ABSTRACT
As discussed in the last chapter, rather than shying away from an emancipatory project or equating politics with localized ‘resistance’, Bhabha offers a refreshingly optimistic political vision that opens up possibilities for creative and transgressive change. In this chapter, I would like to draw attention to the compellingly political character of his project, demonstrating its relevance and applicability to a wider, contemporary politics of change (i.e. a ‘postcolonial politics’). But in order to do so, I will need to twist and stretch his argument. Indeed, his deconstructive approach appears to make him disinclined to transform the notion of hybridization into a more explicit political strategy; and, as just discussed, his reliance on semiotics causes him to restrict his analysis to the sphere of cultural politics. By extending the political and semiotic possibilities of hybridization, and in particular by making hybridization into political strategy, I want to argue that we can move beyond his relatively restricted agency towards a postcolonial politics that effects broader, structural change, and that includes materialist or anti-capitalist challenges. I will use workers’ and social movement case studies to help me make this argument, but also to assess the limits of a ‘strategy of hybridization’.
