File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postco_1995/postco_Dec1.95, message 17


Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 08:29:08 -0500 (EST)
From: "Ivy I. Chang" <iic4228-AT-is.nyu.edu>
Subject: I agree with your thought of Hybridity



On Sat, 2 Dec 1995, Quetzil Castaneda wrote:

> to njubi:
> 
> oh good, a spirited response back.
> re:
> >post-ness liberating?
> this was my term for what it seemed to me that you wanted to do with or make 
> out of m.j.
> 
> >we choose our racial and gender identities?
> I certainly think that we do --- of course, not in conditions or situations 
> that we chose, like, condone, desire, created, etc.
n> As for all of the racism that you note in your response below; does 
that not 
> confirm in fact that people are choosing to try to whiten themselves by 
> imposing greater indianness/blackness, racial otherness on others?  Thus, 
> there is a conscious as well as unconscious and structural/systemic 
> constituting of racial, ethnic, national, gender identities.
> 
> So that, for example, when the indigena (excuse me, but your 
> >excuse me! 
> >do the indios in guatemala choose their identities?
> is kind of offensive since the term "indio" is as pleasant and value-laden 
> as the words nigger, spic, etc.)
> 
> so that when the indigena seeks to "pass" the "race" line and become ladino 
> in guatemala, or mestizo in mexico, they conscious seek to "drop" all of the 
> signs and signals of indianness (clothing, language, mannerisms, 
> ritual-spiritual life, community forms, etc.).  When an Indigena tries to 
> avoid the "cultureloss" of acculturation/assimilation AND again reinvents 
> theirself and their culture as INDIAN, it seems that there too there is a 
> conscious choice.   When a ladino/mestizo assumes the well known racist 
> positions, he or she is also choosing an identity by denigrating other 
> possible ones.  Richard Rodriguez (Hunger of ...[was it: `whiteness'?] and 
> Days of Obligation) certainly is a nice example of this kind of conscious 
> choosing.  His whole discurisve production is his apologia for choosing a 
> specific racial-national and gender identity over other (more or less) 
> possible ones.  in short he says "sorry, but it was easier to assume and 
> pretend that i was white once they gave me the scholarship!"
> 
> >how about the blacks in the west? did they come up with the terms 
> >'pelo malo' (bad 'black' hair)  "no seas tan indio" (don't be an indio) 
> >"esta mejorando la raza" (improving the race) "me estas 
> >negreando?" (don't treat me like a negro) "lista negra" "la oveja negra" "tu 
> >lado negro" "trabajar como negro para vivir como blanco" (working like a 
> >black to live like a white) ???????"
> 
> to move from indian "race" to "black" race(s!), i think the history of 
> different caribbean and circum-carib societies (lets include all of the USA 
> in that circum-ness, by the way) is enough to indicate that racial codes 
> being culturally-socially constructed involve the people living these codes 
> to make incessant and ongoing choices that reproduce these codes (ok, yes, 
> that through historical time change, shift, alter, etc.)
> 
> Farrakhan, it seems to me, is one that is making conscious choices about 
> whether and how to be black (and male).
> 
> If people were not constantly choosing to live their lives according to the 
> socio-culturally preconstructed racial-etc. codes then they would never get 
> reproduced.  No where in this statement is there a exclusion of struggle, 
> constestation, horrific acts of violence and oppression against certain 
> coded people.
> 
> 
> You say:
> >as to postness/hybridity being liberating, this is exactly the issue i 
> >was ridiculing with my analysis of Wacko Jacko. Jacko's desire for 
> >whiteness is only a reflection of the millions who straighten their 
> >hair, color it blond, use skin lightening creams, etc. it is (excuse me 
> >for using a term from cultural studies) an attempt at the  "magical 
> >resolution" of their marginalization  
> 
> I am sorry. i did not recognize that in your comment of MJ being a 
> postnational, postethnic, transgendered figure that in some sense prefigured 
> a future "better" that you were actually being sarcastically critical of 
> that possibility or of jackson being such a figure.  i did not catch the nuance.
> 
> 
> >hybridity with intention? what about "mejorando la raza"? (improving the 
> >race) isn't this what mestizaje is all about? to cover up the racialized 
> >class inequities that maintain the structures of slavery to date? Why 
> >have 'critical' theorists ressurected 19th century theories of 
> >hybridity/mestizaje? what does this colonial lazarus promise?  
> 
> >njubi
> 
> sorry, but i don't  (seriously) understand your endding questions.  for me 
> hybridity has ALWAYS been a part of human social life. period.  sometimes in 
> some places in some sitautions, hybridity is constructed as "good" sometimes 
> not so "good;" sometimes a cosmic race, other times a corruption of the 
> purity of blood.  sometimes it becomes the emblematic nature of "true, 
> authentic" identity/cultural formation (pick any society) othertimes it 
> becomes emblematic of violence, colonialism, neocolonialism:  e.g., pick any 
> tourist attraction.  I don't think that this response however gets at what 
> your point is in this last paragraph. please elaborate it.
> 
> thanks.
> quetzil.
> 
> >
> >
> >     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> >
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
I agree with your thought of Hybridity.  It is necessary to demystify 
"hybridity"> 


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