Reading between the “posts”: Systemic violence and the trope of hybridity in the postcolonial novel

Abstract

The late-20th-century convergence of post-structural, postmodern and postcolonial theories has engendered a critical discourse network that privileges hybridity. These accounts contend that it (re)inscribes the agency of minority subjects, destabilizing hegemonic discourses, but, paradoxically, hybridity has become a stabilizing trope for – as well as the dominant way to read – the postcolonial novel. This essay discusses three postcolonial novels that “disidentify” with this master narrative of postcolonialism: Maryse Condé’s Heremakhonon, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. When reread as performances enacted between the “posts”, these novels suggest that hybridity can expose the systemic violence of colonial rationality.

Keywords:

• hybridity
• reassessment
• fiction
• Shani Mootoo
• Jessica Hagedorn
• Maryse Condé

Acknowledgements

For their comments and encouragement with earlier versions of this paper, the author wishes to thank Faith Smith, Harleen Singh, Cynthia Wu and Hershini Bhana Young.

Notes

1. See Mbembe 25–29.

2. See Prabhu on the materiality of hybridity.

3. See Mardorossian 3–4 on the symbolic economies of identity.

4. See Dayan xvii–xviii and Chapter 2.

5. Žižek notes that “verbal violence [is] the ultimate resort of every specifically human violence” (66).

6. See Clark on “diaspora literacy”.

7. See Doyle on the mother’s function within the economies of “racial patriarchy” (4–5).