The Limits of Cultural Hybridity: On Ritual Monsters, Poetic Licence and Contested Postcolonial Purifications Author(s): Pnina Werbner

Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 133-152 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2660840 . Accessed: 16/03/2011 11:18
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rai. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

http://www.jstor.org

THE LIMITS OF CULTURAL HYBRIDITY: ON RITUAL MONSTERS, POETIC LICENCE AND CONTESTED POSTCOLONIAL PURIFICATIONS
PNINA WERBNER

Keele University
Thereare manyparallels betweenhybridity theory, especially it has been developed as in theworkof Bhabha, theories liminality anthropology, and of in particularly theworkof in Turner Douglas. and These share stress sitedperformance thespecific a on and positioning of actors. in However, stress hybridity the theory the colonialencounter the source on as of reflexivity doubleconsciousness not engage, argue, and I does withthefactthat cultures own indigenous producetheir forms transgression hencealso of critical of and reflexivity and satire: ritual clowns, carnivals, poetry, the like.Moreover, and while transgressiona is potential of resistance tool whichupturns taken-for-granted hierarchies,plays it dangerously on theboundary out of context, becomea sourceof offence, can for and,taken especially postcolonial diasporas struggling recognition. raises question: for This the whatare thecreativelimits cultural of hybridity? In orderto be institutionally the effective a discipline, knowledge cultural as of difference must madeto foreclose theOther;... The Otherlosesitspowerto signify, negate, on to be to initiate historic its to its and discourse. desire, establish own institutional oppositional However the impeccably content an 'other' of culture be known, can however anti-ethnoit it the centrically is represented,is itslocationas the closure grandtheories, demand of in it the the that, analytic terms, be always good objectof knowledge, docilebodyof difthat a of of ference, reproduces relation domination is themostserious and indictment the institutional powers critical of theory (Bhabha1994:31).

We are by now all too familiar with critiquesof 'colonial anthropology', fromAsad's (1973) early deconstructivist exposure of Britishanthropology's apparent collusion with the colonial project, to the denunciation by the of authorsof Writing culture modernistanthropology's false claims to ethnographicauthority (Clifford 1988; Clifford Marcus 1986; Marcus & Fischer & 1988).1The most recentassaulthas come frompostcolonialstudies;as in the quotation above, colonial anthropologists, among others (Bhabha listsMontesquieu, Barthes,Kristeva,Derrida, and Lyotard),are accused of denying oppositionalagency to the 'other', the power to signify, negate,and initiate historicdesire.Yetwhile these critiquesurge us to recognize the historicity of culture, theirown historical narrative theyappear to construct throughan act of amnesia,an erasurefrommemoryand history a particular of strandof Britishsocial anthropology of that moved away fromdescriptions enclosed culturesto an open and explicit focus, from 1940 onwards,on colonial
Inst. (N.S.) 7, 133-152 J. Roy.anthrop.

2001. C RoyalAnthropological Institute

134

PNINA WERBNER

administration, relations, race urbanization, labour migration, 'tribalism', political ethnicity, and social movements.Dominant in this trend were anthroin pologistsassociatedwith the Rhodes-LivingstoneInstitute CentralAfrica (on 'the Manchester School', as it came to be known, see Hannerz 1980; R.Werbner 1990). The erasureis significant. However,here I want to go beyond that act of in detailsof a local culture forgetfulness order to argue thatthe infinitesimal with its seemingly arcanerituals and mythologies, studiedby key modernist as were also ways of reflecting transanthropologists, upon oppositionalagency, of gression, and culturalreflexivity. fromdenyingthe verypossibility critFar ical consciousness,modernist anthropologyaffordedinsight into how, in closed societies,ritual performances and mythsenacted ambivaapparently lences of power and paradoxesof sociality. Cultural hybridity, and transgression, liminality, key tropes animating my argument, have dominated recent writingsin culturaland postcolonial studies.In many senses this has revitalizedthe focus on topics of enduring interest anthropology to and illuminatedthem in news ways.As in some of my earlier work (e.g. P. Werbner 1997a), I attempthere to recover these metaphorsfor anthropology. One key criticismoften levelled against the is notion of culturalhybridity that it assumes the prior existence of whole in a cultures, vision of culturemuch discredited contemporary anthropology. Against that I pose the possibility that culturesmay be grasped as porous, while nevertheless constantly changingand borrowing, being able to retainat any particularhistoricalmoment the capacity to shock throughdeliberate and subversions sanctified of conflations orderings. My argumentrestson a key distinction made by Bakhtinbetween'organic'and 'intentional' hybridity. this distinction, me turn firstto a ceremonyin 1938, the To illustrate let opening of a bridge in modern Zululand, as it was describedby Gluckman (1958 [1940]). In his fine-graineddescription,Gluckman (1958: 11) reveals that the ceremonywas a culturalmishmash.It was organized by the Chief Native Commissioner(CNC), who added exotic touches to a basicallytechnocratmodernistEuropean ceremony. The key moment of the ceremonywas the acrossthe bridge.The car was cutting, the CNC's car,of a tape stretched by preceded by Zulu warriorssingingthe ihubo.Most of the importantZulu were dressedin European ridingclothes,while the Zulu king wore a lounge suit (1958: 5). The guard at the bridge was dressedin full Zulu war regalia, while most of the otherZulu men who were pagans were dressedin 'motley combinationsof European and Zulu dress'(1958: 5). There were royalZulu salutesand blessingsand European hand-clappingand hymnns, speeches in a mixture languages, of Englishand Zulu, and, after the ceremonywas over,the whites retiredto drink tea, the Zulus to drink traditional beer and eat the sacrificial meat,one beastbeing donated by the CNC to the people, the other threeby the people to theirking.The CNC was sent traditional beer across the bridge, the king a cup of tea in the opposite direction.A group of Christiansfrom a Zionist separatist sect, dressed in European clothes,sang Christianhymnsfromthe riverbank. Some of these acts were clearlyspontaneous and unplanned. Gluckman describes in detail the intricatespatial of mixingsand separations whitesand blacksbeforegoing on to discusstheir

PNINA WERBNER

135

of broader sociological significancefor an understanding power and race relations South Africain 1938. in Several key issuesconcern us here,emanatingfromGluckman's(1958: 25) conflicts between point thatthe eventwas a harmoniousone, with structural in black and white kept in abeyance.There was a sharedinterest the bridge that cut across the dominant cleavage of black and white.The project was initiatedby the CNC and built by Zulu men with voluntary successfully hospitalduringthe rainyseason. labour to provideaccess to a local maternity The common celebration The bridge was generallyfeltto be a good thing. and, even though interwas a momentof'co-operation and communication' dependencywas founded in the final analysison the 'superior force of the White group',participants formed'a single communityof two co-operating' groups (1958: 25). Invoking Fortes, Gluckman proposes, against 'culturecontact'theorists, in studying that work social change the anthropologist'must with communities rather than customs... [with]a unit of life... of common in participation the everyday political,economic and social life' (1958: 51). Such conflictualcommunitiesform a single,organized culture,he argues, ratherthan a social aggregationof heterogeneousculturalgroups,as Malinowski would have it. Importantly, then,for Gluckman,as indeed for Fortes by and dominaand Schapera,social relations, even those mnarked hierarchy are of tion, nevertheless constitutive culture:not as a unified,homogeneous contradictory, conflict-ridden and social set of beliefs,but as a fragmentary, formation. allows us to grasp Analysing opening of the bridgefromthisperspective the of the naturalness the eventsmakingup the ceremonyforparticipants, despite its apparently incongruousjuxtaposition of disparateculturalelements and The whites took it for grantedthattheyshould be drinking on tea customs. the banks of the Black Umfolosi River,just as the blacks took for granted them by the the vehicularcuttingof the tape and the sacrificial beast offered of CNC. This naturalness what Hobsbawm and Ranger (1963) have aptly called an 'invented tradition'is one that Bakhtin (1981: 358) refersto as unconscious hybridization one of the is 'organic hybridity': 'unintentional, We modes in the historicallife and evolution of languages. most important primarily by may even say that language and languages change historically means of hybridization, means of mixing of various"languages".'In such by Bakhtin (1981: 360) goes on to say, 'the mixtureremains situations mixing, of and oppositions mute and opaque, never making use of conscious contrasts ... [Yet] such unconscious hybridshave been at the same time profoundly with potentialfornew world views, productive historically: theyare pregnant with new "internalforms"forperceivingthe world.' between In his analysis, Gluckman (1958: 61) recognizesthat as conflicts new configurations existingculturestended to of black and white sharpened, cultural surfaceas means of social and political mobilizationwhich stressed an difference, argumentthat later came to be known throughthe work of as Cohen (1969) as 'political ethnicity'.Yet, I argue below,such social movements,even when theyannounce theirculturalpurityand sharp distinction, since they arise fromwithin the new social are necessarily hybridculturally, and cultural configurationsof the historicallytransformed, organically hybridized community.

136

PNINA WERBNER

The harmonyof the ceremonywas necessarily ambivalentone, given an the pervasive inequalities and separationsbetween white and black. This the ambivalence, unstablemeanings, the hybridity the bridge ceremony, of did not simplyderivefromthe fusing disparate of culturalelements, each bearing its own fixedcultural meaning. Bhabha (1994: 119) insightfully As recognizes, hybridity may be produced by a 'doubling up of the sign', a 'splitting' which is 'less than one and double'. The same object or custom placed in a different context acquires quite new meanings,while echoing old ones. The Zulu warriorstandingguard as policeman at the bridge is not a Zulu warrior. Drinking tea in the middle of the veld is quite unlike tea in Surrey on a Sunday afternoon. thissense,hybridity unconscious,yet disturbing In is and interruptive. renderscolonial authority, It Bhabha proposes,ambivalent, uncertain. This remindsus thatthe bridge ceremonyis not just a 'unit of life'but a a ceremony, staged and framedaestheticproduction.According to Bakhtin (1981: 359), 'an intentional hybridis first all a conscious of hybrid', thatis,'an within the area of an utterance, encounter, between two different linguistic consciousnesses, separatedfromone anotherby an epoch, by social differentiationor by some other factor'(1981: 358). Hence, the intentional,novelistic hybrid is not only an individualized mixing of two socio-linguistic consciousnesses,but 'the collision between differing points of view on the world that are embedded in these forms'(1981: 360). Intentionalhybridsare thus 'inevitably dialogical' (1981: thatsuch intentional are 360). Bakhtin (1981: 361) argues,moreover, hybrids 'double voiced', encapsulatedwithin the framework a single utterance. of Bhabha (1994: 36), drawingon Derrida, also stresses performathe Similarly tive dimensionsof culturalenunciation: 'the place of utterance is crossedby of the dff&ance writing... [which ensures] that meaning is never simply mimeticand transparent'. The ceremonial opening of the bridge definesa liminal space in which both intentionaland organic hybridities, conscious and unconscious, are played out. The policeman in warriorclothes,like the warriordance before the car,are intentional But much else in the ceremonyis unreflexhybrids. Seen fromBhabha's perspective, both typesof hybridity ive and spontaneous. (he does not distinguish them) framea 'thirdspace' in which the ambivalences of the colonial encounter are enacted. Bhabha (pers. comm.) uses like to liminality, hybridity, referto the moment or place of untranslatability, He draws on Benjamin's the limit where a thing becomes its alterity. of is since the intentionality argumentthat accurate translation impossible, words is lost in translation; translation no can exhaust the meaningsof the are subject to future original,especiallybecause those meaningsthemselves historicalrevision.Yettranslations can, accordingto Benjamin (1992: 70-82), extend translating the language and createnew meaningsin it. In the colonial encounter,then,it is not just the colonized who are subjected to Western while the colonized deploy borways; the colonizers too are transformed, rowed formsto tell theirown, distinct narratives which 'unsettle' and'subvert' of the culturalauthority the colonizers(Bhabha 1994: 102-22; see also Nandy 1983).

PNINA WERBNER

137

In anthropology, the liniinalhas been describedas transformative too, and transgressive throughthe conjoining incommensurables: human and god, boy and so forth. Turner's(1967: 97) words, In and man, male and female,
theneophytes neither are living nordead from one aspect, bothliving and and dead from another. Theircondition one ofambiguity paradox, confusion all customary is and a of categories Liminality perhaps regarded the Nay to all positive ... may be as structural assertions, as in some sensethesourceof themall,and,morethanthat, a realmof pure but as whencenovelconfigurationsideasand relations arise. of possibility may

Turner'stheoryof liminality, while drawingon van Gennep,has to be read in the broader theoretical context of the ManchesterSchool, which stressed that social relationsin tribalsocietieswere characterized endemic strucby turalconflicts: between groups,between different principlesof social organization,between rules and norms,and between classificatory categories.'Every social systemis a field of tension,full of ambivalence,of co-operation and contrasting struggle' (Gluckman 1963: 127). Normally, such contradictions are leftunmarkedin everyday life througha process of 'situationalselection',a termderivedfromthe work of Evans-Pritchard. such conflicts But and struggles surfacesymbolically and are 'dramatized' ritual. in They are oftenmarked and the breaking taboos.Paradoxically, by obscenities of however, outcome the and explicitaim of such transgressive performances to achieve the blessing, is and fertility, social unityof the community(Gluckman 1963: 126). Bakhtin (1984) uses a similar argument in his analysis of grotesque realism in European medievalcarnivals. Gluckmancalled thesesymbolicritualizations underlying of conflicts 'rituals of rebellion'.In relationto such rituals, raisesa question relevantto my he argument. Why are such transgressive performances vis-d-vis figures authorof ity licensed in tribalsocietiesfor the sake of communal blessing, whereas in urban civilizations, in Europe today,national ceremonies are 'marked by as adulation only'? (Gluckman 1965: 258; for his full analysis, 250-64) His see answeris thatin small-scale, face-to-face is societies,the natureof authority veryoftennot in doubt,even if the incumbencyof specificrulersis; whereas in our societies, of with theirlarge complex structures, very constitution the In is authority a matterof intensestruggle. thisarticleI raise a similarquestion in relationto Islamic societies. Why were ritualsof transgressive hybridface-to-face Muslim societies, whereas once exposed ity licensed in intimate, came to be regardedas sinful to processesof globalization, such hybridities and dangerous? As we have seen, intentional hybridityas an aesthetic is inherently political,a clash of languages which questions an existingsocial order. In I to intentionalhybridity, propose,refers the conflaanthropological theory, of constructed tion or transgression culturally categoriesin ritualand myth, as much as to the aestheticencounterbetween cultures.Culture itselfis, of course, a constructedcategory, subject to continuous processes of organic at hybridization. Nevertheless, any givenmomentsocial and cultural categories are naturalizedas givens of the social order,and it is these naturalizedcateintentional oftentransgressive gories thatformthe basis foraesthetic, hybrids, and oppositional.

138

PNINA WERBNER

I begin my discussion of Muslim societies with an example of intenin tional hybridity the ritual masquerade followingthe Eid sacrificeamong Berbers in Morocco. The ritual,I suggest, revealsthat culturesproduce their own indigenous forms of critical reflexivity and satire. Yet in a globalizing society,I argue, hybridity and transgression, while being potential tools of resistance which upturn taken-for-granted hierarchies, play dangerously on the boundary and can thus become a source of offence.In postcolonial diasporas, minoritiesoftendraw on culturestrategically fightfor to recognitionand against discrimination and oppression.But this raises the question,what are the creativelimitsof culturalhybridity? When, in what situations, does the use of intentionalhybridaestheticforms overstep the boundaries of acceptability, be experienced by vulnerable minoritiesas to painfulmockery?In relationto this,the finalpart of the paper considersthe of critique by anthropologists postcolonialhybridity theorythat arose espeand which raised also the cially afterthe publication of The SatanicVerses, more generalquestion of the limitsand possibilities communicationacross of cultures.

Order and hybridity Although a fullyfledged field of comparativepostcolonial literarystudies has only emergedrecently, thereare important parallelsto be drawnbetween its themes and some of the centralideas about ritual of modernistanthropology. Modernist anthropology was concerned above all with social orderingand social reproduction. But in thinkingabout order it discovered disorder: betwixt-and-between momentsand liminal spaces,mythical hybrid monsters and ritual clowns, matter out of place, joking relations that attackedhierarchies.2 early scholars, As fromDurkheim and Mauss to LeviStrauss, recognized, even the most rudimentary hunter-gatherer neolithic and societieswere classifiers: orderedthe world in termsof broad categories they - of above and below, male and female,carnivores and herbivores, domestic and wild, young and old, hot and cold, us and them.Whatever did not fit neatly into these arbitrary but compelling classificatory schemes was It experienced as problematic. was matterout of place (Douglas 1966) and, as such,extremely both sacredand yet dangerous, hedged with taboos,haram, often defiling. cross-overfiguresand moments were perceived Ambivalent, to be extremelypowerful,both for good and evil (Douglas 1975). Gods and sorcerers were equally hybrid,their classificatory categoriesmixed: but whereas the gods broughtlife and fertility, sorcerers the broughtdeath and barrenness. There were severalstrands the way the argument to developed about order and disorder, and hybridity. as we have seen, analysedthe liminality Turner, liminalperiod of ritesof passage as transformative momentsin which incongruous elementswerejuxtaposed,often'doubled up', plucked - with all their world.The physiologicaland emotional connotations- out of the everyday liminal phase was also, according to Turner,a time of reflexivity. neoThe with sacred,oftenesoteric,figurines and masks that phyteswere confronted mixed elements from disparatedomains, often magnifiedand exaggerated.

PNINA WERBNER

139

These monstrous images enabled them, Turnerspeculated, reflect to critically on the very constitution theirsocieties. of Douglas's work drew on Levi-Strauss's (1966; 1969) theoryof totemicclasIn sifications. his studyof myth, Levi-Strauss(1963) argued thatmyths were culturalattempts resolvethe fundamental to contradictions dilemmasthat or classificatory schemes threwup, since each societyhad a multiplicity such of schema for orderingthe world.These were orderedin homologous systems of contrast and similarity, example male: femaleas above: below.But given for the complexityof the homologies across the different classificatory schemes, and given the constantneed to overridethe realityof our culturalgrounding in nature, cultural schemagenerated theirown classificatory aporias.Myths were ways of transcending these aporias,and hence oftenfocused on monstrous or creatures clowns thatembodied the contradictions dilemmasthat and cultureitself had invented. In addition to her work on anomaly, Douglas also extended earliertheories on customary joking relationsin tribal societies.Jokingpartnerswere licensed to behave outrageously, throwexcrement, make overtsexual gestures and advances, swearand abuse,stealfood and createhavoc,all withoutcausing Yet offence. the very same joking partners also helped with funeralarrangements. first As formulated Radcliffe-Brown by (1940; 1949), joking managed ambivalencesand ambiguitiesin relationsbetween affinesor joking clans. Douglas (1968; 1975) went further. Joking, proposed,attacks she hierarchy and structures a societyforwhat they of exposes the taken-for-granted authority are: culturalconstructions. Hence joking releaseshuman spontaneity fromthe norms and constraints shacklesof customary and heightensconsciousnessof the relativity all cultureand morality. of More recentwork has built on these early modernistinsights develop to further theoretical a of and clowns understanding the place of ritualmonsters in the ritualprocess.Highlighting betwixt-and-between the qualitiesof ritual clowns, Handelman stressestheir continuous oscillation between opposites (1990: 242), so that they embody flux,process,uncertainty, 'deep instabila ity', the very boundary itself (1990: 243 passim).The reificationof these opposed qualitiesin a single figuremeans,Handelman (1990: 245) suggests, thatritualclowns have the capacityto 'mould contextto the logic of [their] own composition'. But ritual monstersare not only objects of intellectualreflectionand consciousness.As latertheories mediatesacredexchange recognize, theyactively effect movement and symbolictransactions acrossboundaries.Hybridfigures a In of ritualqualitiesbetween spaces,subjects, and communities. doing so, they and bringthe tangibleboons of fertility, baraka, life, power,into a community, removedirt, it.AsR.Werbner(1989: 61) has argued: pollution, decayawayfrom
In ritual purification healing, movement for the to boundand from disorder order requires This the moraluniverse who achieved figures arycrossing. is often by beyond community's are tricksters clown like. or and sexually They maybe wild,obscene, licentious; theyare within often to and the of alternative that transvestite, often epitome an authority paramount In the community. the do dramatise disorder. ritual Nevertheless, figures not merely peras come from of of and formance, go-betweens afar, theyare agents change, purification sacredexchange acrossthe community's moral healing. They serveas meansfordirecting
universe.

140

PNINA WERBNER

Such ritualhybridfigures found very widely.I turn first an example are to fromruralMorocco.

Ritual licence Morocco in

Every year afterthe Great Eid sacrifice, young Berber men in remote communitiesof the High Atlas mountainscelebratethe ritualof Bilmawn (thisis the name givenby Hammoudi 1993). In thisritualmasquerade, one (or sometimestwo) men dressup in sacrificial goat- and sheepskins, theirhead inserted in a goat'shead, hornsand all. Bilmawn is an androgynous figure. his back On hang a phallus and testicles, his chest a large,single breast. on Westermarck reportedthat he is also called 'the lion with sheepskins'(fromR. Werbner 1989: 62). He is accompaniedby severalritualmasqueraders representingJews, with theirleader being the rabbi. The Jews'masksare smearedwith flourand egg, and decoratedwith hairsfromthe sacrificial hides.A thirdfigureis that of a slave.Known as Ismakh,he wears a black goat burnous,while all the other ritualmasqueraders wear greygoatskins(Hammoudi 1993: 58). The masqueradersare allowed almost unlimitedlicence. They swear and attackonlookers,enact sexual copulation in public in front women, enter of the women's homes while the men of the house are absent,demand or steal food.Accordingto Hammoudi, who studiedthe ritualin 1981, these sacrificial goat clownseven satirize Qur'anic verses.As partof theirroutinetheyenact ploughing, harvesting, a mock wedding.During the whole time in which and seniormen are banishedand it becomes the domain theytakeover the village, The masqueraders of young men, women, and children. scatter greatsacks of ash over the people and theirhouses.They themselves roll in the soot of the which heat the ablutionwatersat the mosque.The ash from greatcooking-pots the fires the ablutionis an accumulationof a whole yearof burntfirewood. of One may speculatethattheseremainsof the burningin the mosque are powimbued with baraka. erfully Hence, despite theirlicentiousand transgressive behaviour,as theyscatterthe ash and flailthe people with theirhooves and the to clownsbringdesiredblessing each and everyhousehold. skins, sacrificial The sacrificial clowns are clearlyhybridfigures; they combine the attributes of human and animal,male and female,Muslim and Jew,freeman and and The slave, young and old. They turnthe world topsy-turvy back to front. has ritualitself been reported a long line of ethnologists travellers and who by visited Morocco. Early scholars mostlyattemptedto interpret as a preit Muslim fertility Hammoudi, the most recentto studythe ritual,rightly rite. and the masqueradeare linked objects to thisview,arguingthatthe sacrifice in and cannot be understoodapartfromeach other.Yethe too fails, together effected transformations my view, to grasp fullythe symbolicand structural while by the clowns as metonymiccarriersof powerfulpurityand impurity rite. of Islamic sacrificial being,at the same time,inversions the official Let us recall that when the clowns appear,the sacrificehas alreadytaken is The place in all its sober formality. Eid sacrifice an occasion of purification in which the sacrificer theirbond and expiation and the community reaffirm with Allah. Why, then, the need to incorporatethis othernessbeyond the boundary?

PNINA WERBNER

141

Reflectingon Westermarck's (1968 [1926]) account of the ritualat the turn of the century, Werbner(1989: 61-2) arguesthatboundary-crossing, R. while powerfiil,
is dangerous, and [hence] these trickster figures sometimesviolent or out of control,and are physically attackpeople around them ... theydemand symbolicgifts which are lavishedupon them with generosity Through their performance, ... ordeals are created, the passing of which gives membersof the communityaround the wild or alien figures sense of having a moved towardsa higher plane of existence.Here, the unclean is the purifier; the transgressor of moral norms,the agent of moral renewal;the victim,the victimiser; predator, the the agent of sacrifice.

Moreover,we cannot understand the hybridsacrificial goat and lion clowns of the ritualwithoutnotingthattheyare the bearersof a powerfulsexuality, dangerousbut fertilizing. Wrapped in the sacred skin of the sacrificial animal and smeared with the sacred soot and ashes of the ablution waters,they embody the grosssexuality for necessary human and naturalreproduction, as sanctified and divinelysanctioned. They inseminateand impregnate through mock battles,mock copulations,and sacred exchanges of nurtureand sub-

In thissense theyare both ordealsto be transcended As and purifiers. Bakhtin (1984) too has argued in his studyof carnival, sexuality and the lower body, excluded fromthe realm of formalreligion,are reincorporated throughthe enactment lower-status of in animalsor strangers. importantly this But figures, are imbued (via the soot) with the power case, these transgressive figures first of the sacrificial itself, act and the connection to God it has effected. Hammoudi (1993: 65) tells us thatpeople were reluctant speak of the to masqueradeat other times,because 'that is when people do and say obscene This is, of course,the way such liminal,taboo-breaking momentsare things'. usuallytreated.In the 1980s, however,the ritualwas under a very different sort of threat, this time fromMuslim reformists who wanted to eliminateit thatthe ritualwas unentirely. They argued,much like the old ethnologists, Islamic,bida, unlawful innovation. One man told Hammoudi (1993: 66):'these are customsfrombefore... these are the jahiliya... The people are Muslim, and all of a sudden they call themselves Jews and rabbis! It is not possible. And then,someone who imitates people afterwards a belongs to thatpeople!' The battleis pitchedbetween the puristreformers the traditionalists, and those who want to continue the ritual, each with theirown vision of what constitutesauthenticculturaland religiousauthority (1993: 167).

stance. Theythendepart, the and of old with carrying dirt pollution the year them.

and and Impure pure:intentional organic hybridities

Ritual clowns and monstersare very much like avant-garde works of art or to novels: they are meant to shock, to inseminate,to impregnate, bring otherness frombeyond the boundariesinto established routinesof daily life. to to They are intentional hybridities; theywork to transform, revitalize, create new ordealsto be transcended. as They generate, Bhabha has rightly proposed, liminal spaces, betwixt-and-between tropes that render authoritystructures When are theypart ambivalent. But what are the limitsof such hybridities?

142

PNINA WERBNER

of the revitalizing process of social renewal,as they appear to be in rural Morocco, and when are theyexperiencedas an unacceptableattackon all that is sacred,as they seemed to be by the Islamistreformists? Secondly,is there something about the postcolonial condition that makes such intentional hybrids especiallythreatening some, whereasbeforetheywere accepted as to a bit of fun,a good laugh, a moment of hedonisticliberationthat did not reallythreaten underminethe social order? to New religiousfundamentalist movementsof purification, whetherJewish, or themselves Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim are,somewhatparadoxically, hybridsof modernity. They are regimentedand bureaucratized, scripturalist and procedural. extremethe inherenttendency They take to a new modernist of all religionsto classify rightand wrong,good and evil,the acceptable and the unacceptable, the normal and the transgressive. They allow forno exceptions,no anomalies,no betwixt-and-betweens. They seek to own the instruments of governance and the state in order to exploit its technologies of power. Some have arguedthatnationalism too, the archetypal institution moderof nity, seeks purityand homogeneity. The boundariesof the nation-state, unlike An those of the old dynasticor religious empires,are clearly demarcated. is to inherenttendencyof nationalism thus to turn racist, expunge,margininternalstrangers malignant and impurematter out of alize, or subordinate as place (see Bauman 1989). But thissimplifies complex and highlydynamic the relationbetween nationalbelonging and citizenship. Citizenshipoftenallows for or room for culturalheterogeneity, religiouspluralism, culturalhybridity, multiculturalism. Moreover,the nation is itselfa negotiatedand highlycontestedsocial order, markedby intenseconflicts between classes, lifestyles, politmen ical ideologies,religiousaffiliations, town and country, regionalloyalties, and women.There is a good deal of criticaldebate withindemocraticnationstateseven beforemigrants, or enterthe picture. ethnics, religiousminorities The past itself a contestedterrain different is for nationalfractions. This is true the even of European nationalisms, only ones which posit a 'natural'cultural or linguistichomogeneityas the raisond'etrefor the very existence of the are nation. Postcolonial nationalisms almost always,by contrast, linguistically and ethnically plural.Or, as in the postcolonialMiddle East,neitherlanguage, religion,nor culturedivide the Arab nations,yet they remain,and perceive themselves be, discretepolitical entities. to Leaving aside forthe moment,then,the important question of nationalism, let us considerthe two contrasting hybrids presentedhere so far:the sacrifiwho want cial goat clowns of the Eid masqueradeand the Muslim reformists to abolish themas pollutingthe purityof Islam.These represent two conthe the trasting types of hybridization posited by Bakhtin: the one intentional, other organic.4 As we have seen,we may say thatdespitethe illusionof boundedness, culturesevolve historically unreflective mimeticappropriathrough borrowings, As and inventions. There is no culturein and of itself. Ahmad tions,exchanges, of (1995: 18) puts it, the 'cross-fertilisation cultureshas been endemic to all movements people ... and all such movements history of in have involvedthe of travel,contact,transmutation, hybridisation ideas, values and behavioural norms' (see also Sahlins 1999). At the same time,and thisamplifies Bakhtin's

PNINA WERBNER

143

point,organichybridization does not disruptthe sense of orderand continuity:new images,words,objects,are integrated into languageor cultureunconof sciously. But organichybrids begin to renderprior structures authority do ambivalent;in this sense, they are 'pregnantwith potential for new world views' (Bakhtin 1981: 360). of Islamist and reform movements, propose,are unconscious I hybrids modernity. Self-consciously they reject any kind of syncretic amalgamationas bida, and theyparticularly Westernmoderrejectthe ethicalnorms of a perceived nity. Instead,theyturnback to the past,to the gloriousperiod of Islam at its foundation. But theirverybureaucratic structure and modes of operationand dissemination modernist. are are As organic hybridsof modernity which seek purity, Islamists parthe hostileto any intentional thatare meant ticularly aesthetic religioushybrids or to shock, change, challenge,revitalize, disruptorder throughdeliberate, or intendedfusionsof unlike social languagesand images.They rejectthe ironic double consciousnesscreatedby intentional hybrids. Bakhtin'sdistinction usefulfor theorizingthe simultaneouscoexistence is of both cultural change and resistanceto change in religious,ethnic, or migrantgroups and in postcolonial nation-states. What is felt to be most is threatening the deliberate, provocativeaestheticchallenge to an implicit social orderand identity.Yet same aesthetic the from may also be experienced, a different social position, revitalizing 'fun'.Such aesthetic as interventions and are thus critically different fromthe routineculturalborrowingsand appropriations nationalor diasporicgroupsthatunconsciously by createthe grounds forfuture social change.Demotic discoursesdeny boundaries, while the domas inant discoursesof the vely same actors demand that they be respected, Baumann (1997) has argued. The danger that the aestheticposes for any closed social universewith a single monological,authoritative, unitarylanguage is that of a heteroglossia 'that rages beyond the boundaries' (Bakhtin 1981: 368). Intentional hetand languages.By contrast, eroglossiasrelativizesingularideologies, cultures, the notion of organic hybridization of castsdoubts on the viability simplistic models of culturalholism,the idea that we should studya 'unit of scholarly custom'ratherthan a 'unit of life'.

The limits cultural of hybridity

in is The objection of Islamists funand hybridity comprehensible termsof to that theyhave set themthe very narrowyardsticks religiousauthenticity of for selves.But what are the limitsof cultural people?When hybridity ordinary and become unacdo ritualmasquerades cease to be revitalizing enjoyable and and When and why do hybrid ceptable? postcolonialnovelscease to be funny and Afterall, poetry, includingsatirical entertaining become deeply offensive? in and agonisticpoetry, has long been an integralinstitution many Muslim societies. Geertz (1983: 117) describesit as 'morally Writingabout Moroccan poetry, the ambiguousbecause it is not sacredenough to justify power it actuallyhas and not secularenough forthatpower to be equated to ordinary eloquence'.

144

PNINA WERBNER

The Moroccan oral poet, speaking in Arabic,a sacred language,'inhabitsa region between speech typeswhich is at the same time a region between worlds,between the discourseof God and the wrangleof men'. In other words,Moroccan oral poetry is a hybridof social discoursesin and interruptive.5 Hence poets the Bakhtiniansense,and as such disturbing To transgression and real offence. must tread a fine line between delightful judge the response of their audience, they must share a whole number of to experiences, and emotionalsensitivities art,poetry, implicitunderstandings, religion, and life.Geertz (1983: 99 passim)calls thisaestheticcomplex a local we Extendinghis insight, may argue thatonly someone who fully 'sensibility'. a can play upon and transgress local aesthetic has such a local sensibility goat without causing offence.However outrageous the Eid ritual sacrificial clowns are, they still observe limits;beyond those limits their actions may arouse hostility even violence. or But postcolonialsocietiesare no longer intimatesocietieswith 'local' aesstablenotionsof theticsensibilities and, as Gluckmanwould have it,relatively are Aestheticcommunities formedin them throughand legitimateauthority. consumergoods and'neo-tribal' around mass-produced class and sub-cultural lifestyles (Maffesoli1995). Moreover,as Bourdieu (1984; especially1993) in has as particular argued,the fieldof high art has been reconstituted a discrete for and knowledgeableelite of expert fieldof tasteand distinction a discerning and creativity accorded are It innovation critics. is a fieldin which competitive are high value, and in which noveltyand avant-gardetransgression highly rewarded. There is thus,he proposes,a constantattemptto create disjunctions masses. the same time, between elite tastesand those of the petitbourgeois At novelists would like to reach a mass readership. even avant-garde in Postcolonial diasporic literature English is produced partlywithin this in such as Salman Rushdie rarefied postmodernatmosphere, which novelists or Hanif Qureshi are part of a wider cosmopolitanliterary cohort of writers, postcolonialcriticstoo novelists, and poets (see Fowler 2000). Like novelists, are included within this enchantedcircle of refinedtasters. The special conthatSouth Asian diasporicwritersand criticshave made to hybridtribution ity theoryhas been, in theirown words,to elaboratethe hybridfigureof the postcolonialmigrantand, alongside that,to create and inventa hybridliterwords,images,and tropesand ary stylethat draws on Indian subcontinental weaves them into the English language in delightfully or funny, provocative, in to of disturbing ways.6The originality, particular, Rushdie's contribution the world of English literature, measured by elite canons of high taste,has been breathtaking. pure narratives Postcolonialnovels,Bhabha has argued,serve to 'interrupt' of nation.For Bhabha (1994: 142, 158), nationalism neverhomogeneousand is it transgresperforrative unitary, is the liminalspace createdby the permanent sion of national grand narratives, eternaland 'pedagogic', by the 'shredsand patches'of the quotidian'daily plebiscite'of manynationalvoices,by cultural discoursesfromthe margins. Drawing on Derrida, Bhabha locates agency in the act of interruptive as enunciation, we have seen.As Gilroy(1993: 126, 161a 2) also argues, what thisdoes is to createa 'double consciousness', splitsubject, a fractured this framed (Bhabha 1994: 214).To an anthropologist reality-doubly echoes familiar Liminalmasks, goats,ritual possessed'lions' or sacrificial tropes.

PNINA WERBNER

145

clowns as anomalous creatures frombeyond the boundaries,all create such double consciousnesses, except thathere the discursive setting the nationand is the marginal, hybrid, anomalous,betwixt-and-between, highly potentcreatures are postcolonialmigrants; theircreativeworksof high culture. or One might even suggest that the transgressive and reflexivenature of the modern novel is equivalent to the kinds of 'ritualsof rebellion' I have describedhere,an institutionalized, symbolicformof oppositionto the estabis lished order.In the case of the novel,this sanctified symbolicinterruption one enshrinedby 'enlightened' modern bourgeois society. such, the novel As createsdialogical hybridity and reflexiveness without necessarily being seen to pose a serious threat a liberalsocial order.One has only to thinkof the to elaborateceremonialsof publicityaccompanyingthe launch of a new novel, its aestheticdesign and set-aside spaces (it must not, of course, either be destroyed taken too seriously)to unmaskits hidden ontology:a ritualized or object, hedged with taboos, a modern-day equivalent of liminal sacra, of boundary-crossing pangolinsor humanized sacrificial goats. Artistic creativity not,however, is only the prerogative cosmopolitan of postcolonial elites.In Britainthereis also a local diasporicpoetryin the vernacular,Urdu. Mushairas, poetry readings, extremely are popular among Pakistani settlers. Although not writtenin Arabic and hence not quite as sanctified linguistically their as Arabic counterparts, Urdu poetrycombines high art and mixture. The bigger satirein an unstable, critical, and potentially transgressive Much mushairas include Urdu poets renownedboth locallyand internationally. of thepoetry love poems,ghazals, is which oftendeploystock, formulaic phrases, but now and then poets produce commentarieson the diasporic condition I itself. Especiallygood poems are greetedwith loud shouts of appreciation. use two poems recordedat one such eventin Manchester, both by local poets, is of as an example.The first clearlywrittenfromthe perspective a politically conscious proletarian (wordsin inverted commas were spoken in English):
Seasons Migrant Friends,in a 'hotel"aI have worked and toiled For my belly,I carried a bucketfulof soilb Consumed by summer heat in the deep cold of winterc I wasted my hard-earnedlabour on 'pubs','clubs', and girls.
c

arestaurant b worked extremely hard

the suffering heat of the cooking in cold winters

A second poem revealsthe sense of loss and nostalgiawhich first generation Pakistanimigrant settlers experience:
'Why is it thatonlyI cannot sleep?' The bed is warm and the room is cosy no No fearof tomorrow, work worry 'Ruby' is sleeping,so is 'Rosy' 'Cheeky' is asleep,so is 'Nosy,a It is only I who cannot sleep Why is it that only I cannot sleep?
a

nicknamesof his children,born and broughtup in Britain

146

PNINA WERBNER

The fifth and sixthlines are famous, writtenby the poet Mirza Ghalib,the nineteenth-century Urdu poet who witnessedthe decline of Muslim power and the rise of Britishcolonialism.In the original version the previousline by was 'I know deathwill come one day'. Stuntled the scale of the loss,Ahmed politi(1997: 45) tells us, 'in an oftenquoted verse,perhapsone of the first cal poems in Urdu, Ghalib vividlyrevealsthe darknessof the Muslim mind / confronting disintegration: the "There is no hope in the future Once I could laugh at the human condition / Now thereis no laughter"',and elsewhere (1997: 172), "'There is no solution in sight/ Once therewas mirthin the heart / Now nothingmakes me smile"'. The poet implicitly evokesthe despairof the colonial experiencein lamenting his exile:
They all are happy,speaking English With sweet 'Lancashire''accents'. They do not understandus, nor we them Even 'communication'is broken 'Ti, tu, ta, tatar'b I do not understand Why is it that only I cannot sleep? We cry not just about speakingEating,drinking, washing,sleeping,c How easy to be without God, How can one be woith God?d We cannot see our way throughthis Why is it that only I cannot sleep? I went to the 'GP' to tell my woes They all sleep,but I cannot So what have you been thinkingof? Only of what has been gained and loste But even thinkinghelps me not Why is it, Oh healer,that only I cannot sleep? I took a 'valium' last night I even put 'baan'f on my eyes I've done all I can to find a remedy Talking about Rumi, Sanai, and Razig Now no talk helps Why is it that only I cannot sleep? I even watched 'television' And all the 'season''Christmas''films' What is the cause of my dead heart? Having peiformed the 'recitation' Still,the heart'svoice fails Why is it that only I cannot sleep? We like to displayour piety While doing deeds that should not be done Having done them,we repent And we repentour repentances Nor do we feel ashamed Why is it that only I cannot sleep?
b d

in termsof addressin Urdu All these are different England. and living with them he himself The poet implies that his childrenhave lost theirfaith, has difficulty retaininghis Islamic faithin Britain. by coming to England f an ointmentg names of famous Muslim poets

PNINA WERBNER

147

Both of thesehybrid poems mix Englishand Urdu wordsand phrasessatirically,while commentingironicallyon the predicaments a poet's exile, in of which dreamsof successhave been displacedby a reality sweating restauin of rantkitchens failing communicatewith one's children. the same time, or to At the second poem also expressesa sense of pain and nostalgicyearningfor a less hybridcultureand faith. The question is: is this yearningin some sense as wrong?Theories thatcelebratehybridity an attackon culturalessentialism and criminalizecultureas a source of evil fail to recognize thatthe matrices of cultureare also,forsubjectsthemselves, matrices ethicalvalue,responthe of sibility, sharedsociality(see also Levi-Strauss and 1994: 422-3).7 In the present deconstructive moment,any unitary conceptionof a bounded cultureis pejoratively labelled naturalistic and essentialist. the alternatives But seem equally unconvincing: 'culture'is merelya false intellectual if an construction, inauor thenticnostalgic imaginary, a bricolage of artificially designed capitalist consumerobjects,thisleaves most postmodernsubjectsstrippedof an ethical lifeworld.One mighteven argue thatculturalhybridity powerfulbecause is it originatesfromthat life world and the orders and separationsit prescribes. as Moreover,ethnic and religiousminoritiesuse culturestrategically a rallying banner to demand equal rightsand symbolic citizenshipin the public domain. Culture thus becomes a tool in an emancipatory battle.

The Satanic Verses came to the fore in debates about The question of cultureversushybridity the Muslim responseto the publicationof The SatanicVerses and the offence it evidentlycaused Muslim feelings.The Satanic Verses was a book about in written a hybridmode thatchallengedboth pure theoriesof relihybridity and gion (Islamicfundamentalism) pure theoriesof the nation (racismor culsacreddomain turalracism).But it seemed to spill over beyond the ritualized, which generatedintolerof high art and to become a political intervention a literaance ratherthan tolerance.Partlyas a result, criticalanthropological on of turehas evolved thatreflects the limitations the postcolonialcelebration of culturalhybridity and religioussyncretism, though these were panaceas as for religiouscommunalism, ethnic racism, and culturalintolerance. Criticizinga tendencyof elite Indian intellectuals such as Nandy (1983; 1990) to see a prior religious syncretism (Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist) as more tolerantthan currentfundamentalist Hindu religious revivalist movements,van der Veer (1994) has argued that syncretism disguisesinequalities undera veneerof opennessand universal eclecticism. There is always, mainhe tains, a dominant or hegemonic element in syncreticcults, for example, Sufi saints' cults in South Asia or Gandhian universalism, and in practice also unequal participation inclusionof different and groupsin such discourses. In relationto The SatanicVerses, derVeer (1997: 102) criticizesBhabha's van (1994: chap. 11) celebrationof the book as a greattextof migration and selfrenewal,and argues that its provocativeinsultingof the Prophet and the of Qur'an simply intensifiedthe marginalization a Muslim underclassin Britain and Europe, already suffering racism and economic subordination. The image of fanatical Muslims,which theircollectiveresponseto the novel

148

PNINA WERBNER

provoked, back the course of race relations Britainand Europe,he says, set in by manyyears. Echoes of van derVeer'sposition are found in other work by anthropologists, of whom stress all the vulnerability, backwardness, and deprivation a of Muslim diasporicunderclass Britain.It was the sense of alienationand marin ginalization thisunderclass, argument of the goes, thatpushed them to defend theircultureand sacred icons againstwhat was perceived to be a deliberate insult(Asad 1993; Fischer& Abedi 1990; Friedman 1997). Fischerand Abedi (1990) see this responseas part of an ongoing class war in Muslim society in itself, which satiricalpoetry has alwaysbeen used as a dissenting tool by intellectual elites,while being rejectedby petitbourgeois conservatives. Friedman (1997) focuseson postcolonialintellectuals theWest whom, he argues, in are a small,self-congratulatory havinglittlenotion of the problemsfaced elite by proletarian migrants livingin urban poverty. The same point is echoed by Ahmed (1992: 164-6) in his critique of the snobberyand cronyismof this relatively secularized,South Asian Muslim elite.The disjunctionand lack of communicationbetween elites and masses is also one stressedby Fowler (2000), who suggeststhat Rushdie as a novelistwas primarily responsiveto the demands of the art field for avant-garde innovation.In his ivory tower, he failed entirely anticipatethe wholly negativeresponseto the novel by to fellowPakistanis Britain, in even thoughthe novel was supposedlyabout them and even though it narrates almostprophetically reactionto it. the My own responseto the book has been somewhat different. First,I have seen no groundsfordescribing local Pakistanis merelyan underprivileged, as In in deeply religiousunderclass. my observation, Pakistanis the diasporaform an aestheticcommunity which celebrates 'fun' in the formsof music,dance, and masquerade,much to the disapprovalof a relatively satire, small group of religiousreformists. Pre-weddingmehndi (henna) celebrationsby women include ritualmasqueradingand clowning,in which the women oftendress old and up as disgusting men and in which arrangedmarriage, sexuality, men in general are spoofed and satirized,while romanticlove is celebrated in singingand sensual dancing (P.Werbner1986; 1990: chap. 9; see also Raheja & Gold 1994). The satiricalspoofingof Pakistaniinter-generational relations in BritishPakistanimovies such as 'East is East' exemplifies Asian celebration of self-critical, Cricketand,as we have seen,poetryreadtransgressive laughter. ings,are extremely see popular pursuits(on cricketand hybridity, P. Werbner in 1996b; 1997b). In addition,Pakistanis the diaspora consume an unadulterated diet of Bombay filmsand of audio-cassettes film music, bhangra, of or which are all extremely jazzed-up qawwaliSufi devotionalsinging, popular. also differs fromthe usual run of interMy readingof The SatanicVerses I pretations. have argued (P Werbner 1996a) that the figureof the Prophet set depicted in the novel is one of toleranceand almost-perfection, againsta host of counter-selves who are all deeply flawed. The confrontation with,and ultimateexecution of, the poet Baal, a figurewho is, for most of the novel, devoid of moralfibre the entirely despitehis artistic talents, highlights ambiguous authority amoral poetry vis-a-vis of without resolving religiousmorality, thisdilemma fully. also raisesthe question of the limitsof tolerance. It The Satanic Verses not, then, simply a novel that celebrateshybridity, is the epitomizedby thatfamiliar trope of diasporicwriting, figureof the post-

PNINA WERBNER

149

If colonial migrant. thiswere all the novel was,it would not be worthdefending. For Rushdie, migration, hijra, a more profoundexperience of converis sion and ethical search for a new reality. But even if we take the novel as a serious critiqueof religiousintoleranceand not just a postmodernspoof,this does not do away with the question of whetherit should have been written, and writtenin such an obscure way thatits serious meaningsare completely of The factthatit appears to be a saclost to all but a tinyminority readers. rilegiousattackon Islam and the Prophet makes this the truthof the novel for the majority. Given the clash of emotional aestheticsthat the novel has created,and the deep offenceit generatedeven among elite and relatively Muslims (at least in Britain),the question thatneeds to be liberal, fun-loving The asked is not whetherit challengesa puritanical religiousfundamentalism. real question is this:in a global context,when does transgressive hybridity acrosscultures the sake for facilitate, when does it destroy, and communication of social renewal?

Conclusion
in How does one treadthe line of acceptableinterruptive hybridity the postcolonial world?This is a world in which all identities 'palimpsest', overare laid and reinscribed(Bauman 1997). Given these historicalinscriptions and reinscriptions different of subjective identities, differentially positioned,the of in analysis postcolonialstruggles authority public lifepresents dauntfor a ing challenge(see R. Werbner1996: 4). Debates about culturalhybridity necis essarilyrest on notions of rightand wrong. But in reality, hybridity not essentially good, just as cultural essentialism not intrinsically is evil. When women or minoritiesstruggleto gain recognitionfor 'their' culture in the public domain, they are makinglegitimateclaims to symboliccitizenshipin the nation-state. More thanjust celebrating hybridity, need to ask whethercultural we movements are criticaland emancipatory conservative or and exclusive,whether theyrecognizedifference allow culturalcreativity, deny the rightto be and or different. poetic licence is not unlimited; be effective, mustwalk the But to it fine line between social languages so that humour is not read as painful mockery. must retaina local sensibility a globalizingworld. Otherwise, It in ratherthan leading to a double consciousness,a global cultural ecumene (Hannerz 1996) which some scholarsoptimistically evoke,such hybridtransgressions can lead only to a polarizationof discourses. One of the important pointsarisingfromthe anthropological studyof ritual is hybrids thatcriticalconsciousnessdoes not necessarily emerge solely from the encounterbetween discreteculturesor froma position of strangerhood on the marginsof the nation.A key issue is thatof reflexivity within,as well as in the encounterbetween,cultures. Ewing (1997: 20) has argued against the assumptionby some anthropologists and sociologistsof 'a prior [precolonial] existence of an unreflective plenitude in which traditionis hegemonic and simplyreproduced'.So, too, therehave been manyinstances the in historyof the English novel, for example, in which transgressive critiques of the social order have come fromwithin,fromEnglish novelists, just as

150

PNINA WERBNER

indigenousMoroccan poetryand ritualserve to heightenconsciousnessof a local moral order beyond the West. is This is where an anthropological theoryof hybridity crucial. It makes clear that the encounter of order with disorder,however culturallyconis structed, always contextualand sited,no matterif this be in the microdivisionsof village life or in the meeting politicalgenderedand generational of a local cultureand Westerncolonialism, in the ceremonyby the bridge as in modern Zululand. Whether culturalhybridity generative is and fertilizing depends on how its varied audiences interpret For some, multiculturalism, it. culturalborrowingsand mixings, an constitute attackon theirfeltsubjectivIn from ity. a world in which local people feeltheircultureto be under threat globalizing Western cultural forces or from incoming strangermigrants, and fun,but as interruptive hybridity may be experienced not as revitalizing a The line between respectand threatening prior social order and morality. as transgression, anthropologists studying joking relationshave long recognized,is an easy one to cross. This is ever more so in postcolonialnationsand the ambivalent encounterstheygenerate.

NOTES

- pathological'.

Condition on presented a conference 'The Postcolonial at A version thispaperwas first of version Morocco, 12-14March1998.Thepresent University, Kenitra, ofHybridity' IbnTofail at of University Manches'Manchester -Visions andVoices', 99 was presented theconference to stimfor the at ter,17-21 October1999. I wishto thank participants bothconferences their I grateful Homi K. Bhabhaforhis verygenerous to ulating comments. am also particularly my commentary his workwhichhas,I hope,muchenhanced understanding on transatlantic to of it and itsdis/connections anthropology. anthropology' referto anthropological I theoriesbased on systematic 'By 'modernist including interpretivist. the encompassingvariety approaches, a of empirical research, between Bakhtin's and explicit connections 2Hence Stallybrass White (1986: 193),drawing like Gluckman, Leach, theorists Levi-Strauss, of and anthropological theoly carnivals modernist whichbegan ... was Turner, Douglas,comment:'It not by accident thatan anthropology and of was the mechanisms socialclassification led ontothequestion polof byexploring ordering lutionrites and filth'. the realism popularculture of attempts suppress grotesque to 3Post-Renaissance bourgeois and are discussed Stallybrass White(1986: 9 passim,193-4). by theory, alsoYoung(1995:21see as to of 4For a discussion thisdistinction critical hybridity 5). he a (1981) deniesthat poetry be hybrid, characteristic attributes can 5Interestingly, Bakhtin to thenovel. this it colonialwriter, who initiated exuberant Kipling, English an 6Ironically, was Rudyard in for linguistic hybridization, instance Kim. 'one has to agreeto pay the price:to knowthatcul7Thus Levi-Strauss (1994: 422) says: theirown of each of whichis attached a lifestyle value system its own,foster to and tures, thistendency healthy not- as peoplewouldliketo haveus think is and and peculiarities, that

REFERENCES A. Race of postcoloniality. and Class 36: 3, 1-20. Ahmad, 1995.The politics literary and and London: Routledge. Ahmed, A.S. 1992.Postmodernism Islam:predicament promise.

PNINA WERBNER

151

1997. Jinnah, Pakistanand Islamicidentity: search Saladin. London: Routledge. the for and encounter. London: Ithaca Press. Asad,T. (ed.) 1973. Anthropology thecolonial

1993. Genealogies religion. of Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press. Bakhtin, M. 1981. Thle dialogic imagination (trans.C. Emerson & M. Holquist).Austin: University TexasPress. of and 1984.Rabelais hisworld (trans. Iswolsky). H. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
and Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity theHolocatust. Cambridge: Polity Press. 1997. The making and unmaking of strangers. Debatingcultural In multihybridity: identities thepolitics anti-racism and cultural of (eds) P.Werbner& T. Modood, 46-57. London: and alliances.In Debatingcultural multi-cultural identities thepolitics aniti-racisin hybridity: of (eds)

Zed Books. and of Baumann, 1997.Dominant demotic G. discourses culture: their relevance multi-ethnic to P Werbner T. Modood,209-25.London:Zed Books. & H. Benjamin, 1992 (1973). Illuminations H. Arendt, W (ed. trans. Zohn). London:Fontana.
Bhabha, H.K. 1994. The location culture. of London: Routledge.

P Bourdieu, 1984.Distinction. London:Routledge& KeganPaul.

of Mass:Harvard Press. Clifford, 1988. The predicament culture. J. Cambridge, University & G. Marcus(eds) 1986. Writing culture. of Press. Berkeley: University California 1993. Thle fieldof artproduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.

sainthood: and Ewing, K. 1997. Arguing psychoanialysis Islam. Durham, N.C.: Duke modernity,

M. and London:Routledge& KeganPaul. Douglas, 1966.Purity dainger. in Man (N.S.) 3, 1968.The socialcontrol cognition: of somefactors joke perception. 361-76. 1975.Implicit meanings. London:Routledge& KeganPaul.

in London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cohen, A. 1969. Customand politics urban Africa.

Press. University M. Press. Fischer, & M. Abedi 1990.Debating Muslims. Madison: University Wisconsin of

17: 1, 39-62. 1997. and Friedman,J. Globalcrises, struggle cultural the for identity intellectual porkbarrelling: in In ethnics nationals an era of de-hegemonisation.Debatand versus cosmopolitans locals, Modood,70-89. London:Zed Books. C. London:Fontana. Geertz, 1983.Localkniowledge.
multi-cultural identities thepolitics anti-racisml P Werbner & T. and ing cultural hybridity: of (eds)

affair. Cultureand Society Fowler,B. 2000. A sociological analysisof The SatanicVerses Theory,

P and consciousness. London: Verso. Gilroy, 1993. The BlackAtlantic: modernity dotible in Zululand (Rhodes-Livingstone Gluckman,M. 1958 (1940). Anialysis a socialsituation modern of in 1963. Orderaindrebellion tribal London: Cohen & West. Africa. 1965. Politics, and ritualin tribal law Oxford: Basil Blackwell. society. A. P Hammoudi, 1993. Thevictiim itsmasks aind (trans. Wissig). Chicago:University Press. an Handelman, D. 1990. Models and mirrors: towards anthropology publicevents.Cambridge: of

Press theRhodes-Livingstone for Institute. Papers28). Manchester: University

Press. University the Hannerz, 1980.Exploring city. U. New York:ColumbiaUniversity Press.

1996. Transnational connections. London: Routledge.

M. London: Sage. Maffesoli, 1995. The timeof tltetribes.

E. Hobsbawm, & T. Ranger(eds) 1963. Theinventiontradition. of Cambridge: University Press. C. Levi-Strauss, 1963. Structural anthropology C. Jacobson& B. Grundfest (trans. Schoepf. London:Penguin. mind. 1966. Thesavage London: & Weidenfeld Nicholson. 1969. Totemism R. London:Pelican. (trans. Needham). 1994.Anthropology, and politics: conversation DidierEribon.In Assessing race with a cultural 420-9.New York:McGraw-Hill Inc. anthropology R. Borowski, (ed.)

1986.Anthropology G. as cultural Press. Marcus, & M. Fischer critique. Chicago:University

Delhi: Oxford Nandy, A. 1983. The intimate enemy:loss and recovery seWundercolonialis,ui. of

Press. University 1990.The politics secularism the recovery religious of and of In tolerance. Co0tmmuand survivors SouthAsia (ed.) V. Das, 69-93. New Delhi: Oxford University in nities, riots Press.

Radcliffe-Brown, 1940.On jokingrelationships. 13, 195-210. A.R. Africa 1949.A further on jokingrelationships. 19, 133-40. note Africa

152

PNINA WERBNER

Raheja, G.G. & A.G. Gold 1994. Listento theheron's words: reimnagining and kinship North gender it Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 5, 399-422. P. Stallybrass, & A. White 1986. The politicsand poeticsof transgression. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell

India.Berkeley: University California of Press. M. 1999. Two or threethingsthat I know about culture. Sahlins, Journal the Royal of

University Press. Turner, 1967. The V. forest symbols. of Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press. Van der Veer,P 1994. Syncretism, multiculturalism the discourseof tolerance. and In London:Routledge. 1997. 'The enigmaof arrival': hybridity authenticity the global space. In and in & T. Modood,90-105.London:Zed Books. P Werbner, 1986. The virgin theclown: and ritual in elaboration Pakistani Man weddings. (N.S.) 21, 227-50.
1990. The migration process: capital, and among British Pakistanis. Oxford:Berg. gifts offerings Syncretism/anti-syncretism: thepolitics religious of synthesis (eds) C. Stewart& R. Shaw, 196-211.

Debatingcultural hybridity: multi-cultural identities thepolitics anti-racisin and of (eds) P Werbner

Zed Books. 1997b. 'The Lion of Lahore':anthropology, cultural performance ImranKhan.In and and Anthropology cultural studies (eds) S. Nugent& C. Shore, 34-67.London:PlutoPress. Werbner, 1989.Ritual R. passage, sacred journey. Washington, Smithsonian D.C.: Institution Press. 1990. South-Central Africa: Manchester the School and after. Localizing In strategies: Academic Press. 1996. Introduction: In multiple identitiesAfrica in identities, pluralarenas. Postcolonial & 1-26.London:Zed Books. (eds) R. Werbner T. Ranger, E. and in Westermarck, 1968 (1926). Ritual belief Morocco, 2. New York:University vol. Books.
Young, R. 1995. Colonial desire: in and culture race.London: Routledge. hybridity theory, regionaltraditions ethnographic of writing(ed.) R. Fardon, 152-81. Edinburgh: Scottish

1997a. Introduction: dialectics cultural the of In hybridity. Debating cultural hybridity: multi-cultural identities the and politics anti-racism P.Werbner T. Modood, 1-25. London: of & (eds)

Theory, Cultureand Society 4, 53-80. 13:

1996a. Allegories sacred of imperfection: passion, hermeneutics magicin TheSatanic and Verses. Current Anthropology(Anthropology Public, 37 in supplement), 55-86. 1996b.Fun spaces:on identity social empowerment and amongBritish Pakistanis.

Les limites de l'hybridismeculturel:des monstresrituels,de la licence poetique et des purifications postcoloniales contestees
Re'sume

telle I1y a de nombreux entre theorie l'hybridisme, la de particulierement qu'elle paralleles en a et developpee dans les travaux Bhabha,et les theories la 'liminalite' anthrode de placentun pologie,particulierement les travaux Turner Douglas.Ces theories dans de et accentconmmun la notionde performance sur spesitueedansl'espaceet surles positions cet des Dans la theoriede l'hybridisme, accentest place surla rencontre cifiques acteurs. toutefois de colonialecommesourcede reflexivite de duplicite conscience; soutiens et je leurs formes ne du que cetargument tient compte fait les cultures pas que produisent propres de et clownsrituels, carnavals, et indigenes transgressiondonc ausside reflectivite de satire: de De est qui poesie et autres. plus,tandis que la transgression un outilpotentiel resistance elle a la renverse hierarchies les considerees conmme allant-de-soi, joue dangereusement limite; elle une pour les diasporas horsde contexte, peut devenir sourced'infraction, specialement Ceci amene a poserla questionsuivante: postcoloniales luttent qui pour etrereconnues. culturel? de queles sontles limites creatives l'hybridisme
ST5 5BG. PIWerbner@keele.ac.uk Keele University, Schoolof Social Relations, Keele,Staffs.