The limits of cultural hybridity: on ritual monsters, poetic licence and contested postcolonial purifications

There are many parallels between hybridity theory, especially as it has been developed in the work of Bhabha, and theories of liminality in anthropology, particularly in the work of Turner and Douglas. These share a stress on sited performance and the specific positioning of actors. However, the stress in hybridity theory on the colonial encounter as the source of reflexivity and double consciousness does not engage, I argue, with the fact that cultures produce their own indigenous forms of transgression and hence also of critical reflexivity and satire: ritual clowns, carnivals, poetry, and the like. Moreover, while transgression is a potential tool of resistance which upturns taken-for-granted hierarchies, it plays dangerously on the boundary and, taken out of context, can become a source of offence, especially for postcolonial diasporas struggling for recognition. This raises the question: what are the creative limits of cultural hybridity