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Hybridity
Hybridity refers to a composite form of existence and new mode of being resulting from processes of physical, cultural, or geopolitical mixture. It derives etymologically from the Latin word hybrida, meaning the offspring of a wild boar and a tame sow. The discourse on hybridity originated in eighteenth-century botanical studies, became central to nineteenth-century zoological analyses, and entered subsequently into human debates concerning biology, the origin of the species, colonial desires, and social Darwinist arguments surrounding racial difference.
The resurgence of discussions on hybridity developed in the second half of the twentieth century with the rise of postcolonial studies and critiques of globalization, cultural imperialism, and the nation-state. Instead of locating hybridity within a biological framework of fixed races and ethnicities, theorists reconfigured hybridity as a ...
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