The Concept of Hybridity in Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa”

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, TU Dortmund (American Studies), course: American Cultural Studies, language: English, abstract: One of the central concepts in the work of post-colonial writer Homi Bhabha is that of ‘hybridity’. In the Introduction to The Location of Culture, Bhabha reflects on aspects of hybridity in the context of the ‘in-between’ of cultures. The essay will briefly discuss a passage taken out of this book in order to get a better idea about the significance of the term hybridity. Afterwards, the idea of hybridity will be transferred to Derek Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa”. “The stairwell as liminal space, in-between the designations of identity, becomes the process of symbolic interaction [...]. This interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up a possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy. ” (Bhabha 2004: 3) The term ‘hybridity’, which is a very frequently used construct in post-colonial studies, seeks to explain the melting of different cultural ideas into one entity.