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Writing Hybridity: Identity, Dialogics, and Women‘S Narratives in the Americas

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Writing Hybridity: Identity, Dialogics, and Women‘S Narratives in the Americas WRITING HYBRIDITY: IDENTITY, DIALOGICS, AND WOMEN‘S NARRATIVES IN THE AMERICAS BY GEMA ORTEGA DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Emeritus Michael Palencia-Roth, Chair and Director Associate Professor Dara Goldman Associate Professor Siobhan Somerville Professor Emeritus Émile Talbot ABSTRACT This work examines the concept of ―hybridity‖ and critically engages with the intellectual and political discourses that have attempted to define its meaning from the time of the Spanish Empire to the postmodern era. As a phenomenon resulting from cross-cultural encounters, hybridity has always posed a danger to fixed categorizations of identity, and thus a variety of discourses of hybridity have surfaced across different traditions in order to control its meaning. After the arrival of the Spaniards to the Americas, the need to restrain cultural mixture and therefore define ―hybridity‖ was pressing. Thus, the discourse of mestizaje appears first to differentiate Spaniards from non-Spaniards, and later to give a fixed national identity to Spanish America and its people. Similarly, in the French Caribbean, creoleness put limits on the otherwise fluid interaction of African, native, and European peoples. More recently, postmodernist notions of hybridity assume that cross-cultural encounters cause individuals to live in a state of uncertainty, making ―hybridity‖ a synonym of liminality and constant in-betweeness. This dissertation argues that three women writers, Toni Morrison, Rosario Ferré, and Marysé Condé, reevaluate those theories of hybridity challenging the claim that hybridity have provided a site of resistance to hegemonic and monologic forces. In contrast, their novels redefine hybridity, emphasizing its narrative quality and therefore maintaining the openness of individual identifications. They share with Mikhail M. Bakhtin the idea that hybrid consciousness evolves as a kind of narrative. Thus, these three writers rescue ―hybridity‖ from the realm of theory and cultural generalizations, and realign it with forms of storytelling that construct stories of self through the discourses of others. Hybridity is presented as an artistic expression that at once controls and incorporates others‘ discourses into single texts that tell the stories of female characters who have achieved hybrid consciousness. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first, and most earnest, acknowledgment must go to my advisor and chair, Michael Palencia-Roth. Nearly ten years ago, his course on cross-cultural theory started me on the path I have traveled through this dissertation. Palencia-Roth has been instrumental in ensuring my academic wellbeing. In every sense, this work would not have been possible without him. Many thanks also to all my committee members. They have shaped my approach and academic thinking in so many ways. Prof. Siobhan Somerville‘s course, American Narratives of Passing, decisively influenced the gender and race focus of this dissertation. Prof. Émile Talbot opened my eyes to the Francophone literatures of the Americas, and Prof. Dara Goldman‘s scholarship inspired the incorporation of the literature written by women in the Hispanic Caribbean as a central element of my argument. Far too many people to mention individually have helped me while I was writing this dissertation. They all have my sincere gratitude. In particular, I would like to thank the faculty of the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Saint Xavier University. They have offered the very-needed moral support and hope to continue writing. Also, I give many thanks to Molly Dajani Pérez for the comments that improved the final manuscript of this dissertation. I owe much gratitude to my father-in-law, Ramón, for the loving care he provided to my son while I would go to write at the library. A penultimate thank-you goes to my wonderful parents, Paco and Leo, and siblings, Juán and Laura, for always being there when I needed them most. They deserve far more credit than I can ever give them for helping me become the person I am today. My final, and most heartfelt, acknowledgment must go to my husband, Jacob. Jacob has worked diligently and successfully for many years to provide for our family. His support, iii encouragement, companionship, and patience have given balance to my life. For all that, and for being everything I am not, he has my everlasting love. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to Theo, my son. He has been my inspiration. Without his enthusiasm and curiosity about life, my intellectual work would not have the drive to continue. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 HYBRIDITY: DEFINITIONS, VARIATIONS, AND MONOLOGIC DISCOURSES .…………………..1 1.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………….…………….1 1.2 The Spanish Empire: Limpieza de Sangre and Mestizaje ……...…………….….………...8 1.3 Mestizo Nations of Spanish America: Simón Bolivar, José Martí and José Vasconcelos….……………………………………….……………...26 1.4 Modernism and Creoleness in the French Caribbean: Eduard Glissant and the Creolist Movement ..……………………….……………...……………………...43 1.5 Postmodernism and Hybridity: Homi K. Bhabha‘s Ambivalence …………….………...56 CHAPTER 2 BAKHTIN‘S RESURRECTION OF THE SUBJECT: DIALOGISM AND WOMEN‘S NARRATIVES .……………………………………………………………………………………………73 2.1 M.M. Bakhtin and the Constitution of Hybrid Subjectivities ………………….………...73 2.2 The Hybrid Voices: Rosario Ferré, Maryse Condé, and Toni Morrison ………………...85 2.3 Fictional Theories and the Dialogical Alternative ……………….………………………90 CHAPTER 3 HISTORY AND STORIES OF MESTIZAJE IN THE SPANISH CARIBBEAN: ROSARIO FERRÉ‘S SWEET DIAMOND DUST…….………………………………………………………………..92 3.1 Contemporary Cultural Criticism of Mestizaje‘s Colonial and Nationalistic Roots…..………………………………………………………………..92 3.2 Denouncing Official ―Harmony‖ and the Silencing of the Other ………..……………...100 3.3 Polyphony: the End of the Myth …………………………………………..…………….109 3.4 Gloria‘s voice and Heteroglossia: The Spanish Caribbean as a Site of Conflict …..…………………………………………………………………122 CHAPTER 4 THE ART OF THE HYBRID CONSCIOUSNESS: MARYSE CONDÉ‘S TITUBA …..……………….129 4.1 Creoleness: Subverting the Old vs. New World Binarism……………………………..129 4.2 Movement, Change, and the Freedom of Being an Individual ………………………...133 4.3 Tituba‘s Art, Tituba‘s Magic: Her Hybridity …………………………………………..147 CHAPTER 5 MADNESS AND THE POSTMODERN HYBRID: TONI MORRISON‘S THE BLUEST EYE……..…176 5.1 Ambivalence as a Trap: Transcending the Master‘s Discourse .………………………176 5.2 Auto-ethnography: Writing the Self out of Objectifying Discourses …………………178 5.3 Claudia‘s Inner Speech and the Necessity of Dialogizing Our Identities ……………...186 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION: Writing Hybridity ………………….……………………..……………………………211 BIBLIOGRAPHY...………………………………………………………………..……………………..219 v CHAPTER 1 HYBRIDITY: DEFINITIONS, VARIATIONS, AND MONOLOGIC DISCOURSES 1.1 Introduction It is, therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.1 Cross-cultural interaction began to influence human affairs from the earliest days of history. Trade, migration, empire-building, evangelization, forced removal and other human activities motivated cross-cultural encounters since no civilization or human group has ever lived in complete isolation or self-containment.2 These interactions between different peoples have had tremendous social and cultural repercussions later in modern times. In fact, it is no coincidence that the markers of the beginning of the modern era are Christopher Columbus‘s voyages to the Western Hemisphere and the resulting conscious appearance of ethnic and cultural identities within larger intercultural contexts. Thus, hybridity, as the central concept of this dissertation, is understood as the phenomenon resulting from the encounter of different people. In its more general and static sense hybridity would point to the cultural, ―racial,‖ 1 Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961) 101. 2 For an in-depth study of cross-cultural interactions before Modernity see, Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters. Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993) 19. 1 political, and religious mixture that such encounters provoke. However, if one emphasizes the process, which involves the communication of beliefs and negotiation of values across cultural boundary lines, hybridity becomes a difficult experience to understand and a more elusive concept than the mere idea of mixture. Moreover, hybrididty takes on a different aspect when examined from the viewpoint of the individual rather than society. At the very least, cross- cultural encounters and the resulting phenomenon of hybridity challenge the stability of all parties involved in the exchange. National, cultural, and individual identities are redefined due to the penetration and/or collapse of boundaries. Moreover, whether hybridity is studied from an
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