A Hybridity Continuum

Abstract

The article proposes an analytical framework in the form of a continuum in order to examine instances of hybridity in terms of mechanisms, qualities and outcomes. By foregrounding material pathways and processes through the coming together of disparate elements, the continuum provides a platform to analyse the overlapping spatio-temporalities and bleeding palettes of hybridity. The continuum is deployed to illustrate hybridity in an aspect of embodiment denoted by the term ‘bodyworld’ to mark human–non-human relationalities. Specific reference is made to athletes who operate gym machines and the psychophysical work of performers. The hybridity continuum is developed in the light of the so-called 3As of bodyworld: assemblages, affordances and actants. Reference is also made to Shaun Gallagher’s ‘body schema’ and its links with distributed cognition, as well as to Heike Jöns’s socio-material ‘dynamic hybrids’ from the field of human geography. In reading hybridity and bodyworld in the light of each other via the continuum, the article suggests a deconstructive strategy that draws attention to the material conditions of human activity, thereby shedding light on our understanding of psychosomatic practices. The focus of the continuum on material processes serves to counter the ubiquitous quality often associated with hybridity.