Hybridity and the Culture of Peace in the Age of Globalization

Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Culture of Peace and Human Dignity, Edited by Darryl Macer (UNESCO Bangkok, 2010), pp. 10-14. 

Hybridity and the Culture of Peace in

the Age of Globalization

Rainier Ibana, Philippines

The historical origins of the advent of globalization have been widely contested among theories that

range from the imperial conquests of ancient kingdoms to the contemporary economic integration

facilitated by the new wave of information technologies.

From a Malayan perspective, however, the age of globalization began with the circumnavigation of the

globe when Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet landed in Philippines on March 16, 1521. Since Magellan and his

slave Enrique previously sailed eastward to the Moluccas islands from Portugal in previous expeditions,

they were technically the ones who first crossed all the longitudinal points around the globe.

7 This world

historical event inaugurated the circulation of goods, peoples and technologies that paved the way for

the expansion of Europe’s colonial empires.

Hybridity

The processes of colonization, however, did not merely export new ideas, peoples and artifacts

unilaterally from Europe; it also significantly imported much coveted spices and exotic stories about

foreign lands to the continent. The galleon trade from Acapulco to Manila, for example, brought the

famous Manila hemp and tobacco to Mexico, while Mexican silver coins and European products found

their way back to Manila.

These objects were later adapted to the ecological niche and sensibilities of the recipient cultures

and led to the transformation of new identities that were inseparable but distinct from their original

components. Hybrid identities, therefore, are found in the mixture itself of the elements that constituted

them, in the same manner that the identity of water is distinct, yet inseparable, from the elements of

hydrogen and oxygen. More complex entities, such as a brand of coffee for example, are constituted

by the proportionate mixture of water, ground coffee beans, milk and sugar. These examples can

be extended by way of analogy to the identity of human beings and cultural circles. Therefore as a

general rule, identity is not an unchangeable essential characteristic, but rather is produced by ongoing

processes of receiving and integrating the social and natural forces that impinge on the individual’s life

experiences.

Hybrid identities can thus be construed as a transcendental category that can be used as an explanatory

principle to comprehend all beings, whether native or foreign, because every entity, as Alfred North

Whitehead puts it, is constituted of its actual and potential relationships with others. Even so-called

native populations, such as Philippines, had a distinctive cultural identity prior to its supposed “discovery”

by Magellan under the aegis of the Spanish monarch, because they were already dealing with the more

ancient Sri Vijayan and Majapahit blood lines and were actively trading with Moslem merchants prior to

the arrival of Spanish colonization.

The history of ideas likewise demonstrates how significant insights were bred by the combination of

previous ideas. Anaximander’s apeiron, for example, was inspired by Thales’ claim that everything is

water and Anaximenes’ experiments with air. Saint Thomas Aquinas’ participatory structure of

esse was

derived from the structure of the Platonic world of ideas and Aristotle’s doctrine of substance. Kant, for

his part, admitted that he was awakened from the dogmatic rationalism of his day by Hume’s empiricism.

The hybrid technologies that characterize our contemporary cultures today are merely being intensified

by the new wave of transportation and communication technologies that begun with the world’s

circumnavigation in the 16

th century. The same principle of hybridity, however, is at work even today

in the innovation of new gadgets that continue to populate - even overcrowd - our globalized world.

7 Filipino artists and historians claim that Enrique was a Filipino slave captured in Malacca because of his linguistic

fluency in communicating with Filipinos after their landing in Cebu Island.

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Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Culture of Peace and Human Dignity

A Culture of Peace

From the perspective of the principle of hybridity, the problem of violence lies in taking apart the

organic constitution of entities by reducing them to the determination of their component parts

and arrogating to the primacy of these particular components the meaning of the rest of reality. The

incisive insights of the above-mentioned philosophers were, to a certain extent, also guilty of a form

of reductionism, no matter how powerful their explanatory formulas may happen to be. Hybridity as a

principle of explanation is certainly not an exception to this reductionism; yet it at least tries to come to

terms with the complexity of reality.

The panorama of root metaphors in the history of ideas demonstrate that the profundity of an insight is

a function of its ability to put together the diverse perspectives of a prevailing epoch by coming up with

a transcendental principle that subsumes the various perspectives in a synoptic vision, which includes

the perspectives of contending parties.

The spectre of hybridity, however, can “transgress” (Coombes, 2000, p. 5) the domination of those

who claim to bear the universal march of a preferred essentialist meaning of history on host native

populations by offering alternative mixtures to the purity of the motherland, on the one hand, and the

anarchy of the unconverted heathen populations, on the other hand. For example, the metisse (the

offspring of colonial masters and native servants) challenged the tranquility and secluded life of those

who benefited from the colonial

status quo amidst the squalor of the apparently disorganized life-world

of the heathens. These hybrids eventually led their people, as in the case of the Philippine and Latin

American peoples, to the birth of revolutionary movements that tried to disentangle and distinguish

themselves from the colonial motherland. The Philippine Revolution against colonial Spain in 1896,

for example, was led by Chinese and Spanish

mestizos, who continue to dominate the political and

economic landscape of the country to this day.

The post-colonial era, moreover, requires not only the transgression of a domination that merely

replaced foreign masters with local ones; it also aspires towards the transformation of social systems

that promote justice and human dignity for all the members of society, especially the most vulnerable

sectors that need the mediation of hybrid institutions such as civil society and people’s organizations.

The possibilities of building a culture of peace, therefore, no longer hinge on the imposition of what

appears to be universal principles over and above all others, nor are they built on the disorganized mass

of native cultures, whose sustainability actually needs the support of external social systems. Peace can

be made possible by offering alternative spaces of intercultural encounters wherein the world of others

can be embraced as if it were one’s own, and wherein one can be received into the world of others as if

one belonged to their world.

The work of translating one cultural context to another becomes of crucial importance in building

a culture of peace that facilitates the fusion and enlargement of horizons in order to create mutual

understanding. To this task philosophers have the special talent of reinterpreting philosophical texts

that were originally conceived in other times and other places, for the sake of students and readers who

belonged to other generations and social circles.

As Edward Said puts it in the 25

th anniversary edition of his groundbreaking work, Orientalism: “The world

does have a real interdependence of parts that leaves no genuine opportunity for isolation [...] Rather

than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of

cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any

abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow” (Said, 2003, pp. xxviii-xxix).

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Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Culture of Peace and Human Dignity

Hybridity in the Age of Globalization

The advent of new transportation and communication technologies in the age of globalization is

providing more opportunities for social interaction and the convergence of ideas and products.

The rapid development of such technologies, moreover, is driven by the power of hybridity as one

technology is subsumed to the next by adding new features that cater to individual tastes and needs.

As these gadgets become more powerful, the individual becomes more interconnected with others

through a virtual world that can have real consequences on the practices of everyday life.

In contrast to branded electronic products, hybrid gadgets have the distinctive advantage of being

compatible with a wide array of other electronic equipment because they were made from spare parts,

which can be interfaced with other products that were manufactured in the farthest corners of the

globe. It is not unusual to find cellular phones, cars and computers that were assembled in one place,

yet composed of parts that were merely subcontracted wherever labour and managerial costs were

minimal. Unlike branded products, hybrids can interface with other brands because they have been

integrated from a conglomeration of many other brands.

In the realm of bioethics, the genetic structure of organisms is also being tailor-made to fit the demands

of the market, expand the lifespan of human beings, and increase the production of basic commodities

for the benefit of large populations that would otherwise have had no access to food and proper

nutrition. The field of culinary arts has moreover shown how recipes from one culture can be adapted to

other places by substituting ingredients that are available from the surrounding environment.

Nevertheless, the identities of these hybrids are never lost since they merely deflect from their inner

life the variety of sources that constituted their being, in the same manner that prisms deflect the

various colours from the light that shines through them. Jung prefers to use the metaphor of musical

harmonization, wherein different tones are orchestrated to produce a symphonic whole (Jung, 2008, p.

156). Each note contributes to the enhancement of the whole in the same manner that the variety of

cultural expressions testifies to the grandeur of being human.

These “sites of hybridity” or “sites of converging paths,” as Jung puts it, were mediated by intercultural

encounters such as what we are experiencing today through the marvels of global transportation and

information technologies (Jung, p. 155). These sites are also the locations that engender the possibility

of going beyond the dilemma of universalism and relativism that haunted philosophical theories of

the last century. Jung proposes that we make use of the term “transversality” to describe the middle

voice “between ‘the Scylla of hegemonic unification’/’a vacuous universalism’ on the one hand, and ‘the

Charybdis of a chaotic pluralism’/’an anarchic historicism’ on the other” (Jung, p. 150).

Hybridity and the Culture of Peace in the Age of Globalization

The prefix “trans” in the terms transversality, transportation, transgression, transformation, transcendental

and translation is not a meaningless monosyllable. It suggests an escape route from colonial and

imperialist ideologies that were previously anchored to prejudicial claims such as racial superiority and

divine mandates as expressed in the supposed “white man’s burden”, “evangelizing the heathens,” and

“manifest destinies”. These ideologies actually trampled on the dignity of colonized peoples and have

provoked counter insurgencies and guerrilla warfare that have been labeled as “terrorist tactics” by

those who possess the more powerful arsenals of destruction.

A culture of peace, therefore, will emerge when every individual human being can gain access to the

power afforded by education and self-cultivation. Edward Said thus calls upon his fellow scholars and

intellectuals to “purposely complicate and/or dismantle the reductive formulae and the abstract but

potent kind of thought that leads the mind away from concrete human history and experience (Said, p.

xxiii) [...] It is by debunking the oversimplification of the quest for the good life that we can really come

to terms with the intricate ‘density and interdependence of human life’” (Said, p. xxvii).

The difficulty of coming to terms with the complexity of reality may tax the patience and hospitality

of our work of scholarship; the virtues to be gained from such tedious exercises, such as hospitality,

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Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Culture of Peace and Human Dignity

tolerance, and patience, however, are necessary conditions for the possibility of a more inclusive

understanding of the human condition. Our interventions on the course of human history therefore

can become more effective, the more we extend the comprehensiveness of our vision.

The technologies that are being made available today in the age of globalization, moreover, are

bridging the gap of the particular practices between everyday life and the universal claims of theoretical

discourse by making academics more involved in the affairs of the social world, in the same manner that

ordinary people in their everyday lives are empowering themselves with the world of knowledge and

ideas through their access to the information highway.

Since the index of reality, in the age of globalization, is defined by the depth and intensity of an entity’s

relationships with others, the explanatory power of theoretical discourses must also come to terms with

the complexity and multidimensionality of the affairs of everyday life. Hybrid perspectives, like hybrid

technologies, will most likely succeed in coming to terms with the complex problems generated by our

globalized world.

Commentary

Phinith Chantalangsy, Lao PDR

In his paper “Hybridity and the Culture of Peace in the Age of Globalization”, Ibana states that the

“principle of hybridity” has always had an inherent “power” in the development of human history.

This idea is of utmost importance. Firstly, it raises what seems to be a contingent and peripheral

phenomenon to the rank of a principle that, by definition, can apply to various fields of realities

- philosophical, historical, ethnographical, economic, etc. Secondly, this statement shows that

what globalization entails is not new: the hybridation of the world has always been in process.

Stating this blatant fact leads us to the following question: Do we have more accurate knowledge

of globalization now that we seem to have a better consciousness of being witnesses of this

phenomenon? While the phenomenon itself is not new, the intense production of discourse on it

surely is. Yet, this over-consciousness of being global today does not seem to make us accept more

positively our hybridity.

Is it that the notion of hybridity necessarily implies confrontations and contradictions? Ibana

praises the ability of “hybrid gadgets” to be interfaced easily with other products. But one must

also note that hybrid beings, because they are “made from spare parts”, can be ugly and alienating.

The process of hybridation is not always a peaceful process: it can involve confrontations, violence,

disagreements and difficult adjustments. Human history is self-explanatory in this regard:

colonization has annihilated whole civilizations, and the minds of some have been durably “raped”

by others, as described in Aminata Traore’s book entitled

Le Viol de l’Imaginaire (Traore, 2003).

Reversely, many “foreigners” have been segregated, excluded or exterminated. And yet, all these

moments of encounters could have been –and they actually were, as we look back on them –unique opportunities for hybridation.

The paradigm of hybridation allows us therefore to critically rethink the notion of “culture of

peace”. This notion should not be considered ironically as a consensual notion that nations loosely

proposed to no one but themselves. Peace is difficult, even impossible, to attain - let alone a

culture of peace. Thus, this notion calls on us to fight against what Ibana rightly calls “reductionism”

defined as “taking apart the organic constitution of hybrid entity.” The history of the concept of

“human rights” in relation with the notion of “universal” is significant: for a long time, the idea of

human nature and rights has been understood and applied to a restricted group of human beings,

although the 1789 French Declaration had an ontological dimension in its claim. It is this kind of

reductionism that triggers tensions and feelings of injustice. The paradigm of hybridation, on the

contrary, through its demand for the “slow working-together of cultures” (Said), allows us to shed

a new light on the notion of the “universal”.

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Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Culture of Peace and Human Dignity

What is universal in all cultures is not the fact that they are all the same because they all reveal,

and can be reduced to, some universal principles: this would be an abstract understanding of

the universal. What really is universal in all cultures is the very fact that cultures are utopian –

they belong to nowhere, but are related to, and borrow from, each other: cultures have a natural

capacity for exchange and communication with others. This is what the principle of hybridity

reveals: not only can there be no purity when it comes to cultures, but getting dirty, or getting

complex, is the only way of building on the universal that cultures envelop.

This commentary raises two questions. First, how would Ibana’s paper, after having depicted

a seemingly ideal and positive phenomenon of hybridation, address the issue of conflicts and

violence that are naturally embedded in the hybridation of cultures throughout history? Second,

what if, once again, it is precisely the “trans” ideas and trends that become themselves “pontified”

into vague reductionist discourses and ideologies?

References

Coombes, A. and A. Brah. 2000. Introduction: The Conundrum of ‘Mixing. In

Hybridity and its Discontents:

Politics, Science, Culture

. London, Taylor & Francis Ltd.

Jung, H. Y. 2008.

Transversality and Comparative Political Philosophy in the Age of Globalization. Prajna Vijara. Vol.

9, No. 1, pp. 144-173.

Said, E. 2003. Orientalism. New York, Random House.