Exploring Hybridity in Postcolonial Studies: Bhabha's Influence

Recently, there has been growing interest in cultural studies and especially postcolonial studies. As mentioned in the previous chapters, one of the most criticized terms in the postcolonial cultural criticism is the concept is hybridity. As far as the notion of hybridity is considered, Bhabha is a key figure in the developments of the term. For the reading of colonial and postcolonial texts, Bhabha has presented a conceptual vocabulary, some of which are hybridity, ambivalence and mimicry. Leitch et al. have written that Bhabha “has infused thinking about nationality, ethnicity, and politics with poststructuralist theories of identity and indeterminacy” (2001, 2377). It is worth mentioning that the theories of Sigmun Freud, Jaques Lacan, Jaques

For Bhabha, cultures are hybrid that come after the hybridization. As a consequence, it can be noticed that none of the cultures is pure and genuine. Regarding this, Huddart declares that “Instead of beginning with an idea of pure cultures interacting, Bhabha directs our attention to what happens on the borderlines of cultures, to see what happens in-between cultures” (2006, 4). As woods asserts, “It is from this position of in-betweenness that Bhabha suggests the most interrogative forms of culture are produced” (1995, 293). Therefore, that the cultures are pure and have existed from the beginning is just an illusion. Insisting upon this fact, Bhabha believes that the interaction between the colonized and the colonizer cannot be seen as static. For Bhbah, the features of each culture cannot be imagined as permanent. Donnel has stated that “For Bhabha, hybridity is the moment of the return of repressed knowledges revealing the instability and ambivalence at the heart of a colonial discourse that has attempted to establish itself as univocal and authoritative” (2002,