Introduction: Hybridity in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory

in postcolonial studies with the exigencies that led to the founding of this academic discipline itself. Such exigencies arose from recognizing and studying situations of stark inequalities, which were held in place and legitimated by the various machinations of, or inherited from, colonialism. That is, in unpacking and examining hybridity today in some of its theoretical versions as well as specific societal configurations, this book attends to the ways in which such inequalities might inform current derivatives of hybridity. Hybridity is an enticing idea in current postcolonial studies. In its dominant form, it is claimed that it can provide a way out of binary thinking, allow the inscription of the agency of the subaltern, and even permit a restructuring and destabilizing of power. These assertions need to be tested and this is precisely what I propose to do in this book. This book evaluates central claims regarding agency in postcolonial theories of hybridity and investigates the avatars of hybridity to be found in the realities of the Indian Ocean “Creole” islands of La Réunion, which remains a French department, and Mauritius, independent from Britain since 1968. In theoretical discourse, hybridity has spawned a variegated vocabulary, including terms such as diaspora, métissage, creolization, transculturation. Although skeptical about the validity of an exuberant type of hybridity that, it is claimed, poses an effective challenge to oppressive forces of the increasingly