CHAPTER TWO:

SAID: HYBRIDITY AS CULTURAL COMPROMISE

STARTING ISSUES

Said as Hybrid Persona Said and the Crisis of Representation Orientalism and Hybridity. Dialectical Hybridity Saids Humanistic Approach of Hybridity The Notions of Culture and Imperialism. Contrapuntal Hybridity The Voyage In as Hybridity. Exilic Hybridity.

SAID AS HYBRID PERSONA

Said has the privilege of inaugurating the field of postcolonialism. He represents a different type of persona. He seems to have been plagued with the tension of his Arab origin and western academia. Thus he locates himself within a third space or hybrid location. His exilic experience engraved his hybrid identity. He identifies himself in terms of a hybrid language that subverts any essentialist origin by claiming that he has never known what language he spoke first Arabic or English. Moreover, he never felt that he belonged exclusively to one country.

SAID AND THE CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION

Beginning with Orientalism, Said attempts to address the crisis of representation of the East. So, he provides the western audience with an alternative view of the East. He quotes Marx to show the foundation of colonial discourse on asymmetric power relations: They Cannot Represent themselves. They must be represented. This means that the Other is denied the chance to speak and what is represented is merely an imagined copy based on the tools of hegemony power and knowledge. This leads Said to investigate cultural representations knowledge, power structure, and

Said uses the term orientalism to indicate the colonial discourse which attempts to control other cultures in terms of Foucaults ideas of the relation between knowledge and power. Orientalism is defined as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient. Part of the Orientalist discourse is based on the stereotyping of the Other. Accordingly, this implies an inherent sense of superiority to those who are unalike. The Orientalists disguise themselves as the benefactors of the natives by the virtue of their civilizing mission. Orientalism propagates the idea of binary oppositions Displeased with the orientalist discourse for not being disinterested, Said proposes his early version of hybridity, that is, dialectical hybridity.

ORIENTALISM & HYBRIDITY

DIALECTICAL HYBRIDITY

Criticizing the essentialist approach of orientalism, Said proposes that there are two systems of knowledge that is difficult to detach from each other. it is difficult to proclaim one system as the unilateral bloodsucker and the other the blood. Said introduces his idea of dialectical hybridity as his ideal model of cultural hybridity in studying the Orient. According to this model, the two forces of conflict (the colonizer/ the colonized) come to work together. This kind of hybridity provides an accurate assessment that recognizes the dialectic between the orientalist and the oriental. It provides also a restorative dialectic by which the oriental asserts his actuality. This hybridity is a step towards understanding between cultures creating a space that serves to bond the human experience and grant legitimacy to the experiences of the colonized.
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HUMANISTIC APPROACH TO HYBRIDITY

Humanism is a resource of Saids hybridity. Said endorses humanism as the only and the final resistance against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history. Saids approach of cultural hybridity is paradoxical.

The idea of humanism evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries as both elitist and strongly hierarchical at home and imperialistic abroad. Said uses the values of Western humanism against the imperialistic tradition of Western culture.

Said uses humanism to subvert the essentialist approach to culture and to modify power relations between the colonizer and the colonized.

CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM

Saids notions of culture and imperialism should be clarified and illustrated. For Said, imperialism begins with the idea of having an empire in an attempt not only to exploit other countries but also to operate on the sphere of culture and progress. Imperialism here is broader in scope than colonialism which means the exploitation and invasion of other peoples territories. According to Said there are three cultural themes that constitute his theory of cultural hybridity as compromise:

The Contrapuntal The voyage In The exilic

CONTRAPUNTAL HYBRIDITY

Saids contrapuntal hybridity is developed from his early dialectical hybridity. it is derived from the musical term of the counterpoint that is manipulated in cultural studies to discern the coexistence and integration of voices and cultures in literary studies, According to contrapuntal hybridity, there are two cultural forces come to work together on the basis that all cultural forces are involved in one another. Contrapuntalism is a connection or mutual consideration of disparate social practices of culture and empire, of history and the present. Said calls for a contrapuntal understanding of different cultures. Contrapuntal hybridity is narratives of integration as it is characterized by hybrid, mixed, impure, cultural forms.
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CONTRAPUNTAL HYBRIDITY

According to Said, there are two features of contrapuntal hybridity:

The individuality of the voice The ability to integrate with other different voices.

Multiple independent voices are intertwined with one another. So, they construct a hybrid voice that considers the disjunctive voices. Contrapuntal hybridity seeks, then, to integrate both imperialism with its resistance. Thus, it uncovers the phony centrality of the colonial discourse. So, it helps in avoiding the rhetoric of blame that prevents selfcriticism and denies cultural compromise.

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VOYAGE IN AS HYBRIDITY

It is the second strategy of cultural hybridity.

It is a conscious effort to enter into, to mix with, and transform the colonial discourse. It attempts to subvert any sense of purity and to make the colonial discourse acknowledge the other.

It is used to lay bare the embedded and always suppressed narratives of the colonized in the colonial discourse.
Through the voyage in, postcolonial writers launch their journey of decolonization by writing back to the empire. This is done by migrating across a liminal third space in-between the cultures of the colonized and the colonizer.

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VOYAGE IN AS HYBRIDITY

The voyage in hybridity implies mimicry in Bhabhas sense of the term.

By writing back to the center, the colonized tend to imitate the colonial hegemonic discourse in an attempt to mock it. The colonial discourse can be contaminated and subverted. As a consequence the colonial narrative becomes hybridized. Moreover, the voyage in as a liminal crossing to the colonizing center suggest a fusion of half-involvements and halfdetachments.

This voyage in hybridity enables the colonized to have a double perspective that never sees things in isolation.
Thus, this kind of hybridity demonstrates the hybrid cultural work of anti-imperialistic struggle
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EXILIC HYBRIDITY

Exilic hybridity features the intellectual life in exile. It is nomadic in nature. So, it holds an integrative view of human community and human liberation. According to this type of hybridity, all cultures depend on borrowings, lending, and interdependencies of all kinds.

It makes use of the notion of exile as a liminal figure.

The intellectual is an exilic hybrid individual who does not belong to any particular class, group, race, or culture. This exilic hybrid figure has to represent the underrepresented. The exilic hybrid figure stands for cultural crossing. He stands outside cultures as an alien living in an in-between space.
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EXILIC HYBRIDITY

The exilic hybrid figure is a displaced figure He does not believe in any fixed origin or belonging. The exilic hybrid figure is a liminal figure. He resists the essentialist position of belonging to a place, a people, and heritage. Like Said himself, he is out of place.

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