Case Study 5: Cultural Hybridity Theory: Homi Bhabha, Peter Burke

Hybridity Hybridity: a combination of two or more identities within one person “without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.” (Bhabha) The notion developed by Homi K. Bhabha in The Location of Culture (1994). Homi K. Bhabha, a specialist in postcolonial theory (born in 1949 in India, educated in the UK, works in the US). Bhabha was influenced by Lacan, Derrida, Bakhtin, Foucault, Said.

Hybridity Hybridity often is a mixture of the colonized experience and the colonial influence (ex., education). Can refer to ethnicity, language, and culture. Creates a liminal space between overlapping cultures, the ambivalent third space of “cutting edge of translation and negotiation” (Bhabha).

Cultural Hybridity (2009) by Peter Burke The process of hybridization and globalization are interconnected. Hybridization involves artefacts (ex., architecture, arts, literature), practices (ex., religion, political institutions), and people (‘double consciousness’ generated by life in between cultures).

Cultural Hybridity (2009) by Peter Burke Encounter with a new culture involves “cultural translation.” All cultures have a (different) degree of hybridity. A living culture both gives and receives in the process of cultural exchange. Encounters result in exchange. Cultural change can occur by addition, not necessarily by substitution.

St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church in Nagasaki Cultural Hybridity Peter Burke: St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church in Nagasaki “[F]rontier zones, like cosmopolitan cities, may be described as ‘intercultures,’ intersections between cultures, in which the process of mixing ends in the creation of something new and distinctive … .”

Cultural Hybridity: Responses to Exchange Acceptance (ex., fashion for the foreign). Rejection - resistance or/and purification (ex., sakoku and dismissal of guns by samurai in the 17th cent.). Segregation (Western vs traditional ‘double life’ in public and at home in Meiji Japan). Adaptation (ex., modifications done to suit local tastes).

Cultural Hybridity: Circularity A Statue of MB in Nagasaki An influence returned to its country of origin in an new form modified by an influenced culture. Ex., Japanese adaptations of Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly which was influenced by the music from Japan.