meaning the crossing of two separate cultures.
We started with an essay by Homi Bhabha, in which he discusses the way that mimicry defines a colonizer/colonized relationship. The mission of European enlightenment was to partially reform indigenous people in the colonies so that they may be recognizably almost, but never quite, the same as the colonizer. Bhabha shows that no matter how much the colonized become Anglicized, they will always be seen as an Other and never be allowed to reach “Englishman” status. This is because the colonizers fear that with enough “development”, the colonies would tear away from their oppressors and become their own masters. To him, mimicry is the “ironic compromise” between the dominator’s desire for a static relationship and the historical constant change.
In the other two readings, Hall and Sequoya discuss the creation of identity through the conflict between momentum/tradition of the past and the change/progress of the future. The resolution (synthesis) of this tension creates identity in the present. Hall shows that this dialectic is reliant on a reference to different cultures/identities. For example, in the 70s Jamaica “discovered itself to be ‘black’”. He concludes that (national) identity is created by representation, and that is how a nation both expresses itself and justifies its existence.
Sequoya also discusses how an Indian identity is always bicultural and requires constant work to resolve the tension between their two cultures. She discusses the difficulties of defining “authenticity” within their two cultures. USA likes to use blood as the primary differentiator, but Native American culture distinguishes identity by connections with the land and community. She states that the best expert on Indian culture has fully internalized both cultures, giving them an understanding of the relation/history between them and the current (similar to Said’s argument). BUT she also writes about tribes that want to keep their spiritual traditions within the tribe. This makes that culture completely inaccessible to the dominant culture. Anybody who transcribes the spoken stories to English makes an inauthentic reproduction of the tradition, and therefore this literature cannot create representation/identity for the tribe. Ultimately, she shows how identity is constantly looking back and redefining itself, and it’s all an ambiguous mess.
Themes:
- Connecting this to Du Bois’s double consciousness, where black people’s identity is defined not just by their self perception, but also by their perception of white people’s view of them.
- Never able to draw boundaries, only transitions and relationships. There is no “authentic” native, nor is there an “authentic” Englishman.
- People in between cultures have unique vantage on critiquing both
- Everything is ambiguous and we can only try to find themes within the relationships.
Questions
- In Bhabha, what is the slippage and excess that is produced by the ambivalence of mimicry?
- Slippage or doubling is the threat of power that a bicultural person holds. By being fluent in the rules of the colonizer’s rules, they gain access to colonial power, but can still be fully aligned with their nation.
- Too much like you, but never fully
- Writers/academics in this position, able to write about decolonization from native perspective/values from within western academia
Readings
- On Mimicry and Man - Homi Bhabha
- Cultural Identity and Diaspora - Stuart Hall
- How (!) Is An Indian? - Jana Sequoya