Theorizing the Hybrid

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Folklore Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American Folklore. "Theorizing the Hybrid" is a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore that critically engages the metaphor of hybridity as it is currently employed in the analysis of narratives and discourses, genres and identities, material forms and performances. Authors in the fields offolklore, cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, literary history, ethnomusicology, and comparative literature reflect on the nature, value, limitations, and dangers of hybridity as both an analytic model and a social practice. Articles consider topics ranging from the premodern to the cybernetic, the biological to the political, the highly localized to the transnational. THE ARTICLES INCLUDED IN "THEORIZING THE HYBRID" were originally presented at a conference held in March 1996 at the University of Texas at Austin. The aim of the conference was to critically engage the metaphor of hybridity as it is currently employed in the analysis of a wide variety of genres, discourses, and identities. Conceived as a broadly interdisciplinary forum, the conference not only analyzed but enacted hybridity--transgressing disciplinary boundaries, juxtaposing disciplinary styles, contaminating disciplinary discourses. This issue does the same, challenging readers to follow the hybrid from gene to cyborg, stone to cassette, "root" to "route," and to consider relations among biological, discursive, aesthetic, political, and economic aspects of the social phenomena placed under the sign of hybridity.1 Hybridity Past and PresentIn 1982, Victor Turner noted that "what was once considered 'contaminated,' 'promiscuous,' 'impure' [was] becoming the focus of postmodern analytical attention" (1982:77). These words sound patent today, but they may serve as a marker. To what extent does hybridity become a sign for the impure mixings propagated by the dissolution of political, geographic, ethnic, cultural, and aesthetic boundaries? The essays in this issue inquire into the virtue of interrogating such "impurity," casting attention on subjects as diverse as Apache rock and roll, mestizo politics, Israeli Mizrahi Deborah A. Journal of American Folklore 112 (1999) music, diasporic identity, and transglobal tourist art. Is the analyst of culture "destined to simply accumulate examples of the hybrid" (Franco 1993:141)? Is this accumulation actually a latent theory? or a latent anxiety? In what sense, and in how many senses, is the apprehension of hybrid phenomena necessary for cultural analysis? The biological root of the metaphor of hybridity was the source of considerable ambivalence for many co...

Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization

“…A partial list: anthropology (Thomas, 1996), critical race studies (Werbner and Modood, 1997), cultural studies (Gilroy, 1993), art criticism (Clarke, 1997;Coombes, 1992), popular music and ethnomusicology (Boggs, 1991;Hutnyk, 1997;Nexica, 1997;Salamone, 1998), sociology (Nederveen Pieterse, 1994, film studies (Marchetti, 1998), literary criticism (Jussawalla, 1995;Moreiras, 1999;Young, 1995), migration studies (Papastergiadis, 2000), postcolonial theory (Ahmad, 1995;Bhabha, 1994;Said, 1994), and performance studies (Joseph and Fink, 1999). Hybridity is also used in studies of tourism (Hollinshead, 1998), folklore (Kapchan and Turner-Strong, 1999), sports (Archetti, 1999), and architecture (Morton, 2000). Finally, discussions of hybridity can be found in books about global corporate competition (Zachary, 2000), popular travel writing (Iyer, 2000), economics (Cowen, 2002a), and mainstream media accounts of global popular culture ("Culture Wars, Hermes, 1994;Farhi and Rosenfeld, 1998;Waxman, 1998).…”

“…In France, the journal Diogène, published by the Presses Universitaires de France with the assistance of UNESCO, had a 1999 special issue titled "Métissage culturel entre religionsécrites et traditions orales'' (Cultural Hybridity between Written Religions and Oral Traditions) (" Métissage culturel,'' 1999). Finally, in the United States, the Journal of American Folklore devoted an entire issue to the subject "Theorizing the Hybrid'' (Kapchan and Strong, 1999), which carried the proceedings of the conference by the same title, mentioned in the previous note.…”

Culture as Obstacle: Demusicalization of the World in the Hybrid Discourses of the Effects of Music

“…В академической среде это выражение употребляется скорее в контексте постколониальной теории, трактующей гибридность как рефлексивную форму идентичности, преобладающую в современном мире (о ги-бридности в этом или близком к этому смысле см. : Joseph, Fink, 1999;Kapchan, Strong, 1999;Brah, Coombes, 2000;Puri, 2004;Kraidy, 2005;Maclean, 2015). В этом контексте музыкальный гибрид -не только «культурный» феномен, но и политический, эко-номический, социально-критический и т. д.…”

Literary Kalevala-Metre and Hybrid Poetics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Finland

“…Scholars have provided useful insights of the typical characteristics of both categories (Ong 1982), but it was only the perspectives on the interactions of literary and oral traditions, and on the large scale of different oralities, literacies, and hybrid forms between these two, which opened up the discussion of the actual workings of oral and literary processes (Finnegan 1977;Foley 1995Foley , 2002; see also Burke 2009Burke [1978; DuBois 2006;Hansson 2000;Kuismin & Driscoll 2013;Laitinen & Mikkola 2013;Ramsten & Strand & Ternhag 2015;Tarkka 2013: 46-52, 80-84; on the concept of hybrid, see Kapchan & Turner Strong 1999). Literary traditions may be connected with or use features of oral traditions, and literary and oral traditions may interact in numerous ways.…”