Chapter Two Said Cultural Compromise

8/4/2019 Chapter Two Said Cultural Compromise

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CHAPTER TWO:SAID: HYBRIDITY AS CULTURAL

COMPROMISE


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STARTING ISSUES Said as Hybrid Persona Said and the Crisis of Representation Orientalism and Hybridity. Dialectical Hybridity Saids Humanistic Approach of Hybridity The Notions of Culture and Imperialism. Contrapuntal Hybridity The Voyage In as Hybridity. Exilic Hybridity.

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SAID AS HYBRID PERSONA

Said has the privilege of inaugurating the field of postcolonialism.

He represents a different type of persona.

He seems to have been plagued with the tension of his Arab originand western academia.

Thus he locates himself within a third space or hybrid location.

His exilic experience engraved his hybrid identity.

He identifies himself in terms of a hybrid language that subvertsany essentialist origin by claiming that he has never known what

language he spoke first Arabic or English.

Moreover, he never felt that he belonged exclusively to onecountry.

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SAID AND THE CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION

Beginning with Orientalism, Said attempts to address the crisis ofrepresentation of the East.

So, he provides the western audience with an alternative view of theEast.

He quotes Marx to show the foundation of colonial discourse onasymmetric power relations: They Cannot Represent themselves.They must be represented.

This means that the Other is denied the chance to speak and whatis represented is merely an imagined copy based on the tools of

hegemony power and knowledge. This leads Said to investigate knowledge, power structure, and

cultural representations

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ORIENTALISM & HYBRIDITY Said uses the term orientalism to indicate the colonial discourse

which attempts to control other cultures in terms of Foucaults ideasof the relation between knowledge and power.

Orientalism is defined as a Western style for dominating,restructuring and having authority over the Orient.

Part of the Orientalist discourse is based on the stereotyping of theOther. Accordingly, this implies an inherent sense of superiority tothose who are unalike.

The Orientalists disguise themselves as the benefactors of thenatives by the virtue of their civilizing mission.

Orientalism propagates the idea of binary oppositions Displeased with the orientalist discourse for not being disinterested,

Said proposes his early version of hybridity, that is, dialecticalhybridity.

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DIALECTICAL HYBRIDITY

Criticizing the essentialist approach of orientalism, Said proposesthat there are two systems of knowledge that is difficult to detachfrom each other.

it is difficult to proclaim one system as the unilateral bloodsuckerand the other the blood.

Said introduces his idea of dialecticalhybridity as his ideal modelof cultural hybridity in studying the Orient.

According to this model, the two forces of conflict (the colonizer/ thecolonized) come to work together.

This kind of hybridity provides an accurate assessment thatrecognizes the dialectic between the orientalist and the oriental.

It provides also a restorative dialectic by which the oriental assertshis actuality.

This hybridity is a step towards understanding between culturescreating a space that serves to bond the human experience and

grant legitimacy to the experiences of the colonized.6


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HUMANISTIC APPROACHTO HYBRIDITY

Humanism is a resource of Saids hybridity.

Said endorses humanism as the only and the final resistanceagainst the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human

history. Saids approach of cultural hybridity is paradoxical.

The idea of humanism evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries as both elitist andstrongly hierarchical at home and imperialistic abroad.

Said uses the values of Western humanism against the imperialistic traditionof Western culture.

Said uses humanism to subvert the essentialist approach to cultureand to modify power relations between the colonizer and thecolonized.

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CULTUREANDIMPERIALISM

Saids notions of culture and imperialism should be clarified andillustrated.

For Said, imperialism begins with the idea of having an empire in anattempt not only to exploit other countries but also to operate on the

sphere of culture and progress. Imperialism here is broader in scope than colonialism which means the

exploitation and invasion of other peoples territories.

According to Said there are three cultural themes that constitute histheory of cultural hybridity as compromise:

The Contrapuntal The voyage In

The exilic

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CONTRAPUNTAL HYBRIDITY

Saids contrapuntal hybridity is developed from his early dialecticalhybridity.

it is derived from the musical term of the counterpoint that ismanipulated in cultural studies to discern the coexistence andintegration of voices and cultures in literary studies,

According to contrapuntal hybridity, there are two cultural forcescome to work together on the basis that all cultural forces areinvolved in one another.

Contrapuntalism is a connection or mutual consideration of

disparate social practices of culture and empire, of history and thepresent.

Said calls for a contrapuntal understanding of different cultures.

Contrapuntal hybridity is narratives of integration as it ischaracterized by hybrid, mixed, impure, cultural forms.

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CONTRAPUNTAL HYBRIDITY

According to Said, there are two features of contrapuntal hybridity:

The individuality of the voice

The ability to integrate with other different voices.

Multiple independent voices are intertwined with one another. So, they construct a hybrid voice that considers the disjunctive

voices.

Contrapuntal hybridity seeks, then, to integrate both imperialismwith its resistance.

Thus, it uncovers the phony centrality of the colonial discourse.

So, it helps in avoiding the rhetoric of blame that prevents self-criticism and denies cultural compromise.

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VOYAGE IN AS HYBRIDITY

It is the second strategy of cultural hybridity.

It is a conscious effort to enter into, to mix with, and transform thecolonial discourse.

It attempts to subvert any sense of purity and to make the colonialdiscourse acknowledge the other.

It is used to lay bare the embedded and always suppressed narrativesof the colonized in the colonial discourse.

Through the voyage in, postcolonial writers launch their journey of

decolonization by writingback to the empire.

This is done by migrating across a liminal third space in-between thecultures of the colonized and the colonizer.

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VOYAGE IN AS HYBRIDITY

The voyagein hybridity implies mimicry in Bhabhas sense of theterm.

By writing back to the center, the colonized tend to imitate thecolonial hegemonic discourse in an attempt to mock it.

The colonial discourse can be contaminated and subverted.

As a consequence the colonial narrative becomes hybridized.

Moreover, the voyage in as a liminal crossing to the colonizingcenter suggest a fusion of half-involvements and half-

detachments. This voyage in hybridity enables the colonized to have a double

perspective that never sees things in isolation.

Thus, this kind of hybridity demonstrates the hybrid cultural workof anti-imperialistic struggle

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EXILIC HYBRIDITY

Exilic hybridity features the intellectual life in exile.

It is nomadic in nature.

So, it holds an integrative view of human community and human

liberation. According to this type of hybridity, all cultures depend on borrowings,

lending, and interdependencies of all kinds.

It makes use of the notion of exile as a liminal figure.

The intellectual is an exilic hybrid individual who does not belong to

any particular class, group, race, or culture.

This exilic hybrid figure has to represent the underrepresented.

The exilic hybrid figure stands for cultural crossing.

He stands outside cultures as an alien living in an in-between space.

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EXILIC HYBRIDITY

The exilic hybrid figure is a displaced figure

He does not believe in any fixed origin or belonging.

The exilic hybrid figure is a liminal figure.

He resists the essentialist position of belonging to a place, apeople, and heritage.

Like Said himself, he is out of place.

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Chapter Two Said Cultural Compromise

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