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Angst of hybrid lives
Angst of hybrid lives
May 13, 2004
Cultural theorist Homi Bhabha explains why migrants pose such a challenge to communities. Rosanne Bersten reports.
Homi Bhabha, author and world-renowned cultural theorist, is walking through the Paris end of Collins Street. We are discussing Victorian architecture in Melbourne and the resonance of cities: "This could be Hyde Park in London!" he says as we enter the Treasury Gardens.
The streets of Naples remind him of Bombay: "Standing at one end of the bay in Naples, I can almost see how, if I just turn right down that corner, I'd be at my grandmother's house. It's like my history is laid out along the bay."
Bombay and London are points on a trajectory for Bhabha, from his birth in a small Zoroastrian Parsi community in India, to Oxford, and then to Harvard, where he is now Professor of English and African-American Studies.
Along the way, he developed a fascination for stories of migration, translation and being "in between", what he calls a third space of cultural hybridity.
His book, The Location of Culture, is soon to become a Routledge Classic.
Bhabha says the Parsi became a "translational community" in 19th-century India, functioning as a bridge between the British and the Hindu and Muslim communities.
"It was a community that really lived its life in many languages," he says. "In my home, we spoke Gujarati; we spoke English. My grandmother spoke English and Gujarati and Hindi and also learnt German. It was very cosmopolitan."
Find this article: The AGe - http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/12/1084289733926.html?oneclick=true
May 13, 2004
Cultural theorist Homi Bhabha explains why migrants pose such a challenge to communities. Rosanne Bersten reports.
Homi Bhabha, author and world-renowned cultural theorist, is walking through the Paris end of Collins Street. We are discussing Victorian architecture in Melbourne and the resonance of cities: "This could be Hyde Park in London!" he says as we enter the Treasury Gardens.
The streets of Naples remind him of Bombay: "Standing at one end of the bay in Naples, I can almost see how, if I just turn right down that corner, I'd be at my grandmother's house. It's like my history is laid out along the bay."
Bombay and London are points on a trajectory for Bhabha, from his birth in a small Zoroastrian Parsi community in India, to Oxford, and then to Harvard, where he is now Professor of English and African-American Studies.
Along the way, he developed a fascination for stories of migration, translation and being "in between", what he calls a third space of cultural hybridity.
His book, The Location of Culture, is soon to become a Routledge Classic.
Bhabha says the Parsi became a "translational community" in 19th-century India, functioning as a bridge between the British and the Hindu and Muslim communities.
"It was a community that really lived its life in many languages," he says. "In my home, we spoke Gujarati; we spoke English. My grandmother spoke English and Gujarati and Hindi and also learnt German. It was very cosmopolitan."
Find this article: The AGe - http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/12/1084289733926.html?oneclick=true
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