Homi Bhabha Research Articles

Identity Confusion in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea: A Postcolonial Reading

The purpose of this study is to examine Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) based on theories of post-colonialism in specifically that of Homi Bhabha and Gayatry Spivak. It studies the influence of colonizers on the colonized people's identities. One of the most important concerns is the creation of identity confusion and crisis which is formed through the encounter of two different cultures. Rhys’s novel is about racial and sexual oppression caused by colonialism and wants to depict the hybrid people’s identity confusion and crisis. Consequently, the hybrid identity, ambivalence, and in-betweenness create a crisis and confusion for Creole and African-American individuals who are to be regarded in this novel.

Navigating the Labyrinth of Otherness: A Postcolonial Intervention and Identity Formation in Hailu’s Novel, The Conscript

This article examines the intricate interplay of Otherness and identity in Hailu’s novel, The Conscript, focusing on the relationships among various colonized cultural groups and the internal struggles of the protagonist, Tuquabo. Through a postcolonial lens, the study reveals how Otherness manifests within the black community in Port-Sudan, as Ethiopians and Eritreans perceive the Sudanese as inferior, while the Sudanese view the Askaris as slaves. The analysis also explores the complexities of self and ‘Other’ within the conscripted Askaris’ experiences as they journey from Eritrea to Libya, encountering different cultures, landscapes, and religious beliefs. Furthermore, the article investigates the role of external factors such as colonization, climate, and cultural differences in shaping perceptions of self and ‘Other’. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of identity as a constructed image, the study highlights the transformations and evolving understandings of self and ‘Other’ among the conscripted Askaris. This exploration of Otherness and identity in The Conscript deepens our understanding of the impacts of colonialism, the fluid nature of identity, and the need for empathy in bridging divides between self and ‘Other’.

Hybrids in Literary Translation: Binary Translation Strategies in Howard Goldblatt’s English Translation of Mo Yan’s Frog

Mo Yan’s Frog has been widely recognized and welcomed by readers since its publication. Apart from the Western readers’ love of Chinese culture, it also owes its popularity to the translator’s skillful handling of the translation. Specifically, this paper examines the translation strategies used in the English translation of Frog. The term hybrid translation is derived from Homi Bhabha’s hybrid theory, which advocates the mixing of different cultures in order to create a hybrid and fuzzy third space. This hybrid translation approach consists of mixing and integrating translation strategies, such as domestication and foreignization, literal translation and free translation, and finally forming a translation that reflects cultural hybridity. To demonstrate a cultural hybrid effect, translators must adopt a variety of approaches to the transformation of the text so that the target readers are able to fully understand its meaning and connotations.

Constructing Arab Western Identities Through Metamorphosis in Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons

The current study explores the way Leila Aboulela uses metamorphosis in her novel Bird Summons (2019). The study also shows how Aboulela’s three main characters construct their identities as Arab living in the West through metamorphosis, where they reach to what Homi Bhabha calls “The Third Space”. That is, they are transformed into different shapes and creatures due to the problems they are exposed to in the West as Arabs. The remain as such until they reach a stage where they overcome their issues and adopt their new identities as Arab Westerners. The novel is approached through postcolonial views, and especially Edward Said’s views on Orientalism and how the West sees the Orient. It is also explored through Homi Bhabha’s views on “the Third Space”. There are few studies that are conducted on the current novel. Most of the studies conducted are done on the quest of the three characters and not on how they transformed through metamorphosis.

(In)visible Interstices: Double-Consciousness and the Gutter in Brazilian Jefferson Costa's Rosebush, Medal, Plantation and Other Stories

ABSTRACT: This article explores the relations between W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of "double-consciousness" and the gutter, a specific component of the language of comics and graphic narratives in general, in order to read the graphic novel Rosebush, Medal, Plantation and Other Stories by the Brazilian author and illustrator Jefferson Costa. To make the connection, the article further uses the themes of a "crossroads" and "spiraling time" associated with the Brazilian theorist Leda Maria Martins, Homi Bhabha's espousal of "in-between spaces," and Umberto Eco's notion of the "unsaid." Bringing these conceptual areas together helps to approach Costa's work in terms of its support for his Afro-Brazilian roots, and in such a crossing, the gutter becomes a metaphor for counter-hegemonic, identity-producing discursive practices associated with Afrofuturism.

DIFFERENT GENERATIONS, DISTINCT LIFESTYLES, SAME FEELING OF HIRAETH: APOSTCOLONIAL STUDY OF KEN LIU’S “THE PAPER MENAGERIE”

The wave of immigration in recent decades has heralded new versions of colonialism. Thus, attention to the phenomenon of migration has gained a special place in literature. Among diaspora writers, one can mention Ken Liu and his “The Paper Menagerie”. In the course of this paper, at first and with the help of Edward Said’s theory of orientalism, a thorough discussion of the family’s and Americans’ attitudes toward each other and the cultural differences between them will be provided. Then, the character of the mother, as a representative of the first-generation immigrants, and the boy, as a representative of second-generation immigrants, will be under scrutiny based on Homi Bhabha and William Safran’s postcolonial ideas to delineate their path to their diasporic identities. In the final step, in the light of Eric Landowski’s theory of social relations, Jack and his mother’s distinct lifestyles in their host country will be analyzed to deduce that they chose snob and dandy lifestyles, respectively. The present paper will conclude that although different generations of immigrants have distinct lifestyles, they will consciously or unconsciously keep the connection with their homeland. Just like Jack, who undergoes an identity crisis and abandons his paper menagerie, his mother, and his Chinese heritage to assimilate into American culture. He loses both his mother and her magic, only to regain them to some extent at the end of the story, when he realizes that he, too, feels hiraeth. Although, the hiraeth that he felt was latent in his unconscious.

Reading Homi Bhabha in a Fetus Position on the Wintering Floor of my Empty Brooklyn Apartment

Reading Homi Bhabha in a Fetus Position on the Wintering Floor of my Empty Brooklyn Apartment

“Re-membering” South Korea’s Militarized Landscapes in Pax Americana: Post-Cold War US Military Camps, Camptowns, and Former Camptown Women

The continued US military presence for nearly eighty years in South Korea has produced militarized landscapes of postcoloniality in South Korea. Here, militarized landscapes denote both official American military camps and their vernacular camptowns (kijich'on) as well as social-cultural expressions affected by this spatial militarization, such as the former camptown women’s experiences. As the contours of these militarized borderlands are shifting today with the consolidating of the American military footprint in South Korea, this study seeks to connect these contemporary manifestations with their historical developments. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to what Homi Bhabha conceptualizes as “re-membering”－ “a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present.” While camps are becoming even more insulated Americanized spaces and the once marginalized camptowns are caught in a liminal stride toward internationalism, this study examines how these borderlands, which had not only embodied Korea’s coloniality but also catalyzed changes in the greater bilateral relations, are “re-membered.” It then discusses how former kijich'on women and civic organizations that constitute the “Camptown Women’s Human Rights Coalition” are at the forefront of this postcolonial “re-membering.” Through the subjectivity-formation and trans-border activism of those once rendered voiceless victims sacrificed by the state, the former camptown women themselves have demonstrated how they are the main agents of their own historical integration. Their re-membering, moreover, contributes to bringing to the national center the marginalized history of Korea’s militarized landscapes in Pax Americana, which in turn forces us to re-member our shared postcolonial trauma.

The role of education in a democracy: continuing the debate

ABSTRACT At a time when there are renewed expressions of concern about how our societies are organised and the health of our democracies, this paper focuses on the role of education in a democracy. Informed by John Dewey’s and Martin Buber’s accounts of what it is to be educated, and Homi Bhabha’s concept of third space work, the paper presents the case for a progressive education for democratic citizenship. Adopting an ethnologically-informed approach, the paper provides an in-depth look at two Catalan and two English schools, focussing on the ways in which they look to provide a democracy enabling education. The findings reveal how and why mutual cooperation, collaboration and dialogue in relationships are key elements in the modelling of an education for democratic citizenship.

The reaction to the war which came: an examination of a cold war shelter from the 1960s and the Swedish response to the war in Ukraine

ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between civilians and politicians towards cold war air-raid shelters in Sweden, and how the encounter between Russia and Ukraine might affect how individuals perceive what was previously considered obsolete relics of the cold war. The study makes use of the air-raid shelter at Halvtumsgatan 3 in Gothenburg and interviews are conducted with its tenants, the landlord of the apartment building, as well as a local politician currently part of the municipality council. The text applies a theoretical framework based on post-colonial theories such as Homi Bhabha’s Encounter and Third-Space theories, and it is stressed that a change in the relationship between civilians, the shelter and Sweden’s national foreign policy is the result of the encounter between both Ukraine and Russia. This result is attained by focusing on the case study Halvtumsgatan 3, through interviews, and observing policy changes from the Swedish government.

Racial Bigotry and Afrikaner Agonies: A Post Colonial Reading of John Maxwell Coetzee’s Novel, Disgrace (1999)

South Africa has an exceptionally rich literary environment, particularly when it comes to the experience of coping with a tragic past. Afrikaners in South Africa had the opportunity to benefit from a privileged family foundation and the best socioeconomic and political outcomes thanks to the apartheid racial segregation system. This change has exposed the whites’ illusion that they can exist outside the historical process. Apartheid having been embedded in the consciousness of both the whites and the blacks has made it difficult for the whites to accept the reversal of the status quo within the master-slave matrix. This transformed society is affecting the Afrikaners, so they are struggling to reclaim and sustain a connection with the socio-cultural, economic, and political past. There is a disconnect between the individual and the social-cultural context, which results in agonies experienced by the Afrikaners in the post-apartheid era. The paper employed a postcolonial theory as propagated by Edward Said (1978) and Homi Bhabha (1994). It was also buttressed by New Historicism that grounds socio-political and cultural interconnectedness with the prevailing historical discourses, which gives a deeper insight into human relations. The interplay between history and cultural identity, culture and hegemony, and the resultant interracial divisions that conceal covert misogyny illustrate the reality that history may be recreated from various angles. A qualitative approach based on the library was adopted. The research design used in the study was analytical. By purposive sampling, the text was selected deliberately: Disgrace (1999) by J. M Coetzee. The selected text bulks on agonies Afrikaners go through in the post-apartheid era. This study hopes to contribute to existing post-apartheid dialectics on interracial relations

Postcolonial Identity Crisis in Selected Contemporary Novels

The study argues that postcolonial novels can offer valuable insights into the nature of identity and the challenges of living in a postcolonial world. Homi Bhabha's theoretical framework is used in this study to analyze the complexities of cultural identity and the challenges that actors face as they navigate between their background and new cultural identities. The concept of hybridity, mimicry, and cultural difference developed by Bhabha are utilized to examine and comprehend these themes. It explains how novels such as Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie emphasize the contradictions between cultural hybridity and the need to adhere to mainstream cultural standards. The study also looks at the role of literature in developing our perception of cultural identity and encouraging empathy and understanding across cultures. The study employs an analytic approach for evaluating the postcolonial identity crisis in chosen contemporary novels, which entails an in-depth reading and analysis of the text. This may imply identifying essential themes and motifs relating to identity, cultural hybridity, and colonialism, as well as investigating how characters manage their sense of self in the face of cultural diversity. The study's findings emphasize the necessity of comprehending and appreciating the complexities of cultural identity in the context of globalization. It promotes constant postcolonial debate and reflection on identity as we confront the problems of cultural hybridity and try to build a more inclusive and just society that acknowledges and respects cultural differences. As a result, this study adds to our knowledge of postcolonial identity and its continuing importance within modern literature

Surrendering to the Discourse of Representation in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land

This paper explores the effects of the discourse of representation on the cultural identity of the protagonist Jassim in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land by making specific reference to Stuart Hall’s notion “The Discourse of Representation.” Michel Foucault’s theory of power/ knowledge is also significant to reveal the hegemonic power of discourse in a certain culture. Besides Hall’s and Foucault’s theories, this article draws upon the works of some other theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Louis Althusser, and Antonio Gramsci. The study explains how the primary role of power produces a certain discourse that normalizes the individual. The personal options and experiences of the main character will be scrutinized in order to explain how Jassim ultimately surrenders to the discourse of representation.

Abjecting the Racial Agency in Damon Galgut’s The Promise

ABSTRACT Being a South African post-apartheid novel, The Promise (2021) by Damon Galgut is a narrative whose characters are caught up in a nation torn by racial divisions. The novel bids a sharp comment on racial supremacy ideologies and the dead-ends such dogmas engender. As a white writer who is cognizant of the appalling racial condition of his nation, Galgut brawls to find hope in post-apartheid South Africa which does not live up to the pledged heterogeneity between races. Thus, the fundamental premise of this essay adopts the notion of the abject in the novel which is employed, I argue, to depart from the Manichean politics of black-white divide into a “Third Space” that threatens the norms of fixity. In addition, the essay makes use of Homi Bhabha’s notions of enunciation and the stereotype. These concepts help in construing the novel as a site of erupting the prevailed racial patterns in South Africa.

The History of European Stereotypes and Allegories of Representation of North Africans: Continuity Narratives and Shifting Paradigms

The representational politics of European cinema and literature were effectively determinant in shaping and reflecting the values and the ideologies of the dominant parties in dealing with encounters and representing cultural difference. Conditioned by the synchronous historical and political contexts, the work of stereotyping has persisted and Continued in deploying almost the same tropes and metaphors of representation that have been in operation since the medieval ages, constructing a logic of binarization of encounters on asymmetrical grounds. This article explores the genealogy of representation of North Africans in European cinema and literature, focusing on the metamorphosis of its dominant tropes and stereotypes over centuries. It addresses the ways fictional representation of North Africans, especially Moroccans, reinforce the orientalizing discourse of power, domination, and hegemonic construction of cultural difference on stereotypical and judgmental basis. It suggests that the visual and literary representation of North Africans has constantly kept appearing, disappearing, shifting and redefining in response to the prevailing political and historical contexts that shaped encounters between Europeans and North Africans. To track the mutation of the stereotype, its intertextuality and its hierarchical structures of power, Edward Said’s colonial discourse analysis and Homi Bhabha’s conceptualization of the stereotype will be used as theoretical frameworks in this article.

ANALYZING CULTURAL HYBRIDITY IN HOME FIRE: A POST-COLONIAL PERSPECTIVE

Cultural hybridity is an integral part of migrants’ lives who cross borders and as a result they follow new routes, side by side they connect with their roots. When people migrated due to different reasons, these people also face exploitation and biased behavior of their masters or dominant nations. With the passage of time they stand for their right and succeed somehow in achieving them. In this research work Homi Bhabha’s cultural hybridity is examined. Which is present in his book The Location of Culture. In this selected work two Muslim families migrated to Britain. And in U.S their new generation face problem of identity, home, and cultural hybridity. In diaspora people face different types of problems when they settle into a new country. In new country these people and the new generation would not welcome in positive way they considered them as outsiders and because living in foreign country when they go back to their home country their own people also not enthusiastic towards them due to cultural mixing of that specific foreign country. These people often marginalized and face so many problems in consequence. Aneeka is portray as modern and culturally hybrid character who also considered other in Britain and in Pakistan as well. It is realized when she was struggling for her dead brother, she wanted him to get back home. In this study cultural hybridity stance of Homi Bhabha and the concept of Can the Subaltern Speak? By Gayatri Spivak is applied as theoretical lens. The qualitative approach is used in this research, in which text is analyzed deeply to dig out the concepts of cultural hybridity, home, border, and mimicry in the work Home Fire. Keywords: Cultural hybridity, Home, Border, Identity, Mimicry, Diaspora.

Reimagining African womanhood in an unjust world order: exploring the writings of Ghanaian women’s rights advocates, 1970s–1980s

AbstractThis article provides the first systematic exploration of the ideas on inequality of the two Ghanaian women’s rights advocates Annie Jiagge and Florence Dolphyne, who were both part of the Ghanaian National Council on Women and Development during the 1970s and 1980s. Zooming in on their work and writings during this time, I challenge the view offered by some scholars that these decades were ‘apolitical’ and shaped by ‘quiet activism’ with regard to the Ghanaian women’s front. I show how Jiagge and Dolphyne actively rearticulated womanhood in postcolonial Ghanaian and African societies, placing women’s ‘issues’ and rights within the framework of an unequal world order. In doing so, I argue that they vernacularized the contemporary global discourse on women’s rights, shaped by the UN Decade for Women (1976–85), in a Ghanaian context, evoking what postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha has called an in-between ‘third space’ through which the many intersecting and ambivalent aspects affecting the lives of women in postcolonial Africa, and the so-called Third World at large, could be articulated.

Failed Heterotopias: The Postcolonial Gothic in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, and Anna Burns’s Milkman

‘Failed Heterotopias’ reads three contemporary postcolonial gothic novels, Anna Burns's Milkman (2019), J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) using Michel Foucault’s understanding of heterotopias alongside Homi Bhabha’s term unhomeliness. What emerges is an understanding of how the ‘post’ in postcolonial literature belies the way power continues to function in these societies. These readings reveal how histories of oppression persist even after the end of colonialism. The structures that emerge to take their place continue to buttress imperial standards that often result in the containment and enclosure of threatening forces. For this essay, those threats are women who attempt to imagine an alternative way of being in the world – through literary escapes, communal living, and forbidden love affairs. Such moments suggest that the heterotopic possibilities presented by these characters are foreclosed through patriarchal, racist, classist, and sexist forces at work in the texts. By reading these scenarios across a range of Anglophone novels, this essay uncovers patterns of oppression that, while varying across time and space, show the ways in which power, no matter who holds it, continues to push those most oppressed further from the centres of power.

Merging critical disability theory with Post-Colonial hybridity theory: a widened lens and implications

This article will briefly introduce the traditional disability studies project through the social model of disability and how its inherent theoretical limitations became the impetus to perpetuate a need to adopt critical disability theory (CDT) to expand the intellectual arsenal of the discipline. Being a reflexive inquiry that resists domination that oppresses people with disabilities, CDT’s reach produced work in conversation with other areas of critical social thought and inspired this paper to explore how post-colonial work – particularly Homi Bhabha’s hybridity theory – can be incorporated into CDT’s paradigmatic views of power. This paper concludes by addressing some of the debates and cultural implications that stem from conceptually merging CDT and post-colonial hybridity theory to frame how it can reimagine the possibilities and trajectories of a global disability movement.

Artificial intelligence-based prediction of oral mucositis in patients with head-and-neck cancer: A prospective observational study utilizing a thermographic approach

ABSTRACT JOURNAL/crsat/04.03/02201859-202306020-00003/figure1/v/2023-08-03T140821Z/r/image-tiff JOURNAL/crsat/04.03/02201859-202306020-00003/figure2/v/2023-08-03T140821Z/r/image-tiff Background: In patients with locally advanced head-and-neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), chemoradiotherapy improves outcomes. Radiotherapy commonly causes mucositis, which can significantly impede treatment and reduce the patient’s quality of life. Patients with severe mucocutaneous toxicity will show significant changes in thermal intensity early on, when compared to identically treated counterparts without toxicity. Objective: We aimed to assess the accuracy of the automated computer-aided deep learning approach in predicting the occurrence of oral mucositis in patients with HNSCC undergoing radiotherapy alone or with concurrent chemotherapy. Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted over four weeks in September 2021 in the Department of Radiotherapy at the Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital, Sangrur (Punjab, India). We enrolled patients with HNSCC who were planned for radical intent radiotherapy, with or without concurrent chemotherapy. Using an automated deep learning technique, we analyzed the images taken with a FLIR-E60 thermal camera on the same day that patients received radiotherapy, with or without chemotherapy. Thermal images were binarily classified into two grades, that is, Grade 0 (absence of mucositis) and Grade I (asymptomatic or mild symptoms of mucositis). The dataset was split into training and testing cohorts, with a split ratio of 0.8. Accuracy was calculated as the ratio of correct predicted or classified instances to the total number of instances in the dataset. Accuracy was categorized as testing accuracy and training accuracy. Results: A total of 386 thermal images from 50 patients were acquired. Of these, 308 images (79.8%) were used for the training set and 78 (20.2%) for the testing set. There were 206 images (53.4%) with Grade 0 mucositis and 180 (46.6%) with Grade I. There was a significant difference in the thermal profile of patients with Grade 0 and Grade I images; P = 0.01. The model achieved promising results with 100% training accuracy and 82% testing accuracy. This led to a significant improvement in the false-negative rate of the proposed model, indicating improved performance. Conclusion: The deep learning approach-based analysis of thermal images can be a useful technique for predicting oral mucositis at an early stage in treatment, thus helping in intensifying supportive care. The model has been tested on a diverse dataset, and its performance in terms of accuracy validates the proposed model.