ABSTRACT
The author discusses hybridity and develops the palimpsest metaphor, and then considers the continuing meaning and significance of race in an attempt to retrieve it from its status as a demonic or populist category, and reinstate it as an important and even positive form of social differentiation. The metaphor of hybridity is now gleefully employed in critiques of colonial representations because it so thoroughly undermines the separation and essentialising of cultural domains. Primary socialisation occurs in a world of cultural tensions where the emotional valencies of the signs of culture are specific and sensitive, and the palimpsest repeatedly offers the cloak and peace of invisibility. The metaphor of hybridity, whatever Homi Bhabha means by it, stresses the choices and intentions of those who can take advantage of the messing up of racial and cultural categories and too easily bypasses the varied experiences of those who remain hidden on the margins.
