Rutherford, Jonathan. 1990. The Third Space.

Interview with Homi

Bhabha. In: Ders. (Hg): Identity: Community, Culture, Difference.
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 207-221.
 Identity
The Third Space
some way related to each other, because culture is a signifying or articulating different even i
symbolic activity. The articulation of cultures is possible not because priorities. ,ncommensurable cultural practices and
of the familiarity or similarity of contents, but because all cultures Now the notion of hybridit
are symbol-forming and subject-constituting, interpellative des cnp. t·IOns I've given of the eneal
Y comes . from th e tw0 prior
practices. translation because if as I g . ogy of difference and the idea of
We are very resistant to thinking how the act of signification, the (both as re~resentatio~ and::s sayu;f the a)ct of cultural translation
act of producing the icons and symbols, the myths and metaphors of a prior given original or ~e~ro uction denies the essentialism
through which we live culture, must always - by virtue of the fact forms of culture are continualt~Illary culture, then we see that all
that they are forms of representation - have within them a kind of
self-alienating limit. Meaning is constructed across the bar of
t
the importance of hybridity i: III rrbcesbffhybridit y . But for me
moments from which the th· d no 0 e a e to trace two original
difference and separation between the signifier and the signified. So the 'third space' which enabl~: o:merges.' .rather hybridity to me is
it follows that no culture is full unto itself, no culture is plainly space displaces the histories th;er posl~lOns ~o emerge. This third
plenitudinous, not only because there are other cultures which structures of authorit constitute It, and sets up new
contradict its authority, but also because its own symbol-forming inadequately understooJ thr~:Wgh poli!ical , ~nditiatives, which are
activity, its own interpellation in the process of representation, receive d WIS om.
language, signification and meaning-making, always underscores the Jonathan: I can see how this enabl
claim to an originary, holistic, organic identity. By translation I first
of all mean a process by which, in order to objectify cultural
and a cultural binarism b t
identity as such? , u wou
fJ usyouto elude a politics of polarity
call this 'third space' an
meaning, there always has to be a process of alienation and of
secondariness in relation to itself. In that sense there is no 'in itself' Homi Bhabha: No, not so much i d · . .
and 'for itself' within cultures because they are always subject to psychoanalytic sense) I try t talknt~y as Idenhfication (in the
intrinsic forms of translation. This theory of culture is close to a
theory of language, as part of a process of translations - using that identifying with and thr~ugh
.3
psychoanalytic analo~ so thO t .d a ut hybridity through a
a I enh cation is a process of
th
word as before, not in a strict linguistic sense of translation as in a at which point the agency of~do t:fi ob~ect, an object of otherness,
'book translated from French into English', but as a motif or trope as always ambivalent, because of iline \::!Ion -. the subject - is itself
Benjamin suggests for the activity of displacement within the But the importance of hybridit . th ~venhon of that otherness.
linguistic sign. feelings and practices whl· h . liS . at It bears the traces of those
Developing that notion, translation is also a way of imitating, but . .
h yb ndlty c Illrorm It J·ust lik t I·
puts together th t 'f .e a rans ahon, so that
in a mischevious, displacing sense - imitating an original in such a discourses. It does not give ~h rac: 0 cert~n other meanings or
way that the priority of the original is not reinforced but by the very sense of being original. they em e. autholnty of being prior in the
fact that it can be simulated, copied, transferred, transformed, made . . are pnor on y in th f b
antenor. The process of cultural h b .d. . ~ sense 0 eing
into a simulacrum and so on: the 'original' is never finished or different somethl·ng d y n Ity gives nse to something
complete in itself. The 'originary' is always open to translation so , new an unrecog· bl
negotiation of meaning and r t . lllsa e, a new area of
that it can never be said to have a totalised prior moment of being or be the form of hybridity that ;hre~en a~lon. A good example would
3
meaning - an essence. What this really means is that cultures are clearly a number of controv . e atamc Verses represents, where
only constituted in relation to that otherness internal to their own and indeed the authority of :hSI~S arouhd the origin, the authorship
symbol-forming activity which makes them decentred structures - book. e oran, ave been drawn upon in the
through that displacement or liminality opens up the possibility of Within the dis f h
Courses 0 t eologica1 disputation, what appears in
210
211