The Location of Culture

“These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.”

In this early reference to “in-between” spaces, Bhabha highlights these interstices of cultural hybridity (See: Index of Terms), where colonial and postcolonial identities are continually redefined. These spaces allow for the emergence of new forms of identity, as individuals and communities negotiate their subjectivity in relation to the colonizer and their own traditions. Bhabha suggests these spaces are crucial for contestations of power and the creation of innovative social structures, forming a central part of The Negotiation of Cultural Identity and Hybridity.

“Where, once, the transmission of national traditions was the major theme of a world literature, perhaps we can now suggest that transnational histories of migrants, the colonized, or political refugees—these border and frontier conditions—may be the terrains of world literature.”

In this quote, Bhabha shifts the focus of world literature from the transmission of fixed national traditions to the fluid, dynamic experiences of migrants, colonized people, and refugees, whose identities are shaped by movement and displacement. By emphasizing border and frontier conditions, Bhabha advocates for a more inclusive understanding of literature that reflects the realities of postcolonial and transnational experiences. This reimagining of world literature underscores the importance of hybridity, cross-cultural exchange, and the politics of migration in shaping contemporary narratives.

“[E]ach position is always a process of translation and transference of meaning. Each objective is constructed on the trace of that perspective that it puts under erasure; each political object is determined in relation to the other, and displaced in that critical act.”

Bhabha underscores the relational and contingent nature of meaning, suggesting that identities, political objects, and cultural concepts are never fixed but are instead shaped by constant processes of translation and displacement.