‘Making Difference into Sameness and Sameness into Difference’5
The idea of cultural hybridization is one of those deceptively simple-seeming notions which turns out, on examination, to have lots of tricky connotations and theoretical implications. (Tomlinson, 1999:141)
It seems to be evident from the quote above that hybridity and cultural hybridisation in particular are as tricky as the terms imply. In fact, both terms have broader meanings that provide diverse understandings and myriad ways of articulating phenomena
currently happening in the world. Originally taken from a biological activity of grafting two different species onto each other to create a new species, the concept of hybridity has evolved to incorporate the idea that ‘globalized culture is hybrid culture’
(Tomlinson, 1999: 141). It appears to be widely agreed that hybridity is not new but has been happening throughout the centuries in one way or another (García Canclini, 2000:
41). Hence, some scholars argue that in order to understand hybridity, history must not be overlooked (Kraidy, 2006: vii; Neverveen Pieterse, 2001, 2004). Robert Young in particular pays close attention to this and in his analysis of the term he remarks that hybridity is ‘an historical stemma’ between what he calls the ‘forgotten past’ and the cultural concepts of the present (1995: 27).
Hybridity can indeed be found in numerous fields and it is understood differently in
5 This is taken from Robert Young’s book, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (1995: 26). The full phrase is, ‘Hybridity makes difference into sameness, and sameness into difference, but in a way that makes the same no longer the same, the different no longer simply different’ (26).
different cultural, historical and political contexts. Young explains hybridity, in a similar vein: ‘There is no single, or correct, concept of hybridity: it changes as it repeats, but it also repeats as it changes’ (1995: 27). Indeed, this could be seen as a hybridising theory itself. For the purpose of this thesis, I briefly introduce different patterns of hybridity and then elaborate using alternative terms. These different processes provide important characteristics of hybridity, which are ‘contestatory, political and dialogical’ (Young, 1995: 22, drawing on Bakhtin’s account of hybridisation).As a start, we look into a number of hybridity patterns coming from different traditions - linguistic, racial, and cultural.
For Bakhtin, linguistic hybridity is linguistic mixture. This type of blending could be ‘organic/unconscious,’ which Werbner (1997: 5) explains as ‘a feature of the historical evolution of all languages’. However, linguistic hybridity may also be
‘conscious/intentional,’ which is ‘the process of the authorial unmasking of another’s speech, through a language that is ‘double-accented’ and ‘double-styled’’ (Young, 1995:
20). Creolization is the term used to indicate this double-edged phenomenon. According to Young, linguistic hybridity is the very evidence of cultural contact found from history (1995: 5). He argues that the importance of creolization goes further as to relate to the
‘power relation of dominance of colonizer over colonized’ (5). This becomes a
significant point in tandem with the second hybridity pattern that Young suggests – sex (ibid.). With that respect, Young quotes Hyam (1990: 211) to argue that ‘sexuality was the spearhead of racial contact’ (ibid.).
Historical events like imperialism, colonialism and the resultant exile and migration of people have caused diverse forms of human contacts and led to natural or/and
intentional racial mixing (Young, 1995: 6-11). Contact between divergent societies continues today in the form of cosmopolitanism or transnationalism that is mostly voluntary (Hannerz, 1992; Werbner, 1997: 11-2; Friedman 1999: 233-4, 237-8) and also
in forms of diaspora (Hall, 1990, 1992; Kalra, Kaur & Hutnyk, 2005: 70-73). In one way or another, the movement and intermingling of people has led to a racial mixing as a biological response. Eventually, hybridity has also expanded to cover broader and wider cultural meanings as reflected by the term, mestizaje. This term does not only indicate mixed race but more importantly mestizaje has come to stand for a cultural mixture that is conceived of as a significant and positive part of a national ideology.
Kraidy (2006: 51-55) explains this as the political strategies taken by some countries:
‘melting pot’ as a ‘nation-building strategy’ in the USA and ‘official ideology’ in Latin America (51), for instance. Another example given is Mexico, known as ‘a pioneering example of a hybrid cosmic race’ (Vasconcelos, 1925/1997, cited in Kraidy, 2006: 52).
Notions constructed around cultural hybridisation are imperative to situate elements or patterns of hybridity in power relations. For example, hybridity is regarded by some scholars as a powerful and political possibility for the world. Bakhtin’s view on
intentional hybridity fits this pattern. This view, according to Young, ‘enables a contestatory activity, a politicised setting of cultural differences against each other dialogically’ (1995: 22). The academic arena where such a view is actively discussed is post-colonial studies (Papastergiadis, 1997: 273). This field of study looks into the complexity of traces left from decolonialism or imperialism, such as the economic and political situation of people (Young, 2001: 58). Thus, power relations and political notions come to the fore in this particular field of study and the value of hybridity is sometimes celebrated as ‘transgressive power’ (Werbner, 1997: 1). How is such
‘subversion of authority through hybridity’ (Young, 1995: 22) understood? In the next section, I will review hybridity as cultural politics and power in post-colonial studies, in particular. This, hopefully, could let us assess if hybridity is applicable in the case of the Korean animation industry. In the same vein, this thesis will discuss whether hybridity is useful to deploy as a way of understanding the animators’ experiences, which appear
to be paradoxically located between globally imposed values and local values.