Homi K. Bhabha
Homi K. Bhabha (January 24th 1966 -) is major figure in the development of Postcolonial studies. His field of focus centres around the concepts of hybridization, mimicry and ambivalence, understanding that there exists a fluidity within cultural identities and borders - within colonizer-colonized interactions as well as the post-imperial world. He argued against Said's concept of binary opposition, adopting a more deconstructionist approach that contested that the world was possessed of a cultural complexity that defied binary opposition. Bhabha's influences include Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan
Education and Academia
Bhabha is a graduate of St. Mary's High School from Mumbai. He would later gain a B.A. from Bombay University, and an M.A. and Doc. from Christ Church, Oxford University. He later gained a senior fellowship at Princeton University, became a visiting professor at Old Dominion and the University of Pennsylvania, a faculty fellow at the school of Criticism and Theory, and a lecturer at the University of Sussex. He continues to be the Anne F. Rothenberg professor of English, American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Humanities Centre at Harvard University.
List of Works
- On Art (forthcoming)
- A Global Measure' (forthcoming)
- The Right to Narrate (forthcoming)
- Beyond Photography (2011)
- Our Neighbours, Ourselves (2011)
- Elusive Objects (2009); On Global Memory (2009)
- The Black Savant and the Dark Princess (2006)
- Framing Fanon (2005)
- The Location of Culture (2004, Routledge Classics)
- Still Life (2004)
- Adagio (2004)
Theoretical Approach
Bhabha argues against Said's binary opposition, as well as Negritude, believing that both schools of thought inadequately describe the interaction between cultures.
Ambivalence
Bhabha proposed the concept of Ambivalence, purporting that there was a fluidity involved in the process of colonization, where the practice of adopting of colonizer cultural practices was a natural result of human intermingling and cultural shifting, and that the stereotyping of the colonized nation spoke more to the insecurities and fears of the colonizer than it did representing the practices of the colonized. Bhabha remains skeptical of the concept of colonization being a struggle between opposite cultures.
Hybridity
Carrying over from New Historicism, Bhabha argues for a cultural complexity, or hybridity - a sense of cultural multiplicity and continuous cultural change across history regardless of colonial influence. He argues that an individual culture cannot return to a "pre-colonial" state but rather as being part of the greater "culture" of the international world-space. He sees borders as a sort of permeable membrane that sorts and shifts the cultural diversity of the people within. He ultimately argues that cultures have no distinct, permanent being, but rather sees them as shifting and defined by the people that carry them, interweaving and changing with where the people live and where they have lived – creating a hybrid or mix of cultures within a person.
False Stereotypes
Bhabha view stereotypes as deficient not because of their inaccuracies so much as because they represent a denial of the colonizer's outlook. He believes that stereotypes as are a projection of the “other” from the perspective of the stereotyper. (Echoing the Feminist “images-of-women"). The fault in stereotypes lies in the myopia of the stereotyper's perspective - the desire to create a static, immovable, universal image of culture.
Mimicry
Mimicry was the belief that the colonized inevitably take on some of the practices and attributes of the colonizers. This could be viewed as a sort of "internalized colonialism", or alternatively it could be viewed as a representation of the colonizeds' ambivalence. When the colonizers see the colonized, they see a "same but distinctly different" culture: a blend of both cultures but with a difference that can cause the colonizer to grow fearful and angry, threatening their racial identity and authority. Bhabha claims that the colonizers see their own gaze reflected back at them, forcing them to confront their own sense of privilege from the eyes of the "other".
On the reverse side, the colonizers are also compelled to imitate the colonized - exhibited in the practice to changing hair colour and styles to emulate those typically genetically attributed to those of certain colonized countries. Further more are examples of adapting musical techniques, or even parties or events "themed" around cultures. Bhabha theorizes that the colonizer mimicking the colonized is a potentially dangerous expression of the recognition of the other, and a desire to take on the traits that are normally suppressed and feared.