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Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies
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Hybridity
The idea of nation is often based on naturalised myths of racial or cultural origin. Asserting such myths was a very important part of the imperial process and therefore an important feature of much imperial writing and indeed postcolonial writing. The need for commonality of thought to encourage resistance became a feature of many of the first postcolonial novels. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is an example of a novel dealing with the collective resistance to imperialism. More recently we have become aware of how problematic such accounts are. The simple binaries that made up imperial and postcolonial studies have in some way become redundant with regard to later literature. As Mudrooroo has said of the Aborigine's , they were a tribe like any other, susceptible to change and influence from outside forces. He says; “the Aboriginal writer is a Janus-type figure with a face turned to the past and the other to the future while existing in a postmodern, multi cultural Australia in which he or she must fight for cultural space”. [1] So in a sense Mudrooroo embraces his hybridised position not as a “badge of failure or denigration, but as a part of the contestational weave of cultures ”. [2]
One
of the most disputed terms in postcolonial studies, ‘hybridity' commonly
refers to “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact
zone produced by colonisation.” 
[3]
Hybridisation takes many forms including cultural, political and linguistic.
Pidgin
and Creole
are linguistic examples. Within languages there can also be evidence
of ‘linguistic cross breeding' and the use of loan words from either the
language of the coloniser or the colonised. Examples can be seen in Swahili,
Aborigine and Irish. The coloniser's language cannot escape and one sees
the many loan words in the English language today. In Ireland for example,
there are many sayings and words in English that an English man or woman
would not understand. For example the use of the word ‘amadan' meaning
‘fool'. Labeled Hiberno-English, it is a typical example of linguistic
hybridisation.
Robert Young
a widely written commentator on imperialism and postcolonialism, has remarked
on the negativity sometimes associated with the term hybridity. He notes
how it was influential in imperial and colonial discourse in giving
damaging reports on the union of different races. Young would argue that
at the turn of the century, ‘hybridity' had become part of a colonialist
discourse of 
racism.
In Jean
Rhys ' Wide Sargasso Sea , to be a Creole or a ‘hybrid' was essentially
negative. They were reported in the book as lazy and the dangers of such
hybrids inevitably reverting to their ‘primitive' traditions is highlighted
throughout the novel. In reading Young alongside Rhys, it becomes easy
to see the negative connotations that the term once had.
However,
the crossover inherent in the imperial experience is essentially a two-way
process. According to Ashcroft
most postcolonial writing has focused on the hybridised nature of
postcolonial culture as a strength rather than a weakness. It is not a
case of the oppressor obliterating the oppressed or the coloniser silencing
the colonised. In practice it stresses the mutuality of the process. 
The clash of cultures can impact as much upon the coloniser as the colonised.
In reading Juanita
Carberry , the daughter of a settler in the White Valley region in
Kenya, one gets a taste of the hybridised nature of her childhood and
her life. Growing up a Swahili speaker and playing with the wild animals
against her father's wishes, her experience was essentially more African
than English. [4] It is proof that even under the most potent of oppression,
that distinctive aspects of the culture of the oppressed can survive and
become an integral part of the new formations which arise. Ashcroft says
how “hybridity and the power it releases may well be seen as the
characteristic feature and contribution of the post-colonial, allowing
a means of evading the replication of the binary categories of the past
and developing new anti-monolithic models of cultural exchange and growth”.
[5]
The term hybridity has been most recently associated with
Homi Bhabha . In his piece entitled ‘Cultural 
Diversity and Cultural Differences', Bhaba stresses the interdependence
of coloniser and colonised. Bhabha argues that all cultural systems and
statements are constructed in what he calls the ‘Third Space of
Enunciation'. [6] In accepting this argument, we begin to understand why
claims to the inherent purity and originality of cultures are ‘untenable'.
Bhaba urges us into this space in an effort to open up the notion of an
inter national culture “not based on exoticism or multi-culturalism
of the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation
of culture's hybridity. ” [7] In bringing this to the next stage,
Bhabha hopes that it is in this space “that we will find those words
with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by exploring this
‘Third Space', we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge
as the others of ourselves”. [8] So as Mudrooroo suggests, embracing
the hybridised nature of cultures steers us away from the problematic
binarisms that have until now framed our notions of culture.
[1] Mudrooroo, Nyoongah. Writing from the Fringe: A
Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1990.
p. 24
[2] ibid.
[3] Ashcroft,B., G Griffiths and H Tiffin. Post-Colonial Studies:
The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2003. p. 118
[4] Carberry, Juanita. Child of Happy Valley. Colonialism through
the eyes of a child.
[5] Ashcroft, Bill., Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Eds. The Post-Colonial
Reader. London: Routledge, 1995. p. 183
[6] ibid. p. 209
[7] ibid.
[8] ibid.
