Page 98 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

UNDOING DIASPORA

Those interested in the Chinese diaspora would typically consider this border
zone either as of peripheral significance – too far removed from the ‘pure’ Chinese
core in the inner circle – or as a danger zone, where Chinese people are at risk of
losing their Chinese characteristics. However, I would argue that it is precisely by
focusing on this soft and porous border zone, which is only peripheral if one accepts
the hierarchical model of concentric circles as the only valid representation of reality,
that we can move beyond the nationalist imagination – territorial or deterritorialized
ethnic – shared by both nation–states and diasporas. Indeed, in this era of global-
ization, where the mixing and interconnecting of people from different ethnic
and cultural backgrounds are becoming increasingly commonplace, even in the
still relatively closed and homogeneous nation–state of China, one could suspect
that the border zone, where identities are unfixed and destabilized, will only
become increasingly crowded, and gain in size and significance. This border zone,
the actual and symbolic contact zone of intercultural encounter and negotiation
(Pratt 1992), is where processes of hybridization transpire on a regular and ordinary
basis.
It is my argument throughout this book that if we are interested in analysing
cultural globalization today it is these processes of hybridization that need to be
the centre of our attention (Garcia Canclini 1995; 2000; Hannerz 1996). One
of the merits of the concept of hybridization is that it undermines the binary and
static way of thinking about difference which is dominant in theories of cultural
pluralism, which are premised on the distinctness of cultures and ethnicities.
However, as Garcia Canclini remarks, ‘Diversity and heterogeneity are terms that
serve to establish catalogues of differences, but they do not account for intersections
and mixings between cultures’ (2000: 41, emphasis in original). The importance
of highlighting processes of hybridization is that it provides us with a conceptual
‘point of departure from which to break from fundamentalist tendencies and from
the fatalism of the doctrines of civilizing wars’ (ibid.: 48). Crucially, the cut-and-
mix circulation of cultural meanings activated by hybridization illuminates the
relatively arbitrary and contingent character of all culture, its dynamic flexibility and
profound open-endedness.
Taking processes of hybridity seriously as productive of ‘a field of energy
and sociocultural innovation’ (ibid.: 49) has of course become commonplace
in contemporary cultural studies. What has been less emphasized, however, is that
pervasive hybridity also has radical ramifications for how we think of different
‘peoples’. Indeed, as hybridization consists of exchanges, crossings, and mutual
entanglements, it necessarily implies a softening of the boundaries between
‘peoples’: the encounters between them are as constitutive of who they are as the
proceedings within. These encounters are not always harmonious or conciliatory;
often they are extremely violent, as the history of colonialism has amply shown.
Nevertheless, they have to be gone through ‘when a collection of men and women
feels challenged by another culture and has to choose between hybridisation and
confrontation’ (ibid.: 50). Even in the most oppressive situations, then, people
thrown into intercultural encounters, whether by force or by will, would seek to

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