Identity and Cultural Hybridization in the Paniberian Context

The concept of cultural hybridization was coined by Néstor García Canclini in 1989. From his theories, other studies are developed, such as that of Bhabha, who focuses on migration, diasporas and social displacements, which determine the origin of multiculturalism and transculturalism; or those of Kraidy, who opportunely insists on the key role played by communication in the formation of hybrids and stresses the need for case studies to make the concept operational. Other contributions, however, are quite critical, such as that of Floya Anthias, who considers that the concept, because it relates only to cultural products, depoliticizes culture, and furthermore focuses excessively on the idea of transgression; or the essay by Jan Nederveen Pieterse, who analyses the phenomenon from an economic-political perspective, but who nevertheless emphasizes the importance of recreation and resemantization of the concept of cultural hybridization. On this occasion, however, the proposed approach is based on the awareness of the dissolution of all kinds of borders in the contemporary context, which is characterized by cultural convergence –in the broadest sense of the word– and the close relations between the local and the global, giving rise to the current glocal dimension. In this intercultural and transcultural reality, the dynamics of cultural mediations, in their peculiar expressions and mediatizations, play a key role: in fact, the analysis of the transformations of contemporary expressive-communicational processes, in turn affected by cultural hybridization, allows us to identify and understand the assumptions that give rise to cultural hybridization itself and its different manifestations in today’s societies.