Hybridity in Cultural Globalization

Abstract

Hybridity has become a master trope across many spheres of cultural research, theory, and criticism, and one of the most widely used and criticized concepts in postcolonial theory. This article begins with a thorough review of the interdisciplinary scholarship on hybridity. Then it revisits the trope of hybridity in the context of a series of articles on cultural globalization published in the Washington Post in 1998. This series on “American Popular Culture Abroad” appropriates hybridity to describe the global reception of U.S. American popular culture. Due to the controversy surrounding hybridity, the discourse woven into these articles invites a critical deconstruction. A discussion of the implications of hybridity's conceptual ambiguity follows. Finally, this article makes the case that hybridity is a conceptual inevitability, and proposes an intercontextual theory of hybridity, which comprehends global cultural dynamics by articulating hybridity and hegemony, providing an initial theoretical platform for a critical cultural transnationalism.