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Performing Identity

Hybridity | Homi K. Bhabha

Creation of transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization.
Hybridisation takes place in many form : cultural, political & linguistic (Pidgin & Creole)
Hybridity :
 bringing together two cultures
 offering the possibility of a third way/ “Third Space”


"former colonial subject became a kind of hybrid, neither belonging to the imperialist master nation, nor to the new nation, the former colony"

An indeterminate identity, 
which, paradoxically,
may have some strength. 
Edward Said | Orientalism

- Orient as a construction of Western Imperialism
- made to continue subjugation of southern hemisphere/ eastern people

Orient as 'the other' 


Like feminism -

The problem of the male gaze and a 'colonial' gaze 

--> Objectification of the 'other' = seen as weak, different, and therefore not 'right', relative to the experience of the powerful (men, colonial powers) 

The 'other' is seen as exotic, foreign, non-native, and not seen and recognised as an equal. 



Erving Goffman

- Performing our social lives 
- A mask for each social situation 
- Encounters encoded in its 'frame'; the context of the encounter 
- Effectively, no difference between appearance and reality 


Judith Butler 
- gendered identity is not a biological phenomenon, but is actually produced socially through the repetition of ordinary day-to-day activities 
- Gender-specific actions (expectations) fix us into a rigid state in which our true identity is excluded. 
- Our gender & our identity is more fluid, more diffuse, and more changeable than that. 
- the elusiveness of identity 
- Susan Bordo: the body itself is a social construct; what society demands (feet-binding, 'classically good-looking', model-like figure) 


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