Crossing the Border?
Hybridity as Late-Capitalistic Logic of Cultural Translation and National Modernisation

Kien Nghi Ha

One of the most celebrated features of hybridity is its supposed characteristic to cross cultural and national boundaries and its ability to translate oppositional cultural spheres into innovative expressions of the so-called postmodern era of late capitalism. This era is apparently based on free circulation and intermingling of ideas and significations in a world, which is more and more shaped and reshaped by different forces and different meanings of globalisation and migration. This view stresses hybridity as the central term for the ongoing process of intercultural transgression and became lately prominent in the mainstream academic discourse. Even in the more sophisticated parts of the multicultural integration industry sponsored by the state are obvious’ trends to refashion national representation through inclusion and appropriation of cultural resources, which belong to marginalized groups in the immigration society. At the same time there is also a significant and popular desire within the mainstream society to explore new forms of cultural consumptions, which are not purely based on the construction of antagonistic differences and fixed stereotypes, but rather on the culturalistic production "out of such hybridization that newness can emerge" (Salman Rushdie).

In my presentation I will discuss the effects of cultural hybridization on the national as well as on the economic sphere. Both processes aim to translate the marginalized domains of discriminated minorities into national resources, while leaving the enduring legacies and dynamics of colonial and racist patterns in almost every Western society untouched. These forms of hybridization turn out to work as a form of political utilisation and therefore broaden the economic exploitation through cultural subordination. I suggest to discuss cultural hybridity and national identity not as conceptual oppositions, but as a functional relationship, which allows the nation to expand and modernize the symbolic field of national self-representation by creating a more colourful, joyful, and attractive image of itself. In the global competition of national economies and cultures it is even for the nation a task of growing importance to appear cosmopolitan and open for productive flows of migrating capital, creative subjects and powerful symbols. Meanwhile, the cultural industry have discovered hybridity to introduce the mainstream society with new mass markets by developing innovative transcultural products. It is nothing new, that cultural translation is greatly helpful to raise material profits, but from my point of view I would suggest, that hybridity means much more. I would call it a new mode of production in a globalized economy that is increasingly obsessed with the consumption of cultural signs and meanings. With intercultural competence and diversity training as new management guidelines for the 21. century, hybridity became easily not only a trendy, but maybe the major method for new ways of commodification.

Kien Nghi Ha

biography