In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Hybridity: Limits, Transformations, Prospects
  • Peter Hawkins
Hybridity: Limits, Transformations, Prospects By Anjali Prabhu. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. xv + 185 pp. ISBN 978-0-7914-7042-8.

This is a stimulating and important book for anyone interested in the radical potential of the notion of hybridity or métissage in its many literal and metaphorical guises, as developed by such figures as Léopold Sedar Senghor in the francophone context and more recently by Homi K. Bhabha in the anglophone world. Anjali Prabhu approaches this body of crosscultural theorizing from an explicitly Marxist perspective, which represents both its strength and its weakness. It offers a robust critique of the textualist emphasis of figures such as Bhabha, and attempts to go beyond this by identifying a possibility of active political and social agency in the interstices of his theorizing of the hybrid situation of the postcolonial subaltern. This elusive notion she attempts to situate in particular in a re-reading of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks and Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation. The problem with this is that her Marxist premises lead her to prefer as literary inspiration and illustration texts that dramatize the dialectical element of racial conflict at the expense of other more positive examples of métissage or hybridity. These are drawn mainly from Indian Ocean writing rather than the Caribbean: the already overcanonized examples of Marie-Thérèse Humbert’s A l’autre bout de moi and Monique Boyer’s Métisse. The possibilities of other less “black and white” examples are neglected, such as the novels of Axel Gauvin or Monique Agénor, although the latter’s Bé-Maho is appreciatively referenced in passing (154n8). The book does not attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of postcolonial Indian Ocean writing, but rather to develop a template with which to interpret it, and illustrates this with some incisive close reading of the aforementioned primary texts. In this respect it is a pity that the main theoretical works referenced both emanate from the more familiar Caribbean context, rather than the neglected Indian Ocean one, whose history and emphasis around notions of hybridity are subtly different. This is even so a welcome and challenging contribution to the very limited coverage of Indian Ocean writing in anglophone postcolonial studies.

Peter Hawkins
University of Bristo l, UK

Works Cited

Agénor, Monique. Bé-Maho: chroniques sous le vent. Paris: Serpent à plumes, 1996.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Boyer, Monique. Métisse. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994.
Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire masques blancs. Paris: Seuil, 1952.
———. Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove, 1967.
Gauvin, Axel. L’aimé. Paris: Seuil, 1990.
Glissant, Edouard. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.
———. Poetics of Relation. Trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997.
Humbert, Marie-Thérèse. A l’autre bout de moi. Paris: Stock, 1982. [End Page 183]
Senghor, Léopold Sedar. “De la liberté de l’âme ou éloge du métissage.” Liberté 1. Négritude et humanisme. Paris: Seuil, 1964. 98–103.
...

pdf

Share