Critical Review of Postcolonial Theory of Homi Bhabha’s Hybridity: A Study of “The Location of Culture”

Abstract

Homi K. Bhabha's The Location of Culture, published in 1994, is one of the foundational texts of the branch of literary theory known as postcolonialism. Although postcolonialism has many facets, the central question lies in the interpretation and understanding of the encounters between the Western colonial powers and the nations of the world to which they belong, and colonization is not only an economic, military or political process but also a process that profoundly affects cultures and identities around the world. This is an area in which interpretation takes centre stage, and its strength depends in large part on its ability to address the complex legacy of colonial encounters with careful and constant attention to the significance of the marks they left on colonial cultures. What Bhabha do writings show, like so much other postcolonial thought, is that the art of clarification and definition underpinning good interpretation is rarely the same as simplification. Indeed, making good interpretations often involves pointing out and dividing the different types of complexity going on within a single process or term. For Bhabha, the main object is identity, as embodied in the idea of colonial powers. According to his interpretation, what at first glance appears to be the cohesive set of ideas behind colonialism quickly breaks down into a complex mass of shifting views – creating something much closer to postcolonial thought than it might seem at first glance.