general lecture - transculturation heterogeneity and hybridity

8/7/2019 General Lecture - Transculturation Heterogeneity and Hybridity

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Any investigation of collective identity today, if it is not to become an

essentialist quest for a national spirit or soul, must necessarily bear in mind

that knowledge is constructed, and that this construction is endlessly

renewed. Not only is there no such a thing as cultural essence, but our very

conceptualization of collective identity is subject to interpretation, renewal

and criticism.

Amaryll Chanady Latin American Identity and Constructions of

Difference. University of Minessota Press, 1994. Introduction p. x

The indigenous nations of the Latin America found in the quincentennial

(1992) an opportunity to assert a counter history, revindicate their lifeways,

and consolidate present struggles for territory and autonomy. Intellectuals

are called upon to define, or redefine, their relation to the structures of

knowledge and power they produce, and that produce them. In the midst of

ecological catastrophe and continuing imperial adventurism, thequincentennial underscores what tremendous historical force has been

wielded by the European ideologies of territory and global possessiveness.

Three Approaches to Understand Latin America

Transculturation, Heterogeneity and Hybridity are three concepts that

challenge the monolingual discourse and strategies of nation building in

Latin America from a particular position. Since the nineteenth century the

idea of a nation or national identity in the newly born Latin Americancountries was primarily based on the mestizo idea. However, this mestizo

image ended up being a whitening process ignoring huge sectors of the

population, i.e. Amerindians and Afro-Latin Americans.

Transculturation:

The term transculturacin has been used by ethnographers to describe how

subordinated or marginal groups select and invent materials transmitted to

them by a dominant or metropolitan culture. Transculturacin was coined in

1940 by Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz in his attempt to describe theAfro-culture in his work Contrapunto Cubano. (1947, 1963) published in

Caracas by Biblioteca Ayacucho.

Ortiz, describing the Afro-Cuban culture, claimed that two plants, tobacco

and sugar, were the two most important figures in its history. This new

approach called the attention of researchers to the fact of how non-human


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America can move towards democracy and compete in a global marketplace

giving in to temptations of elitism or losing its cultural identity.

Canclini argues that there has been too much weight put on the traditional

when dealing with popular culture. He defends the hypothesis that it makes

little sense to study some processes under the light of popular culture.

Almost all the conventional categories and pairs of oppositions

(subaltern/hegemony, traditional/modern) employed for talking about the

popular explode more visibly. Their new modalities of organization of

culture and the hybridization of the traditions of classes, ethnic groups, and

nations require different conceptual instruments.

All these three concepts seen in above revendicate a reconceptualization of

Latin america as plural, hybrid and heterogenoeus, which contrasts with themonolithic discourse of hispanidad.

As regards literature, they also question the literary canon to be

representative of what is Latin American. It is in the late twentieth century

that subaltern texts have been included and studied as part of the cultural

identity of Latin America.

general lecture - transculturation heterogeneity and hybridity

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