Cultural Hybridity
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Hybridity, in its most basic sense, refers to mixture. The term originates from
biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...
and was subsequently employed in
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Young, Robert. ''Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race'', 1995, Putnam, . Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines and is salient in
popular culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of cultural practice, practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art
f. pop art F is the sixth letter of the Latin alphabet. F may also refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * F or f, the number 15 (number), 15 in hexadecimal and higher positional systems * ''p'F'q'', the hypergeometric function * F-distributi ...
or mass art, sometimes contraste ...
.pp.106-136. Hutnyk, John. ‘Adorno at Womad: South Asian crossovers and the limits of hybridity-talk’, in ''Debating Cultural Hybridity'', ed. by Tariq Modood and
Pnina Werbner Pnina Werbner ( Gluckman/Gillon; 3 December 1944 – 17 January 2023) was a British social anthropologist. Her work focused on Sufi mysticism, diasporas, Muslim women and public sector unions in Botswana. She wrote extensively about the Arab Sp ...
, 1997, Zed Books, .
Hybridity is used in discourses about race,
postcolonialism Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and extractivism, exploitation of colonized pe ...
, identity,
anti-racism Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate ...
and
multiculturalism Multiculturalism is the coexistence of multiple cultures. The word is used in sociology, in political philosophy, and colloquially. In sociology and everyday usage, it is usually a synonym for ''Pluralism (political theory), ethnic'' or cultura ...
, and
globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...
, developed from its roots as a biological term.


In biology

In biology, a hybrid is the offspring resulting from combining the qualities of two organisms of different varieties,
species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...
or
genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...
through
sexual reproduction Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that involves a complex life cycle in which a gamete ( haploid reproductive cells, such as a sperm or egg cell) with a single set of chromosomes combines with another gamete to produce a zygote tha ...
. Generally, it means that each cell has genetic material from two different organisms, whereas an individual where some cells are derived from a different organism is called a chimera. Hybrids are not always intermediates between their parents (such as in
blending inheritance Blending inheritance is an obsolete theory in biology from the 19th century. The theory is that the progeny inherits any characteristic as the average of the parents' values of that characteristic. As an example of this, a crossing of a red flo ...
), but can show
hybrid vigor Heterosis, hybrid vigor, or outbreeding enhancement is the improved or increased function of any biological quality in a Hybrid (biology), hybrid offspring. An offspring is heterotic if its trait (biology), traits are enhanced as a result of m ...
, sometimes growing larger or taller than either parent. The concept of a hybrid is interpreted differently in animal and plant breeding, where there is interest in the individual parentage. In
genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...
, attention is focused on the numbers of
chromosome A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most import ...
s. In taxonomy, a key question is how closely related the parent
species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...
are. Species are reproductively isolated by strong barriers to hybridization, which include genetic and morphological differences, differing times of fertility, mating behaviors and cues, and physiological rejection of sperm cells or the developing embryo. Some act before
fertilization Fertilisation or fertilization (see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), spelling differences), also known as generative fertilisation, syngamy and impregnation, is the fusion of gametes to give ...
and others after it. Similar barriers exist in plants, with differences in flowering times, pollen vectors, inhibition of pollen tube growth, somatoplastic sterility, cytoplasmic-genic male sterility and the structure of the chromosomes. A few animal species and many plant species, however, are the result of
hybrid speciation Hybrid speciation is a form of speciation where hybridization between two different species leads to a new species, reproductively isolated from the parent species. Previously, reproductive isolation between two species and their parents was tho ...
, including important crop plants such as
wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...
, where the number of chromosomes has been doubled


As racial mixing

Hybridity is a cross between two separate races, plants or cultures. A hybrid is something that is mixed, and hybridity is simply mixture. Hybridity is not a new cultural or historical phenomenon. It has been a feature of all civilizations since time immemorial from the Sumerians through the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to the present. Both ancient and modern civilizations have, through trade and conquests, borrowed foreign ideas, philosophies, and sciences, thus producing hybrid cultures and societies. The term hybridity itself is not a modern coinage. It was common among the Greeks and Romans. In Latin, ''hybrida''`, or ''ibrida'', refers to "the offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar" and, by extension, to the progeny of a Roman and a non-Roman. The word ''hybridity'' was in use in English since the early 17th century and gained popular currency in the 19th century.
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
used the term in 1837 in reference to his experiments in cross-fertilization in plants. The concept of hybridity has been fraught with negative connotations from its incipience. The Greeks and the Romans borrowed extensively from other civilizations, the Egyptians and the Persians in particular, and created ''ipso facto'' hybridized cultures but regarded unfavourably biological hybridity.
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
,
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
and
Pericles Pericles (; ; –429 BC) was a Greek statesman and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed ...
were all opposed to racial mixing between Greeks and "barbarians" and viewed biological hybridity as a source of racial degeneration and social disorder. Similarly, within the Roman Empire, which is considered as one of the most multi-ethnic empires, cultural difference was usually integrated into the predominant culture, but biological hybridity was condemned. The Romans’ attitudes to racial mixing hardened in the 4th century AD, when Rome embraced the Christian faith. That is manifest in the
Codex Theodosianus The ''Codex Theodosianus'' ("Theodosian Code") is a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Emperor Theodosius II and his co-emperor Valentinian III on 26 March 429 an ...
(AD365), which prohibited marriages between Christians and non-Christians, the Jews in particular, and inflicted death penalty on those who did not obey the law. Contempt for biological hybridity did not end with the fall of the Roman Empire but continued throughout the Middle Ages and well into modern times, reaching a peak in the 19th century with the rise of Europe into an unrivalled imperial power. Hybridity and fear of racial degeneration caused by the mixing of Europeans and non-Europeans were major concerns in 19th century colonialist discourse prompted by racist pseudo-scientific discourses found in such works as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau's ''Essai sur l’inégalité des races'' and Joseph-Ernest Renan's ''L’Education culturelle et morale''. As an explicative term, hybridity became a useful tool in forming a fearful discourse of racial mixing that arose toward the end of the 18th century. Pseudo-scientific models of anatomy and
craniometry Craniometry is measurement of the cranium (the main part of the skull), usually the human cranium. It is a subset of cephalometry, measurement of the head, which in humans is a subset of anthropometry, measurement of the human body. It is d ...
were used to argue that Africans, Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders were racially inferior to Europeans. The fear of
miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. It has occurred many times throughout history, in many places. It has occasionally been controversial or illegal. Adjectives describin ...
that followed responded to the concern that the offspring of racial interbreeding would result in the dilution of the European race. Hybrids were seen as an aberration, worse than the inferior races, a weak and diseased mutation. Hybridity as a concern for racial purity responds clearly to the zeitgeist of colonialism; despite the backdrop of the humanitarian
Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
, social hierarchy was beyond contention as was the position of Europeans at its summit. The social transformations that followed the ending of colonial mandates, rising immigration, and
economic liberalization Economic liberalization, or economic liberalisation, is the lessening of government regulations and restrictions in an economy in exchange for greater participation by private entities. In politics, the doctrine is associated with classical liber ...
have profoundly altered the use and the understanding of the term.


In post-colonial discourse

''Hybrid talk'', the rhetoric of hybridity, is fundamentally associated with the emergence of post-colonial discourse and its critiques of
cultural imperialism Cultural imperialism (also cultural colonialism) comprises the culture, cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture (language, tradition, ritual, politics, economics) to creat ...
. It is the second stage in the history of hybridity, characterized by literature and theory that study the effects of mixture (hybridity) upon identity and culture. The principal theorists of hybridity are Homi Bhabha, Néstor García Canclini, Stuart Hall,
Gayatri Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (; born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Li ...
, and Paul Gilroy, whose works respond to the multi-cultural awareness that emerged in the early 1990s. In the theoretic development of hybridity, the key text is ''The Location of Culture'' (1994), by Homi Bhabha, wherein the
liminality In anthropology, liminality () is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they ...
of hybridity is presented as a paradigm of colonial anxiety.Bhabha, Homi K. ''The Location of Culture''. 1994. London: Routledge. The principal proposition is the hybridity of colonial identity, which, as a cultural form, made the colonial masters ambivalent, and, as such, altered the
authority Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group of other people. In a civil state, ''authority'' may be practiced by legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government,''The New Fontana Dictionary of M ...
of power; as such, Bhabha's arguments are important to the conceptual discussion of ''hybridity''. Hybridity demonstrates how cultures come to be represented by processes of iteration and translation through which their meanings are vicariously addressed to—through—an Other. This contrasts any "essentialist claims for the inherent authenticity or purity of cultures which, when inscribed in the naturalistic sign of symbolic consciousness frequently become political arguments for the hierarchy and ascendancy of powerful cultures." This also means that the colonial subject takes place, its subaltern position inscribed in that space of iteration. The colonial subject is located in a place of hybridity, its identity formed in a space of iteration and translation by the colonizer. Bhabha emphasizes that "the discriminatory effects of the discourse of cultural colonialism, for instance, do not simply or singly refer to a 'person'... or to a discrimination between mother culture and alien culture...the reference of discrimination is always to a process of splitting as the condition of subjection: a discrimination between the mother and its bastards, the self and its doubles, where the trace of what is disavowed is not repressed but repeated as something different—a mutation." Like mimicry, hybridity is a metonymy of presence. Hybridity opens up a space, figuratively speaking, where the construction of a political object that is new, neither the colonizer nor the Other, properly defies our political expectations. However, like Bhabha's concept of mimicry, hybridity is a doubling, dissembling image of being in at least two places at once. This turn in the effect of hybridity makes the presence of colonist authority no longer immediately visible. Bhabha includes interpretations of hybridity in postcolonial discourse. One is that he sees hybridity as a strategic reversal of the process domination through disavowal. Hybridity reevaluates the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects. In this way, hybridity can unsettle the narcissist demands of colonial power, but reforms its identifications in strategies of subversion that turn the gaze of the discriminated back upon the colonist. Therefore, with this interpretation, hybridity represents that ambivalent ‘turn’ of the subject into the anxiety-causing object of "paranoid classification—a disturbing questioning of the images and presences of authority". The hybrid retains the actual semblance of the authoritative symbol but reforms its presence by denying it as the signifier of disfigurement—after the intervention of difference. In turn, mimicry is the effect of hybridity. First, the metonymy of presence supports the authoritarian voyeurism, but then as discrimination turns into the assertion of the hybrid, the sign of authority becomes a mask, a mockery. Although the original, theoretic development of hybridity addressed the narratives of cultural imperialism, Bhabha's work also comprehends the cultural politics of the condition of being "a migrant" in the contemporary metropolis. Yet hybridity no longer is solely associated with migrant populations and with border towns, it also applies contextually to the flow of cultures and their interactions. That critique of cultural imperialist hybridity meant that the rhetoric of hybridity progressed to challenging
essentialism Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their Identity (philosophy), identity. In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an Theory of forms, "idea" or "f ...
, and is applied to sociological theories of identity,
multiculturalism Multiculturalism is the coexistence of multiple cultures. The word is used in sociology, in political philosophy, and colloquially. In sociology and everyday usage, it is usually a synonym for ''Pluralism (political theory), ethnic'' or cultura ...
, and
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
. Moreover, ''polyphony'' is another important element of hybridity theory, by
Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...
, which is applied to hybrid discourses presented in
folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...
and
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
.


Criticism of hybridity theory

The development of hybridity theory as a discourse of anti-essentialism marked the height of the popularity of academic "hybridity talk". However the usage of hybridity in theory to eliminate essentialist thinking and practices (namely racism) failed as hybridity itself is prone to the same essentialist framework and thus requires definition and placement. A number of arguments have followed in which promoters and detractors argue the uses of hybridity theory. Much of this debate can be criticized as being excessively bogged down in theory and pertaining to some unhelpful quarrels on the direction hybridity should progress e.g. attached to racial theory, post-colonialism, cultural studies, or globalization. Sociologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse highlights these core arguments in a debate that promotes hybridity.Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, ''Globalization and Culture: global mélange''. 2004, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Some on the left, such as cultural theorist John Hutnyk, have criticized hybridity as politically void. Others like Aijaz Ahmad, Arif Dirlik, and Benita Parry blame Homi Bhabha for recycling obscure psychoanalytic and postmodern theories of culture and identity. Ahmad criticizes Bhabha for establishing a postcolonial theory which overlooks the material colonial context and post-independence realities of the former colonies. He writes: "Between postcoloniality as it exists in a former colony like India, and postcoloniality as the condition of discourse by such critics as Bhabha, there would appear to be a considerable gap". Dirlik follows in a similar vein, stressing the postcolonial theorists’ propensity to flatten out cultural difference under the umbrella term of hybridity: "Africa, Caribbean, South-Asian literatures come from different places and different histories, and not merely different from France, but different from each other. It is this real sort of difference that disappears in postcolonial studies". In "Signs of our Time" Benita Parry discusses ''The Location of Culture'' and criticizes the "linguistic turn" in cultural studies, more particularly, Bhabha's dependence on fuzzy psychoanalytical and linguistic explanations of cultural identities, or what she calls the "autarchy of the signifier". ''In Postcolonial Studies: a materialist critique,'' she further rails against the "linguistic turn" and recommends a materialist postcolonial critique that addresses colonialism's epistemic violence within the wider context of the economic exploitation of the colonized masses by imperial capitalism. More recently, Amar Acheraiou in ''Questioning Hybridity, Postcolonialism and Globalization'' challenges Bhabha's theory of hybridity on theoretical as well as ideological and historical grounds. He criticizes Bhabha for examining hybridity from a narrow, "synchronic" perspective confined to the 19th century, instead of adopting a "diachronic" view which renders better this concept's historical depth. He also reproaches this theorist for stripping the notion of hybridity off its constitutive racial connotations and considers this as an essentialist gesture. According to him, by clearing this concept of its negative biological associations, Bhabha evades the discussion of the problematic issue of race and racism, which should, paradoxically, be a central concern in hybridity theory. He further argues that Bhabha overlooks the fact that there are still today several places across the world where for many biologically hybrids, hybridity or "the third space" often proves "the space of the impossible" rather than a site of cultural and racial emancipation. The new theory of hybridity that Acheraiou develops in this book departs from the strictly "cultural and spatial paradigm" of postcolonial theory, or what he calls "angelic hybridism." It is a broadly historical and multi-layered form of hybridity focused on the nebulous political, economic, and ideological power structures, emancipatory as well as oppressive, which have presided over the discourse and practice of hybridity since the dawn of civilization. He calls this alternative mode of rethinking postcoloniality "a radical ethics of hybridity," which is "global in scope and planetary in aspiration". Furthermore, he stresses that this "resistive planetary hybridity" is not "confined to the migrant, diasporic condition," and has "as many centres of consciousness as geographical points of origin". The next phase in the use of the term has been to see hybridity as a cultural effect of globalization. For example, hybridity is presented by Kraidy as the 'cultural logic' of globalization as it "entails that traces of other cultures exist in every culture, thus offering foreign media and marketers transcultural wedges for forging affective links between their commodities and local communities." Another promoter of hybridity as globalization is Jan Nederveen Pieterse, who asserts hybridity as the
rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...
of culture. He argues that globalization as hybridization opposes views which see the process as homogenizing, modernizing, and westernizing, and that it broadens the empirical history of the concept. However neither of these scholars have reinvigorated the hybridity theory debate in terms of solving its inherent problematics. The term hybridity remains contested precisely because it has resisted the appropriations of numerous discourses despite the fact that it is radically malleable. For example, young Muslims in Indonesia are followers of Islam but have "synthesized" trends from global culture in ways that respect religious tradition. These include drinking non-alcoholic beer, using Koranic apps on their iPhones, and buying ''
halal ''Halal'' (; ) is an Arabic word that translates to in English. Although the term ''halal'' is often associated with Islamic dietary laws, particularly meat that is slaughtered according to Islamic guidelines, it also governs ethical practices ...
'' cosmetics. In anti-Western countries, youth who try to create cultural hybridity through clothing conflict with the traditional views of modesty in their religion. Conflict occurs across generations when older adults clash with youth over youth attempts to change traditions.


In linguistics


Colonialism

Languages are all hybrid, in varying degrees. For centuries people borrowed from foreign languages, creating thus hybrid linguistic idioms. They did so for commercial, aesthetic, ideological and technological reasons (to facilitate trade transactions, express philosophical or scientific ideas unavailable in their original idioms, enrich and adapt their languages to new realities, subvert a dominant colonial literary canon by deliberately introducing words from the colonized peoples' idiom). Trade and colonization have been the main vehicles of linguistic hybridization across history. Since the classical conquests, both the colonizers and colonized tapped into each other's languages. The Greeks soaked up many mathematical and astronomical concepts from the Egyptians. The Romans, too, absorbed much of Greek culture and ideas. They also drew abundantly from the "barbarians". In ''Taktika'',
Arrian Arrian of Nicomedia (; Greek: ''Arrianos''; ; ) was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander, and philosopher of the Roman period. '' The Anabasis of Alexander'' by Arrian is considered the best source on the campaigns of ...
(92–175 AD), a Greek historian and philosopher of the Roman period, drew attention to the Romans' indebtedness to their colonial subjects, arguing that "the Romans have many foreign (Iberian, Celtic) terms for formations, for they used Celtic cavalry". In modern times, the French and British resorted to similar linguistic appropriations throughout their conquests. The French language, for example, contains over 200 Arabic and Berber words, most of which were taken up during France's colonization of Algeria. Similarly, hundreds of Indian words entered the English idiom from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. According to ''The Oxford English Dictionary,'' 900 English words are of Indian origin. Linguistic hybridity was manifest in these colonial contexts, but was acknowledged by neither the colonizers nor the colonized. More still, while these linguistic borrowings had, de facto, rendered colonial languages hybrid and therefore impure, the myth of linguistic purity and superiority, inherited from the ancient Greeks’ "linguistic racialism", held firmly among the European colonizers. The Greek word ‘barbarian,’ which was used to refer to non-Greek languages’ inferiority, backwardness and inarticulacy, was adopted by the French since the 16th century. It was often applied to the Basque, Breton and Occitan languages and to their speakers. Abbé Grégoire recommended wiping out these "crude idioms" and forcing French on the Basques, Bretons and Occitans to "spread enlightened ideas (...), well-being and political tranquillity". According to him, this would "banish superstition" and "simplify the mechanism of the political machine." It would, above all, "mould the citizens into a national whole" In Britain, this Aristotelian view of language was revitalized by authors like
Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...
,
Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson ( – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
, and
Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold (academic), Tom Arnold, literary professor, and Willi ...
, who cast respectively the Irish, Scots and Welsh as "rude" and "backward", attributing these peoples’ intellectual and economic "backwardness" to their "inferior" languages.


A dual dynamics

Linguistic and cultural hybridity is a "dual dynamics" which operates "passively" as well as "actively".
Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...
distinguished two types of hybridity: "organic" or "unconscious" hybridity and "intentional" hybridity. He defines organic hybridity as an "unintentional, unconscious hybridization" and regards it as "the most important mode in the historical life and evolution of all languages". "Intentional hybridization" consists of juxtaposing deliberately different idioms, discourses, and perspectives within the same semiotic space without merging them. Bakhtin states that the language of the novel is "a system of languages that mutually and ideologically interanimate each other". He adds: "the novelistic hybrid is an artistically organized system for bringing different languages in contact with one another, a system having as its goal the illumination of one language by another, the carving-out of a living image of another language". Further down, yet, he cautions against drawing clear-cut boundaries between these two forms of hybridity, arguing that the "centripetal" forces inherent in "organic hybridity" are also present in "intentional hybridity," in the same way as the "centrifugal" features of "intentional hybridity" may be at play in "organic hybridity."


The tree model

Linguistic hybridity and the case of mixed languages challenge the
tree model In historical linguistics, the tree model (also Stammbaum, genetic, or cladistic model) is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species. ...
in
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
. For example, "Israeli" (a term for
Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...
) has been argued to be a Semito-European hybrid language that "demonstrates that the reality of linguistic genesis is far more complex than a simple family tree system allows. 'Revived' languages are unlikely to have a single parent."


In the arts

Presently, human beings are immersed in a hybridised environment of reality and augmented reality on a daily basis, considering the proliferation of physical and digital media (i.e. print books vs. e-books, music downloads vs. physical formats). Many people attend performances intending to place a digital recording device between them and the performers, intentionally "layering a digital reality on top of the real world." For artists working with and responding to new technologies, the hybridisation of physical and digital elements has become a reflexive reaction to this strange dichotomy. For example, in ''Rooms'' by Sara Ludy computer-generated effects process physical spaces into abstractions, making familiar environments and items such as carpets, doors and windows disorientating, set to the sound of an industrial hum. In effect, the distinction between real and virtual space in
art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...
is deconstructed. The conditions and processes known as glocalization play an important role in recent forms of hybridity in the arts, since artists commonly seek to negotiate between local and global forces. Several theoretical models have been developed to explain approaches to hybridity in the arts, a phenomenon that is especially common among artists who either identify as
multicultural Multiculturalism is the coexistence of multiple cultures. The word is used in sociology, in political philosophy, and colloquially. In sociology and everyday usage, it is usually a synonym for ''ethnic'' or cultural pluralism in which various e ...
or see their work as situated between “East” and “West.”Hebert, David G. (2018)
Cultural Translation and Musical Innovation: A Theoretical Model with Examples from Japan
In David G. Hebert (Ed.), ''International Perspectives on Translation, Education and Innovation in Japanese and Korean Societies''. Cham: Springer, p.309-331.
Such developments demonstrate ways that the arts can both forecast and respond to changing conditions in society.


See also

* * * * * * *


References

{{Reflist Sociology of culture Politics and race Sociolinguistics Historical linguistics