Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 14:12:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Kristeva and Bhabha


I think the position of Bhabha is quite complicated. The "standard" 
reading of Bhabha, I agree, overemphasizes the pleasures of hybridity
rather than the psychic costs--in much the same way as Bhaktin's notion of
the carnivaleque became a trope for a postmodern carnival.  However, i
think Bhabha's writings do develop the antagonisms and psychic costs of
hybridity--it's not pure celebration on his part, although the difficulty
and exhuberance of his language at times obscures this. 9And I think
Bhabha is not necessarily consistent--he never really develops a sustained
reading of a text, and the result is that selective reading of different
quotes can make it appear that he uncritically celebrates migrancy (not
that I think Sam has done this). Study of how texts are received could be
interesting--why ARE certain parts of a writer emphasized and why are
other ignored? Is "Bhabha" the sum of his texts (with all the
contradictions that entails) or the dominant reading of those texts? Joe 





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