ABSTRACT
Perhaps no other term has been more powerful and evocative in postcolonial
theory than hybridity. The notion of hybridity has appealed to theorists in virtually
all disciplinary areas – including anthropology, cultural studies, geography,
literature, sociology and, of course, architecture – as a useful vehicle to study the
particularities of sociocultural interaction between different groups in
circumstances of colonialism and contemporary globalisation. Rather than simply
the straight mixture of two or more elements which form a new one, in
postcolonial theory, hybridity has multiple connotations. It refers to the site of
cultural productivity that emerges on the margins of culture, between cultures. As
such, it is a space where cultural elements are continually rearticulated and
reconstituted. Hybridity also expresses the process of rearticulation of culture,
hybridisation, a process in which cultural elements change in relation to themselves
and to one another; they continue to hybridise. Hence, rather than disappearing in
a merger, processes of cultural hybridisation perpetuate difference and, indeed,
multiply it. As a result, the concept of cultural hybridity has multiple theoretical
effects: it helps to dismantle binary systems of cultural analysis; it unsettles the idea
that cultures are, or were, once pure and homogeneous; it disrupts the recognition
of authority because it illustrates an endless proliferation of cultural difference; it
helps to authorise cultural practices which do not correspond exactly to the
parameters of hegemonic systems of cultural classification.
