ABSTRACT
At the end of the previous chapter I identified some of the dynamics of post-colonial
culture; namely the emergence of the Other as the source of its own defining and
enunciation; the potential for these voices to create alternative ‘blocs’ (which Bhabha
refers to as ‘counter-hegemonic’) that radically question traditional hierarchies
and perceived ways of understanding the world based on colonialism and other
Enlightenment sources; and the alleged fear of the Other that now pervades post-
colonial society as a counter-reaction to this new assertiveness on the part of the
previously dispossessed. We concluded with Rushdie’s striking assertion that due to
the velocity of cultural change in the past thirty years, that all citizens of the West are
strangers, or perhaps ‘visitors’, to their own understanding of culture and society.
Familiar signposts reflecting cultural stability and unequivocal understandings of
identity are dissolving, to be replaced by perceptions of identity that have to
acknowledge understandings of hybridity and so-called impurity. Rushdie claims
that, culturally at least, we are now all ‘mongrels’. Whether we can learn to love
ourselves as such we will leave for now as an open question.
