<p>The novel White teeth by Zadie Smith has been the object of my study in this essay. The aim of this study was to explore what the text communicated to the reader about hybridity and mimicry in the portrayal of some of the characters in the two families in White Teeth. The focus is on the male characters within the two families, as identity is created differently for men and women.</p>

<p>The essay investigates hybridity in Jean Rhys's <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em> with a focus on the main character Antoinette. Homi K Bhabha's theory of hybridity provides a way to analyze Antoinette's predicament as an outsider and threat to both the Caribbean society she is living in and her English husband. The aim of the essay is to examine the alienation and rejection of Antoinette in the light of her hybridity.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D. (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The novel White teeth by Zadie Smith has been the object of my study in this essay. The aim of this study was to explore what the text communicated to the reader about hybridity and mimicry in the portrayal of some of the characters in the two families in White Teeth. The focus is on the male characters within the two families, as identity is created differently for men and women.

The essay investigates hybridity in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea with a focus on the main character Antoinette. Homi K Bhabha's theory of hybridity provides a way to analyze Antoinette's predicament as an outsider and threat to both the Caribbean society she is living in and her English husband. The aim of the essay is to examine the alienation and rejection of Antoinette in the light of her hybridity.

This thesis examines the premises postulated by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin and Homi K. Bhabha within Postcolonial theory. The theorists suggest that these strategies can be applied to the entire literary production emerging from the erstwhile European colonies in Asia and Latin America; hence the aim of this project is to test the validity of their claim. Given the vastnesss of the theory, the scope of this study has been confined to the analysis of hybridity, Nativism, and mimicry. Critical works by Benita Parry, Walter Mignolo, Neil Lazarus, and others, have been taken into consideration. José María Arguedas (1911-1969), Arundhati Roy (1963-) and Geetanjali Shree (1957-), writing in Spanish, English and Hindi, respectively, were chosen to represent Peru and India. The Hindi novel was included to address the lack of adequate research in the field of vernacular literature within Postcolonial studies, as most of the critics have concentrated on texts written in the former colonizers’ languages. Language and culture have been the cornerstones of this theory hence they form an important part of my analysis. The dissertation foregrounds the relation between Spanish, English and the vernaculars in the text-nations crafted by Arguedas, and Roy. Their narratives indicate that the vernacular melds with the colonizer’s language to form a hybrid tongue, but the manner in which hybridity is constructed depends on the geo-political character of each society. The role of Hindi, its relation to English and Urdu, as well as the invention of its Sanskritized version during the colonial period, is examined in Shree’s narrative and her work is particularly insightful in this regard, as hybridity and Nativism are portrayed very differently in her novel. In this way my thesis demonstrates the difficulty of carrying out a comparative analysis of the entire literary corpus emerging from the erstwhile European colonies based solely on their shared colonial experience.

This thesis examines the premises postulated by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin and Homi K. Bhabha within Postcolonial theory. The theorists suggest that these strategies can be applied to the entire literary production emerging from the erstwhile European colonies in Asia and Latin America; hence the aim of this project is to test the validity of their claim. Given the vastnesss of the theory, the scope of this study has been confined to the analysis of hybridity, Nativism, and mimicry. Critical works by Benita Parry, Walter Mignolo, Neil Lazarus, and others, have been taken into consideration. José María Arguedas (1911-1969), Arundhati Roy (1963-) and Geetanjali Shree (1957-), writing in Spanish, English and Hindi, respectively, were chosen to represent Peru and India. The Hindi novel was included to address the lack of adequate research in the field of vernacular literature within Postcolonial studies, as most of the critics have concentrated on texts written in the former colonizers’ languages. Language and culture have been the cornerstones of this theory hence they form an important part of my analysis. The dissertation foregrounds the relation between Spanish, English and the vernaculars in the text-nations crafted by Arguedas, and Roy. Their narratives indicate that the vernacular melds with the colonizer’s language to form a hybrid tongue, but the manner in which hybridity is constructed depends on the geo-political character of each society. The role of Hindi, its relation to English and Urdu, as well as the invention of its Sanskritized version during the colonial period, is examined in Shree’s narrative and her work is particularly insightful in this regard, as hybridity and Nativism are portrayed very differently in her novel. In this way my thesis demonstrates the difficulty of carrying out a comparative analysis of the entire literary corpus emerging from the erstwhile European colonies based solely on their shared colonial experience.

Before his death, Michael Jackson arguably was one of the most famous living celebrities to walk the planet. Onstage, on air, and onscreen, he captivated the attention of millions of people around the world, whether because they loved him or loved to hate him. In an attempt to explain his popularity and cultural influence, I analyze certain theoretical and methodological approaches found in recent scholarship on western hagiographic and teratological texts, and apply these theories and methods to selected biographies written on Michael Jackson. By interpreting the biographies in this way, I suggest why saints, monsters, and celebrities have received considerable attention in their respective communities, and demonstrate how public responses to these figures are contextual, constructed, and often contradictory.

Drawing upon Homi. K. Bhabha's essay A Personal Response and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can The Subaltern Speak? I initiated my research project When the Silenced Voices Meet Homi. K. Bhabha's "Megaohone". The focal point of this paper aims at identifying and questioning the limitatpons of Bhabha's theories while highlighting Spivak's insightful perspectives. In conducting this project, the motif of my paper is derived, which is to question male scholars’ gender-blindness under the feminist lens in the field of post-colonial studies. Issues, such as identity, hybridity and representation are under discussion; meanwhile by citing the example of and debate on sati, the gender issue and the special contributions of postcolonial feminism are developed.

Battlestar Galactica (2003) is a textually rich cultural product with much to say about the ever-changing global dynamics and social relations of Earthly inhabitants. Through the familiar science fiction tropes of catastrophe, space travel, and cyborgs, this study aims to reveal the discursive frameworks that inform identity politics and knowledge production as they relate to self/Other. Postcolonial theory guides the structure of this study through the influential insights of Homi Bhabha, James Clifford, and Robert J.C. Young. The first chapter investigates the ways in which colonial discourse exercises power and sanctions difference through the stereotype. Chapter two explores the justifications for and ramifications of physical colonization of subjugated peoples, while chapter three reads several characters in BSG as occupying a third space whereby binary notions of subjectivity are problematized in favor of hybridity. Overall, this study argues that through the allegorical interplay between a recognizable self and alien other, viewers can come to better understand the discursive conditions of their existence and, perhaps, locate sites of resistance inside the ideological prison within which we are all prisoners. / text