Introduction

302
Sonja Lehmann
space’ which enables other positions to emerge. This third space displaces
the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new
political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received
wisdom. […] [H]ybridity puts together the traces of certain other meanings
or discourses. It does not give them the authority of being prior in the
sense of being the original: they are prior only in the sense of being anterior.
The process of hybridity gives rise to something different, something
new and unrecognisable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.
(Bhabha, “Third Space” 211)
According to this, hybridity is a process which leads to the creation of “something
new” that does, however, contain some “traces” of what existed before its creation,
but is neither one nor the other. Being a mixture of both it is nevertheless
neither. For Bhabha, this is how new cultural meaning is produced. An important
notion connected with that of hybridity is that of liminality. Hybridity comes into
existence in the “third space”, which Bhabha also often calls an “’in-between’”
space (“Location” 2), especially when he refers to contact between nations. When
different national cultures, which he stresses are not homogeneous or pure to
begin with (“Location” 212), come into contact with one another, they enter into
the process of hybridization. This takes place at “the boundary [which] becomes
the place from which something begins its presencing” (“Location” 7; emphasis in
original). Thus the “boundary” is the place of contact where hybridity is created
and consequently the place at which the third space is located.
This boundary is however used in a metaphorical sense and does not denote a
“physical location” (Huddart 7). Therefore, the liminal, in-between space of the
boundary becomes a “space in which strategies for personal or communal selfhood
may be elaborated, a region in which there is a continual process of movement
and interchange between different states” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin,
“Liminality” 130). As Bhabha also assumes that all cultures are constantly changing
within during the process of inner translation, the whole concept becomes
slightly paradoxical since then everything turns out to be hybrid. One must wonder
of how much more use this concept can be once the constructed nature of
cultures, identities and nations has been recognized (see also Easthope 346; Griem
269). In addition, Bhabha’s purely theoretical approach neglects the very real
power of nation-states to identify and categorize, which puts an end to at least
some aspects of hybridization when it comes to national identities.
This is made even more problematic by the lack of differentiation of hybridity
in Bhabha’s theory. As stated, for Bhabha, hybridization occurs whenever there is
contact between differences. This clearly does not only apply to collectives such as
nations or cultures, but necessarily also affects individuals and especially migrants.
Yet, all Bhabha says of such migrants is that they occupy “’in-between’ spaces”
(“Location” 2) and the spaces of “liminality” (“Location” 321). They are displaced
(Bhabha “Location” 13) and lead “unhomely” lives which means that they do not