The most compelling challenge facing today's scholars of the Americas is a familiar one: how to articulate the juxtaposition of radically different cultural encounters within a single heterogeneous space. Having appeared before under the guise of a number of terms throughout the history of such encounters, it is the concept of hybridity that is debated most recurrently in academia in response to this challenge. Inextricably linked to colonialism (the contact and subsequent hybridization of diverse peoples), it is not uncommon that studies of cultural hybridity fall subject to the same political auspices that characterize the binary discourse of postcolonialism. As a consequence, hybridity, in spite of the diversity that the term implies, often becomes entwined in practices of exclusion. I propose, then, to explore the history of cultural hybridity in the Americas as it emerges in theory, and how the theory has strayed toward discriminatory tactics on three fronts: (1) in local circles where minority groups employ the term in their politics of difference (the most immediate example of which is readily available in Los Angeles, or Aztlán, where the Chicano Movement has long grounded ontological questions in an elevated sense of racial hybridity), (2) on the national level, bearing witness to nation-building projects and enduring efforts against neo-colonial hegemony, and (3), in terms of Latin America's perceived distinct place in the "global village"

Keywords

• Cultural
• Hybridity
• Latin
• America
• Theory
• Practice

(Virtual Presentation, English)