#hybridity

'Microcosmos (Determinismo)' by Remedios Varo

2021

Carolina Caycedo, Flag Series: Mexiamericana, 2007

Auto-ethnography and Composition as Epistemologies for Healing Double-consciousness: An Interrogation of Hybridity and Diaspora.

In a press release for Torey Thornton’s show “Subdominium Edges Y Assumed Legalities”, Ivan Dal Cin writes: “There are mouths that water for writing as the strengthener to an artwork or show, the hardening component in the mixture, historicizing it, firming it.” He asks: “Is a body of work stronger when it’s fully explained and squeezed out?” And adds: “We have been taught that explanation, speaking, telling, writing equates to a presentation of knowledge and cultural wealth” (Dal Cin). This is certainly so, yet isn’t the inverse true also? There are those who seem less willing to read non-illustrated books, non-graphic novels, those who prefer film to reading because they have trouble picturing what they read, trouble mentally illuminating un-illuminated manuscripts. A general sense of mixture, of collage, has come to characterize our era; and we needn’t necessarily bemoan this trend in the direction of semi-reflexive hybridity. Perhaps, in fact, it should be celebrated. The social symbolism seems clear enough: an aversion, at the formal level, to “purity” and discourses (often racist/xenophobic) that surround it, representing a paradigmatic shift in a direction more ethical precisely because less preoccupied with cold (and epistemologically indefensible) “purity”.