Taxonomizing hybridity

• Published in: Textual practice 2003, Vol.17 (2), p.357-378
• Main Author: Yao, Steven
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asian American Literature; Formal Criticism; Politics; Taxonomy; Theory
• ISSN: 0950-236X; 1470-1308
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236032000094881

For some time now, "hybridity' has occupied a central role in discussions of "ethnic' or "minority' cultural production within both Asian American and postcolonial studies. However, existing approaches to " hybridity' ultimately simplify more than they reveal about the dynamic complexities exhibited throughout a variety of "minority' cultural expressions. Because they attempt to characterize the conditions of existence for Asian American and postcolonial expression, established conceptions of "hybridity' lack the analytical capacity to distinguish between formal differences between texts within a field of cultural production such as Asian American poetry. In order to address more fully the political and/or social meaning of such works, this article delineates a new "taxonomy' of hybridization strategies that builds upon the inescapably biologistic conceptual foundations of the term " hybridity' and includes the following categories or modes: "cross-fertilization', "mimicry', "grafting', "transplantation' and "mutation'. "Cross-fertilization' refers to those instances when elements or features of different traditions come into contact in such a way as to generate new possibilities of meaning in one or other of the contributing cultures. Based in an evolutionary sense of simulation as a competitive strategy, "mimicry' also involves the explicit joining of components from different cultures, but in these cases the specificity of one tradition is subordinated to the internal systematic logic of the other. Designating a type of synthesis that operates at a surface level, "grafting' identifies those instances when a writer deploys culturally specific images or references without altering the expressive capacities of the dominantoperative medium of the work. "Transplantation' refers to the explicit incorporation or depiction of "foreign' cultural elements specifically as such within the dominant operative medium of a work. Finally, "mutation' identifies expressive strategies that alter the logic of established methods for "ethnic' signification by redefining the underlying conceptual terms within a given cultural/linguistic system.