LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:1 January 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

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         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

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Hybridity in Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover:
Bhabhaian Approach and Cultural Expressions

Dr. S. Snekha Sri


Courtesy: www.amazon.com

Abstract

Identity has been deemed as a crucial concern for people whose living situation is either deliberately or involuntarily altered. Individuals are compelled to adapt to a foreign or new space in which they do not belong and must construct subjectivity. Due to the cultural intersectionality, the immigrants are neither considered as native members of the host culture nor able to claim to be part of their own. The lack of control and dependency are not under the control of either the coloniser or the colonised. But there is a conscious resistance on the part of the colonised.

Bhabha demonstrates how the histories and cultures of colonialism continuously encroach on the present, forcing us to rethink how we see cross-cultural interactions rather than viewing them as something that is confined to the past. Bhabha views culture is not an unchangeable essence, however, characterized by flux, transformation and most importantly by mixed-ness or interconnectedness, which Bhabha terms as hybridity.

Through this lens, the present research paper makes an attempt to study the causes of hybridity, homelessness and ambivalence in Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover to analyse an unusual blend of simultaneous emotions of repulsion and attraction that exist between the colonizer and the colonized due to liminal status.

Keywords: Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover, Identity, cultural, intersectionality, hybridity, homelessness, ambivalence

Introduction

In the present context of social, economic, and cultural globalization, the term Hybridity is loaded in social and cultural theory. Following the colonial encounter, hybridity highlights the difficulties of returning to any sense of intrinsic national or cultural identity. The process of hybridization is never an even exchange and is always inevitably a lived, power-laden activity, even though the term is frequently employed without question to refer to a balanced and harmless blending of cultures. The porous boundaries, psychological barriers, socially constructed racial superiority, political hegemony, economic domination, or military power to the detriment of others was further eroded by the process of globalization. Any migration is a result of a persistent global crisis or of social, economic, or political injustice on a worldwide scale. Migration alters how people think about identity and cultural understanding in addition to how they see physical location. Divergent opinions on hybridity have been expressed by academics. Hutnyk (2005) asserts “Hybridity has come to mean all sorts of things to do with mixing and combination in the moment of cultural exchange”.

The term ‘hybridity’ traditionally carried the connotation of being ‘impure’, ‘racially contaminated’, and genetically ‘deviant’, in social evolution theory,” says Hoon (2006). People travel not just physically but also with all of their social, emotional, and cultural quirks, which makes it impossible for them to be mechanically assimilated into the new environment.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. S. Snekha Sri
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Periyar University
Salem -11
Tamil Nadu
snekhasri@gmail.com
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