This interdisciplinary collection of critical articles seeks to reassess the concept of hybridity and its relevance to post-colonial theory and literature. The challenging articles written by internationally acclaimed scholars discuss the usefulness of the term in relation to such questions as citizenship, whiteness studies and transnational identity politics. In addition to developing theories of hybridity, the articles in this volume deal with the role of hybridity in a variety of literary and cultural phenomena in geographical settings ranging from the Pacific to native North America. The collection pays particular attention to questions of hybridity, migrancy and diaspora.
Over the last two decades, the unstable notion of hybridity has been the focus of a number of debates in cultural and literary studies, and has been discussed in connection with such notions as métissage, creolization, syncretism, diaspora, transculturation and in-betweeness. The aim of this volume is to form a critical assessment of the scope, significance and role of the notion in literature and the visual arts from the eighteenth century to the present day. The contributors propose to examine the development and various manifestations of the concept as a principle held in contempt by the partisans of racial purity, a process enthusiastically promoted by adepts of mixing and syncretism, but also a notion viewed with suspicion by those who decry its multifarious and triumphalist dimensions and its lack of political roots. The notion of hybridity is analysed in relation to the concepts of identity, nationhood, language and culture, drawing from the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young, Paul Gilroy and Edouard Glissant, among others. Contributors examine forms of hybridity in the work of such canonical writers as Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas De Quincey and Victor Hugo, as well as in contemporary American and British fiction, Neo-Victorian and postcolonial literature.
This interdisciplinary collection of critical articles seeks to reassess the concept of hybridity and its relevance to post-colonial theory and literature. The challenging articles written by internationally acclaimed scholars discuss the usefulness of the term in relation to such questions as citizenship, whiteness studies and transnational identity politics. In addition to developing theories of hybridity, the articles in this volume deal with the role of hybridity in a variety of literary and cultural phenomena in geographical settings ranging from the Pacific to native North America. The collection pays particular attention to questions of hybridity, migrancy and diaspora.
In Shanghai in the early twentieth century, a hybrid theatrical form, wenmingxi, emerged that was based on Western spoken theatre, classical Chinese theatre, and a Japanese hybrid form known as shinpa. This book places it in the context of its hybridized literary and performance elements, giving it a definitive place in modern Chinese theatre.
Engagements with Hybridity in Literature: An Introduction is a textbook especially for undergraduate and graduate students of literature. It discusses the different dimensions of the notion of hybridity in theory and practice, introducing the use and relevance of the concept in literary studies. As a structured and up-to-date source for both instructors and learners, it provides a fascinating selection of materials and approaches. The book examines the concept of hybridity, offers a historical overview of the term and its critique, and draws upon the key ideas, trends, and voices in the field. It critically engages with the theoretical, intellectual, and literary discussions of the concept from the time of colonialism to the postmodern era and beyond. The book enables students to develop critical thinking through engaging them in case studies addressing a diverse selection of literary texts from various genres and cultures that open up new perspectives and opportunities for analysis. Each chapter offers a specific theoretical background and close readings of hybridity in literary texts. To improve the students’ analytical skills and knowledge of hybridity, each chapter includes relevant tasks, questions, and additional reference materials.
This study depicts the traumatic condition of the formerly colonised indigenous people of Africa and Canada. The postcolonial trauma novels Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998) and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) are first-hand accounts of colonial experience under the governance of the British Empire of the second half of the twentieth century. The semi-autobiographical novels bring up the voices of the formerly silenced natives and are pioneering accounts of the native perception of Western intrusion. The narratives portray the upsetting experiences of the era of colonisation and explore the insidious consequences of living in the midst of historical change. The novels, written in English, speak back to the canon and expose the suffering of its subjects. They depict the grim atmosphere of the colonial project and show the effects of the domination, oppression, diaspora and discrimination suffered by the natives. They are life narratives and as such reveal facts that are not recorded in history books. Both trauma novels enrich and challenge the discourse on (post)colonial trauma. The native authors, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Tomson Highway, explore the questions of identity, trauma and resistance in the context of colonization. Their approach queries traditional notions of identity formation and the common understanding of trauma and trauma healing. With their portrayal of unique means for resistance and survival, the novelists offer a challenge to the existing beliefs and theories.
This book examines the socio-political and theatrical conditions that heralded the shift from the margins to the mainstream for black British Writers, through analysis of the social issues portrayed in plays by Kwame Kwei-Armah, debbie tucker green, Roy Williams, and Bola Agbaje.
The concept of identity has steadily emerged in importance in the field of intercultural communication, especially over the last two decades. In a transnational world marked by complex connectivity as well as enduring differences and power inequities, it is imperative to understand and continuously theorize how we perceive the self in relation to the cultural other. Such understandings play a central role in how we negotiate relationships, build alliances, promote peace, and strive for social justice across cultural differences in various contexts. Identity Research in Intercultural Communication, edited by Nilanjana Bardhan and Mark P. Orbe, is unique in scope because it brings together a vast range of positions on identity scholarship under one umbrella. It tracks the state of identity research in the field and includes cutting-edge theoretical essays (some supported by empirical data), and queries what kinds of theoretical, methodological, praxiological and pedagogical boundaries researchers should be pushing in the future. This collection’s primary and qualitative focus is on more recent concepts related to identity that have emerged in scholarship such as power, privilege, intersectionality, critical selfhood, hybridity, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, queer theory, globalization and transnationalism, immigration, gendered and sexual politics, self-reflexivity, positionality, agency, ethics, dialogue and dialectics, and more. The essays are critical/interpretive, postmodern, postcolonial and performative in perspective, and they strike a balance between U.S. and transnational views on identity. This volume is an essential text for scholars, educators, students, and intercultural consultants and trainers.
Drawing on recent insights from postcolonial theory and social psychology, Travis B. Williams seeks to diagnose the social strategy of good works in 1 Peter by examining how the persistent admonition to "do good" is intended to be an appropriate response to social conflict. Challenging the modern consensus, which interprets the epistle's good works language as an attempt to accommodate Greco-Roman society and thereby to lessen social hostility, the author demonstrates that the exhortation to "do good" envisages a pattern of conduct which stands opposed to popular values. The Petrine author appropriates terminology that was commonly associated with wealth and social privilege and reinscribes it with a new meaning in order to provide his marginalized readers with an alternative vision of reality, one in which the honor and approval so valued in society is finally available to them. The good works theme thus articulates a competing discourse which challenges dominant social structures and the hegemonic ideology which underlies them.
