Hybridity in the Third Space: Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Hybridity in the Third Space:

Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Paul Meredith

In this paper I invoke Homi Bhabha’s notions of hybridity and the third space and

offer some introductory comment as to what these concepts might mean for a project

that seeks to redesign the laws and institutions for a bicultural Aotearoa/New Zealand. 1

Since the

1980s, the notion of biculturalism has increasingly found popularity despite continual

contestation as to its meaning and the form of its practical application. 1

What has become apparent though is the emergence of a cultural politics in

Aotearoa/New Zealand concentrated and contested around the binary of Maori (the

colonised) or Pakeha (the coloniser), over-simplified and essentialised. 1

In colonial

discourse, hybridity is a term of abuse for those who are products of miscegenation,

mixed-breeds. 2

In fact the concept of hybridity occupies a central place in postcolonial discourse. It

is “celebrated and privileged as a kind of superior cultural intelligence owing to the

advantage of in-betweeness, the straddling of two cultures and the consequent ability

to negotiate the difference.” (Hoogvelt 1997: 158) This is particularly so in Bhabha’s

discussion of cultural hybridity. 2

Bhabha has developed his concept of hybridity from literary and cultural theory to

describe the construction of culture and identity within conditions of colonial

antagonism and inequity. (Bhabha 1994; Bhabha 1996) For Bhabha, hybridity is the

process by which the colonial governing authority undertakes to translate the identity

of the colonised (the Other) within a singular universal framework, but then fails

producing something familiar but new. (Papastergiadis 1997) Bhabha contends that a

new hybrid identity or subject-position emerges from the interweaving of elements of

the coloniser and colonised challenging the validity and authenticity of any

essentialist cultural identity. 2

In postcolonial discourse, the notion that any culture or

identity is pure or essential is disputable. (Ashcroft et al 1995) Bhabha himself is

aware of the dangers of fixity and fetishism of identities within binary colonial

thinking arguing that “all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity.”

(Rutherford 1990: 211) 2

third space. (Rutherford 1990) 2

For me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original

moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‘Third

Space’, which enables other positions to emerge. (Rutherford 1990: 211) 3

space of new forms of cultural meaning

and production blurring the limitations of existing boundaries and calling into

question established categorisations of culture and identity. According to Bhabha,

this hybrid third space is an ambivalent site where cultural meaning and

representation have no ‘primordial unity or fixity’. (Bhabha 1994) 3

The hybrid identity is positioned within this third space, as ‘lubricant’ 3

At the point at which the coloniser presents a normalising,

hegemonic practice, the hybrid strategy opens up a third space of/for rearticulation of

negotiation and meaning. (Bhabha 1996)

In presenting Bhabha’s conceptual model, I am aware of criticism that his formulation

is problematic. He has been admonished for neglecting to adequately conceptualise

the historical and material conditions that would emerge within a colonial discourse

analysis framework. (Parry 1996; Mitchell 1997) I do not posit this conceptual

perspective within a political and cultural vacuum nor do I celebrate a false sense of

liberation from the continued influence of the historical colonial encounter. What I do

argue though is the need for a more optimistic and complex strategy of negotiating

affinity and difference that recognises the postcolonial reality of settler-societies (such

as Aotearoa/New Zealand). 3

An important activity

then is the juxtaposition of Maori and Pakeha to find where affinity and contrast occur

and how the tension between them in turn produces their hybridity. 4

Bhabha’s conceptual posturing also argues for an approach to the redesign of laws

and institutions that moves beyond the categorical binary structure of contemporary

bicultural Maori/Pakeha relations. Any redesign must recognise and provide for the

hybridity dynamic of those relations. This redesign should take place in an alternative

ambivalent site, a third space, where there is ongoing [re]vision, negotiation, and if

necessary, renewal of those cultural practices, norms, values and identities inscripted

and enunciated through the production of bicultural ‘meaning and representation’.

(Bhabha 1994) 4

The

notions of hybridity and the third space have a particular contribution to make betwixt

‘Maori’ given the appearance of dualistic categories (iwi/urban Maori) and increasing

nostalgic claims to a false sense of authenticity and essentialised representation of

‘traditional’ Maori culture and identity (what is a real Maori?). 4

He is mixed! Comment on this in essay

Paul Meredith (Ngati Kaputuhi/Pakeha). “Hybridity in the Third Space: Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand.” Te Oru Rangahau Maori Research and Development Conference, Massy University, 7-9 July 1998, pp.1-7.