"The act of migration puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about the identity and self hood and culture and belief. How does newness enter the world?" (Joseph Anton 72)
-----Salman Rushdie
As I am reading Rushdie's memoirs, Joseph Anton, I can't help coming back to this idea of migration, one in which Rushdie categorizes as a time of change between culture and self hood. Because if one looks at it a certain way, colonial expansion can be seen as a mass movement or migration throughout a world that was suddenly not just one dimensional. Instead new frontiers and places were discovered. Thus out of a mass migration this notion of East/West was created that established a very rigid colonial binary of self/other. Because of migration and the blending of cultures and societies this static binary became more flaccid and flexible allowing room for exploration of the self and the other culture coming into contact with that self.
Last week I focused on the poco concept of mimicry. One can not describe mimicry without also understanding the post-colonial phenomenon of hybridity--two terms that Homi Bhabha intricately links together.
So let's begin to decipher what hybridity is, using what know about mimicry.
If mimicry is the act of, shall we say mockery and or camouflage to be accepted by what was considered the superior culture, then hybridity can best be understood in terms of the change that takes place in one's identity--whether it be the colonized or the colonizer--when certain contact zones are breached and or transversed during colonial expansion. In other words the colonized or colonizer become something new or other in which two cultures and identities are fused together.
In order to understand post-colonial hybridity it is important to first understand the idea of space--specifically colonial space. This space is where "Bhabha contends that all culture statements and systems are constructed...the "Third Space of enunciation" (Key Concepts in Poco Studies 118). To get to this "space of enunciation" the colonized or the colonizer must first pass through what Bhabha calls a liminal space, or a space of transculturalism. Mimicry therefore can be considered the first step in the creation of hybridity because it is the first act of crossing through a liminal space into the space of enunciation. But once this liminal space or threshold has been crossed the colonized and colonizer are changed for ever.
Thus a great change takes place that has many different consequences when it comes to the concept of hybridity. But we must remember that hybridity begins when newness enters the colonial world.
So what type of changes take place, and what are the different implications of becoming a post-colonial hybrid?
To understand this question it is best again to take a look at Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel Nervous Conditions. Within the novel there are three different types of hybridity/hybrid experiences that correlate to specific characters, and they offer a perspective into what types of hybrids exists and the challenges that face cultural hybrids.
The first cultural hybrid that exists within the novel is Maiguru. Maiguru is an example of a cultural hybrid who has crossed the liminal threshold and was able to reach a space of cultural enunciation, only to make the return journey across the threshold to remain stuck in her original cultural space. This can be understood through a very important conversation that takes place between Maiguru and Tambu. Tambu discovers that Maiguru studied and received a Bachelor's degree when she was in England. Maiguru makes the statement that "What it is to have to choose between self and security" ( Nervous Conditions 101). Maiguru gets a glimpse of freedom when she crosses culture spaces. However, because she is a woman she is still controlled by the patriarchy of her original culture and can not truly be her free self. Instead she chooses the security of her own culture, security in the fact that she must always live under the rule of a man. Thus she is not a true hybrid even though she has been changed. In one part of the novel she embraces hybridity by leaving Babamukuru, but she comes back proving that cultural hybridity is a space in which Maiguru can not occupy.
The second example of a cultural hybrid who can survive within a space of hybridity is Tambu. She can understand the flaws of both cultures and is able to transverse between two different cultural spaces. Eventually she embraces the idea of cultural hybridity when she decides to leave for the Sacred Heart mission. She values education--something associated with the European colonizer--because she sees it as away to over come the patriarchy of her culture, a patriarchy in which women are demeaned and and controlled. Tambu becomes a hybrid and uses it as weapon against both the Europeans and the controlling men of her society. She says "something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story. It was a long and painful process for me, that process of expansion. It was a process whose events stretched over many years and would fill another volume, but the story I have told here, is my own story, the story of four women whom I loved, and our men, this story is how it all began" (Nervous Conditions 204). This "expansion" she describes is synonymous with the great migration because she understands the fact that her family as forever been changed.
The final person who is a cultural hybrid and asserts it every chance she gets is Nyasha. However, Nyasha represents the destruction that faces the hybrids who are stuck between two cultural spaces unable to achieve full hybridity, rejected by both cultures. This can best be understood by the fact that Nyasha has a complete break down and eventually suffers body issues, such as anorexia because of the taxation of dealing with two cultures that are constantly contesting her self-identity. In her break down Nyasha declares "Why do they do it...to me and to you and to him? Do you see what they've done? They've deprived you of you, him of him, ourselves of each other....They've trapped us....I'm not one of them but I'm not one of you" (Nervous Conditions 200-203). Thus Nyasha sees destruction in the concept of hybridity and the swapping of cultures. She is forever doomed to be stuck in a space of cultural enunciation, unable to be one or shall we say the other. She doesn't become the new cultural hybrid because she is unable to truly understand herself.
As you can see cultural hybridity can effect the colonized in a variety of different ways. Some it has little influence on, like the passive Maiguru. Some it has a great influence on, like the extremely perceptive Tambu who can survive in the future through hybridity because of a colonial past. And sometimes hybridity can serve as a means of entrapment, like Nyasha who can never leave the space of cultural enunciation. Overall hybridity suggests that once the "great migration" began, the world was changed for ever and East and West were constantly forced to view each other in terms of cultural enunciation and newness. A cultural crisis entered the world through hybridity.
-----Salman Rushdie
As I am reading Rushdie's memoirs, Joseph Anton, I can't help coming back to this idea of migration, one in which Rushdie categorizes as a time of change between culture and self hood. Because if one looks at it a certain way, colonial expansion can be seen as a mass movement or migration throughout a world that was suddenly not just one dimensional. Instead new frontiers and places were discovered. Thus out of a mass migration this notion of East/West was created that established a very rigid colonial binary of self/other. Because of migration and the blending of cultures and societies this static binary became more flaccid and flexible allowing room for exploration of the self and the other culture coming into contact with that self.
Last week I focused on the poco concept of mimicry. One can not describe mimicry without also understanding the post-colonial phenomenon of hybridity--two terms that Homi Bhabha intricately links together.
So let's begin to decipher what hybridity is, using what know about mimicry.
If mimicry is the act of, shall we say mockery and or camouflage to be accepted by what was considered the superior culture, then hybridity can best be understood in terms of the change that takes place in one's identity--whether it be the colonized or the colonizer--when certain contact zones are breached and or transversed during colonial expansion. In other words the colonized or colonizer become something new or other in which two cultures and identities are fused together.
In order to understand post-colonial hybridity it is important to first understand the idea of space--specifically colonial space. This space is where "Bhabha contends that all culture statements and systems are constructed...the "Third Space of enunciation" (Key Concepts in Poco Studies 118). To get to this "space of enunciation" the colonized or the colonizer must first pass through what Bhabha calls a liminal space, or a space of transculturalism. Mimicry therefore can be considered the first step in the creation of hybridity because it is the first act of crossing through a liminal space into the space of enunciation. But once this liminal space or threshold has been crossed the colonized and colonizer are changed for ever.
Thus a great change takes place that has many different consequences when it comes to the concept of hybridity. But we must remember that hybridity begins when newness enters the colonial world.
So what type of changes take place, and what are the different implications of becoming a post-colonial hybrid?
To understand this question it is best again to take a look at Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel Nervous Conditions. Within the novel there are three different types of hybridity/hybrid experiences that correlate to specific characters, and they offer a perspective into what types of hybrids exists and the challenges that face cultural hybrids.
The first cultural hybrid that exists within the novel is Maiguru. Maiguru is an example of a cultural hybrid who has crossed the liminal threshold and was able to reach a space of cultural enunciation, only to make the return journey across the threshold to remain stuck in her original cultural space. This can be understood through a very important conversation that takes place between Maiguru and Tambu. Tambu discovers that Maiguru studied and received a Bachelor's degree when she was in England. Maiguru makes the statement that "What it is to have to choose between self and security" ( Nervous Conditions 101). Maiguru gets a glimpse of freedom when she crosses culture spaces. However, because she is a woman she is still controlled by the patriarchy of her original culture and can not truly be her free self. Instead she chooses the security of her own culture, security in the fact that she must always live under the rule of a man. Thus she is not a true hybrid even though she has been changed. In one part of the novel she embraces hybridity by leaving Babamukuru, but she comes back proving that cultural hybridity is a space in which Maiguru can not occupy.
The second example of a cultural hybrid who can survive within a space of hybridity is Tambu. She can understand the flaws of both cultures and is able to transverse between two different cultural spaces. Eventually she embraces the idea of cultural hybridity when she decides to leave for the Sacred Heart mission. She values education--something associated with the European colonizer--because she sees it as away to over come the patriarchy of her culture, a patriarchy in which women are demeaned and and controlled. Tambu becomes a hybrid and uses it as weapon against both the Europeans and the controlling men of her society. She says "something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story. It was a long and painful process for me, that process of expansion. It was a process whose events stretched over many years and would fill another volume, but the story I have told here, is my own story, the story of four women whom I loved, and our men, this story is how it all began" (Nervous Conditions 204). This "expansion" she describes is synonymous with the great migration because she understands the fact that her family as forever been changed.
The final person who is a cultural hybrid and asserts it every chance she gets is Nyasha. However, Nyasha represents the destruction that faces the hybrids who are stuck between two cultural spaces unable to achieve full hybridity, rejected by both cultures. This can best be understood by the fact that Nyasha has a complete break down and eventually suffers body issues, such as anorexia because of the taxation of dealing with two cultures that are constantly contesting her self-identity. In her break down Nyasha declares "Why do they do it...to me and to you and to him? Do you see what they've done? They've deprived you of you, him of him, ourselves of each other....They've trapped us....I'm not one of them but I'm not one of you" (Nervous Conditions 200-203). Thus Nyasha sees destruction in the concept of hybridity and the swapping of cultures. She is forever doomed to be stuck in a space of cultural enunciation, unable to be one or shall we say the other. She doesn't become the new cultural hybrid because she is unable to truly understand herself.
As you can see cultural hybridity can effect the colonized in a variety of different ways. Some it has little influence on, like the passive Maiguru. Some it has a great influence on, like the extremely perceptive Tambu who can survive in the future through hybridity because of a colonial past. And sometimes hybridity can serve as a means of entrapment, like Nyasha who can never leave the space of cultural enunciation. Overall hybridity suggests that once the "great migration" began, the world was changed for ever and East and West were constantly forced to view each other in terms of cultural enunciation and newness. A cultural crisis entered the world through hybridity.
Great readings of these three characters. I wonder if you think there's an importance to the fact that all three are females. I imagine this idea of space will become even more clear (or perhaps more muddied) when we look at gender next week. And I can see that these readings are helping you clarify your ideas as you work on your conference paper, which I will be happy to continue to help you with.
ReplyDeleteI have an idea that the author is trying to invoke the idea of the subaltern. BUT then again maybe there is a more symbolic reason. Woman represents birth/new life/the womb. Maybe the only way culture can survive is through its rebirth through women? Wild guess, but I think its the authors way of trying to get the prospective of colonialism through the eyes of a woman. Loved this story!
DeleteI think birth/femininity has a lot to do with it.
DeleteHi, Sean, I'm going to respectfully disagree with a couple things in your post. Perhaps it is just that as male and female we read and respond differently to the text and the characters, which is one of the ideas behind gender theory. As a female who has been married, left the marriage and tried to make it work again, and undergone profound philosphical and cultural changes due to leaving a subculture, I see things a bit differently. At any rate, here goes.
ReplyDeleteFirst, Maiguru. While she returns to Africa and resumes her cultural role as wife and mother, she isn't happy or content at all. She pretends. A lot. This is evident when she lets some of her resentment and bitterness slip in front of Tambu who didn't even know her aunt also earned a master's degree. Maiguru is not content working as a teacher when her husband (with the same qualifications) is headmaster. She is not content with never seeing her paycheck. She is definitely not content with being a slave to all her husband's relatives every time they visit the homestead while he is treated with the homage one owes a demi-god.
As the story progresses, Maiguru makes tentative efforts to break free from her cultural role. She keeps finding reasons to delay purchasing material and engaging a dress maker to create gowns for the joke of a wedding that Babmakuru insists Tambu's parents must go through so they are not "sinners." When Nyasha makes it all happen anyway, Maiguru's efforts become more overt.
She finally blurts out just how she feels about working so hard and never seeing any of her money while her husband spends it on his relatives and on stupidity like the wedding. She lets him know how she feels about working so hard at the homestead. And when her husband won't hear her, she leaves.
Yes, she goes back to him when he goes tearing off into the night to her brother's to get her. But he must have promised that things would change, because based on my own experience, she had to be pretty fed up with it all to leave in the first place. Marriage is a commitment, one not easily thrown away. Something has to be seriously wrong to make one partner leave. So Maiguru leaves and returns. But things ARE different.
Now Babamukuru asks Maiguru's opinion about sending Tambu to Sacred Heart. Maiguru tells him people were prejudiced against her as an educated woman (they called her "loose!!!") and that the same prejudicial thinking is in place 20 years later in regard to Tambu. After this conversation, Babamukuru tells the family that "he" decided to allow Tambu to attend. The fact is, he was convinced by Maiguru's arguments. The guy at least knows wisdom when he hears it. Notice how he respects Lucia...because he considers her almost like a man in her arguments. That was definitely part of what precipitated Maiguru's departure -- her husband respected an uneducated woman but not HER!!! She must really have still loved him, because if she hadn't he would have been SCHOOLED. And Babamukuru must have really loved Maiguru as well, or he would have been having a whinefest after she left and replaced her or filed for divorce. As soon as he finds out where she is, he goes tearing after her because he realizes what he's been doing to a woman who has known vocational respect and how other couples act in different cultures. The fact that he is willing to change FOR HER to feel like she matters also demonstrates that.
ReplyDeleteThe icing on the cake: Miaguru no longer goes to the holiday festivities at the homestead (or at least until her own home is built there) and she refuses to be a slave to the whole family, and Babamukuru drives back and forth between the homestead and the mission every day without complaint. She WON, Sean. She walked out, but her husband loved and respected her enough to change, so she was able to remain in the marriage. If he had lied about changing, she would eventually have left again, as I did. Well, actually, I kicked him out of my home, but this IS America not Rhodesia. This time Maiguru would have done for good, but she didn't have to.
Last, Nyasha. I think she hits self-destruct mode because she receives acceptance NO WHERE. And she is only a kid, not a mature woman like Maiguru. The sad thing for Nyasha is that she is intelligent enough to see what mimicry and hybridization have done to her and to her family but she is not yet mature enough to figure out what to do about it or how to handle it. Perhaps if she would have realized how much her mother was resenting her own situation. If they could have had an open dialogue, things might have been different for Nyasha. You've experienced not fitting in -- you know if there is one person in the world that understands and let you know they are there for you it can make all the difference.
I hope you enjoy reading my take on things and it gives you some female perspective. Even if you don't ever agree, I hope I made you think as you do for me, without fail, every single week. And which I actually appreciate. : )
However, I would like to kick this site's word count in the pants.
Although I enjoyed your understanding of the story. I am still going to stick with my interpretations. Maiguru may win in little instances, and I think that's what Tambu highlights throughout her narrative. All the women fight the challenges of masculine dominant society. And if you must know, I definitely see things from a woman's perspective sometimes even though I am not a woman. I am extremely effeminate in my feelings towards others and tend to identify with women the most of the time. Beware of the danger of a single story!! As for Nyasha she doesn't feel a sense of belonging because she is stuck in a constant space where two cultures are pulling her apart. LIKE you point out and I suggest in my post, Nyasha doesn't belong because she is stuck in the in between space or the space of enunciation that Poco key concepts outlines. And thank you for the compliments I appreciate it and I understand where you are coming from, but I still don't see how Maiguru escaped her culture. Like I said she wins little freedoms, but is that enough? Would Nyasha really have reacted the way she did at the end if her mother truly could divest her self of the patriarchy of her own culture?
DeleteAnd this is why it is exhilarating to be a scholar--to use each other's questions to push our own understanding.
DeleteI'm wondering, after reading your post, about the identification of strict worlds that can be left and reentered as life for the postcolonial subjects continues. You note that colonial mass movements opened "a world that was suddenly not just one dimensional" but I have to wonder; hasn't the world always been multidimensional? While I think it's useful to perceive something like colonial or indigenous "worlds" but I also think that we use such terms at the expense of their complexity. I don't think for any of these characters that there is any escape to separate worlds, the worlds that we use to construct binaries. Each narrative return to the "homestead" reveals a place changing already in the post-colonial present of the novel, but not a place separated from it. Maiguru's life is one of forced hybridity--her subservient position makes it inescapable. Tambu's hybridity is somewhat her choice: she wouldn't have gotten as far without her own motivation toward education and her recognition of her strength as a student but her exposure through Nhamo and Babamukuru had already dismantled the idea of a homestead. Of course when we look at the privileged position of Sacred Heart we see that they attempt to remain a separate world, but what happens when there are seven or eight "Africans" in their school? They certainly won't fit into one room. How many "African" nuns does it take to change Sacred Heart forever? Six? One? The mere presence of a convent in Africa show that the borders between Western and African worlds are permeable.
ReplyDeleteI'm only bringing this into question because it is something that I often contend with. In videogame studies, there is a concept of the magic circle, a special space, or world if you like, that contains the moment of the game and potentially some of the meaning. Certainly the concept is useful. There is a designated space for videogame play, after all, whatever screen that happens to be. The magic circle, defined this way, is of course problematic. First of all, individuals from outside the circle play the game and enter. With their introduction, their natures begin to play out in the magic circle. The players are changed by their experience. When play is done, they leave the circle but from it and through the players something escapes. Some essence of the game follows the player out into the world where it can manifest in ways yet unimaginable and some that are unprecedented.
So there is a back and forth between what we might call worlds, but we never really come to rest in any one of these worlds. We are ephemeral beings, in all things, and I think it's important to remember that our corporeal and evolutionary existence preceded the logic of binaries and their subsequent digitized takeover of our ways of thinking. It is our dance, really, between worlds that makes life so interesting. I agree that "once the 'great migration' began, the world was changed for ever and East and West were constantly forced to view each other in terms of cultural enunciation and newness and cultural crisis entered the world through hybridity" but I wonder what it would be like if East and West could each look at the other and finally see a self portrait, crafted in the fragmented media of modernity.
Jordan I bring up the idea of one dimensional, because of the fact that explorers and sailors first viewed the world as flat--nothing else existed. Of course they figured it out and saw that the world wasn't one dimensional, thus the idea of a "great migration." Second, it is clear from the novel that the Africans viewed the colonizers as other wordly something that doesn't fit into their idea of humanity. In essence Africans understood themselves in a very one dimensional way; their world and things not of their world. I guess you could say it would be a dualdimensional view, but I have a feeling something like that doesn't exist.
DeleteHi Sean.
ReplyDeleteI love this idea of space, the space the colonized inhabit as they cross boundaries and introduce or accept newness into their cultural sphere. Do you suppose this is the space Nyasha inhabited as she tussled with her father? I think he represents the pull back into what she’s left behind, and she stubbornly resists, only to retire and smoke a cigarette afterward. Baba is the unwavering loyalty to his people, although he has traveled to become educated, only to return to use that “anglicization” to ensure that the ways and traditions of his people thrive and endure.
I hadn’t considered Maiguru a cultural hybrid, I think, because there are more glaring examples in this novel. I would also add that she experiences a bit of freedom when she leaves her family for a few days. It’s also interesting that you point out Maiguru as an entity which cannot occupy a space of hybridity--he represents the antithesis of such an idea...he is static and one-dimensional in the way of dual viewpoints. He refuses to understand the evolution of his daughter not because he doesn’t love her but because he simply lacks the space within his mind to grasp such an idea.
Bouncing off of what you say about Tambu’s uncanny ability to come and go as she pleases within this fuzzy space, I think I’ve found another reason to admire her. She does not become trapped by her cultural hybridity; rather, she owns it.
Ha, yes, indeed: beware (again) the single story. I thoroughly enjoy your feminine analyses, Sean!
Jenny it's funny, I read your post earlier and was going to agree with you about the analysis between Babamakuru and Nyasha. AND Yes I think that is the same space you talk about! And I agree with you Tambu DOES own it!!!
DeleteI keep missing all of this conversation. You all rock.
ReplyDeleteSean,
ReplyDeleteThis sentence sticks out at me:"But we must remember that hybridity is when newness enters the colonial world."
I would quibble with one word in this otherwise excellent sentence: the verb is. Your use of the present tense form of the verb "to be" in this sentence suggests that hybridity exists as an independent concept. Is it not the case,as our PCS text suggests, that hybridity is "created"(108)? Permit me to fiddle with your sentence: "We must remember that hybridity *begins* when newness enters the colonial world. Hybridity itself is a false construct, a product of a weirdo resolution of the civilized/savage binary. Hybridity, of course, involves mimicry, and it comes into being via the forced entry of foreign identities into a particular space. Mimicry, you might argue, is voluntary--in Dangarembga's text, Maigru voluntary mimics British speech, but as the plot progresses and the family's nervous conditions begin to manifest themselves, she voluntary ceases the anglicized baby-talk she picked up in England. Nyasha's breakdown at NC's end exemplifies the consequences of enforced, involuntary hybridity. Instead of swallowing the language of her oppressors, she rends their books between her teeth. She "mimics" the speech of the colonized, the colonizer, and the white other :
'Her eyes dilated. "They've done it to me", she whispered. "Really, they have." And then she became stern..."They put him through it all. But it's not his fault, he's good"...Her voice took on a Rhodesian accent. (Note: Rhodesian after Rhodes, the colonizer, British English spoken by whites who have "gone native", who mimic from the opposite side of the false civilized/savage binary). "He's a good boy, a good munt. A bloody good kaffir", she informed in sneering sarcastic tones. Then she was whispering again.
You might argue that this vocal switching in which Nyasha engages during her breakdown is voluntary, as she is manipulating her own vocal cords through speech, but if you regard her breakdown as a psychological manifestation of the torturous burdens of her hybridity, then it becomes clear that there is no mimicry.
Hybridity is a consequence of colonial violence. Therefore, it cannot exist independently. It must, to borrow a philosophical term, be thinged into being by violence.
Marry me? I'm changing that line right away because you are so right!!!!!!
DeleteHowever, I don't think hybridity is a fals construct, it does exist and is prevelant throughout Nervous Conditions. In some hybrids it does seem like false construction but it is an actuallity that most conized/colonizers deal with. I do agree that sometimes it is forced. This forced coersion results in a violent space. But what about actual hybrids. For example what about Indo/Britains who have both European and Indian blood. They are in essence cultural/genetic hybrids.
Delete