The post-colonial concept of hybridity has been largely associated with Homi Bhabha who writes:
it is in between the edict of Englishness and the assault of the dark unruly spaces of the earth, through an act of repetition, that the colonial text emerges uncertainly...consequently, the colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference (Bhabha 1994, 107).
In the genetic concept of hybridity, the "edict of Englishness" is one parent, and the "dark unruly spaces" is the other. Its offspring is a synthesis of the two, a third thing -- part neither and part both.
Societal hybridity occurs in the liminal spaces where cultures meet and mingle. Often hybrids are rejected by both cultures, but when they perform within acceptable boundaries of either culture's discourse, they can be subversive.
Hybridity is already a form of bent Discourse in that it has taken aspects of multiple regimes of truth and merged them in a way that is often recognizable by both "parents" and yet just a little bit unfamiliar. In order to lay claim to the offspring, both parents may find themselves taking on aspects of the child as their own. Inadvertantly, this leads to a familiarization with the discourses and practices of the other parent, and therefore a greater level of comfort and acceptance.
Of course, this is not always the case when it comes to cultures, and the whole parent-parent-child metaphor is an overly simplistic representation of hybridity. However, I believe it has some merit to justify its use.
I read my copy of Homi Bhabha's 1994 Location of Culture years ago, and forgot who I lent it out to, so if anyone reads this and thinks "Huh, I don't remember how I got my copy..." maybe I have the answer.
The final "paper" for my Fall 2004 "Multicultural Perspectives in Education" class with Gloria Ladson-Billings.
