I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: two extracts from Néstor García Canclini ‘s Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity.

A thought I found interesting in the introduction is the fact that we have to nuance the idea of hybridization when it is understood as a fusion of two cultures. First of all, the idea of a peaceful fusion is too optimistic, in most cases hybridity is in fact a form of violence and of conflict. This is why names such as syncretism, mestizaje and creolization allow to describe more specifically the kind of process involved. Secondly, as the author takes the example of the hybrid language called Spanglish, we can say that the two components mixed in the process (here, English and Spanish) are pure themselves: each culture is itself the result of past hybridizations, and the idea of pure, absolute essence of one culture is in fact a biased vision of the process, when one observes the culture at a precise moment in time. The author suggests that better understanding the process of hybridization is a way to relativize conflicts between cultures, and to prevent conflicts predicted by Samuel Huntington in Clash of Civilizations.

With globalization, increased economic exchanges and economic segregations imply more phenomena of hybridization but with newer conditions. For instance, in Latin America, Spanish investments are considerably increasing, which represent both an opportunity and a challenge for Latin American culture to express itself. This doesn’t mean global and national cannot be reconciled: the process of glocalization hopefully manages to do it.

The chapter 7 lists several ways in which modernity challenges the way to see culture. It addresses urban culture in Latin America, evolving with the political situation (dictatorship, populism…), with globalization, with social protests,… “New” technologies (the author writes in the 1990s) endanger the very idea of collection (precious, unique, physical items). Deterritorialization and reterritorialization are other new processes that heavily modify the traditional way to perceive culture in Latin America, as some places lose a cultural trait that was attached to them or regain it or gain a new one (such as the maquiladoras along the border between the Mexico and the US). And even Latin American comic strips can now tackle with humor social problems.