Introduction

Construction of Identity in Northern Irish Novels 229
What is already hinted at here is that a new field has opened up that has not existed
in this sense before. It is not a “new horizon”, however, as it is connected
with what was already there in the past. The “beyond” directly leads to what
Bhabha calls hybridity; an identity that lies in the inbetween. In line with postcolonialism
it describes a new or different state of the once colonised and his or
her materialisation in a mixture of pre- and postcolonial self. Bhabha stresses the
fact that it is necessary to “think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities
and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation
of cultural differences” (ibid. 1ff). In this way new forms of identity are
made available. To make his theory more vivid Bhabha evokes the image of a
liminal stairwell, which is situated inbetween identities and serves as a connection
by allowing passage and movement. At the same time it symbolises the differences
between fixed identities and in consequence brings about the generation of cultural
hybridity (ibid. 4).
For Bhabha hybridity is “a difference ‘within’” or “a subject that inhabits the
rim of an ‘in-between’ reality” (ibid. 13). The cultural hybrid is therefore a complex
building that both resembles and differs from the colonising agent. The hybrid
resembles an effigy of the subjugator but not quite, for “what is disavowed is
not repressed but repeated as something different – a mutation, a hybrid” (ibid.
111). By creating hybrid characters the colonisers allow themselves to maintain
their “identity of authority” through discriminatory acts (ibid. 112). Bhabha also
calls this “strategic disavowal” (ibid. 112). Lawrence Grossberg shares this opinion
of the third space, that is, the cultural hybrid living in an inbetween place. Apart
from that he also refers to the image of liminality. Here the colonised is moved
from an inbetween place directly to the border itself (Grossberg 91ff). The hybrid
thus is neither coloniser nor precolonial subject any longer.
Antony Easthope sees in Bhabha’s descriptions a relation to the theories of
Jacques Derrida: “Bhabha’s hybridity is essentially Derridean difference applied to
colonialist texts – the presence of a dominant meaning in a dominant culture can
be called into question by referring to the hybridity or difference from which it
emerges” (Easthope 343). All things considered Easthope argues mainly against
Bhabha’s as well as Derrida’s theory. The terms hybridity and difference in his
view are too vague and can be applied anywhere and anytime. The term hybridity
leads him to ask the legitimate question whether the two joined identities were
formerly pure in themselves (ibid. 342). The borders of where hybridity can be
applied blur in Easthope’s understanding and he asks himself if he, the child of an
English father and an Irish mother, will also count as a hybrid. “Who or what is
not hybrid?” he asks (ibid. 342).
Easthope calls Bhabha’s desire to put fixed identities aside in order to “entertain
difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (Bhabha 1994, 4) a
“wishful thinking” (Easthope 346). In his point of view “speaking subjects must
have a coherent identity”, everything else would lead to instability (ibid. 346). But