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Hybridity and Trespass: With Jesus at the Borders of Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Michele Saracino
Michele Saracino
Affiliation:
Manhattan College
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Abstract

The author considers how Christians are called to bear witness to difference specifically in a global context where boundaries are becoming increasingly ambiguous. After arguing that it is particularly important for Christians to embrace the responsibility associated with ambiguous borders and hybrid existence, the author explains how American culture works against being open to others at borders because of the emotional conflict they bring. An attitude of entitlement embedded in a narcissistic mentality prevents some from inviting otherness into their lives. By developing empathy and through mourning privilege, human beings can overcome a posture of entitlement. Christ's ministry, incarnation, and death are highlighted, finally, as resources for dealing with the loss of privilege that emerges at the borders of self and other.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Fall 2006 , pp. 221 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2006

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References

1 It is important to analyze the implications of the globalization of political power in relation to borders. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri highlight the shift in the global political economy from being built on the idea of imperialism, which fosters clear boundaries, to empire, which, as they argue “establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers” (Hardt and Negri, Empire [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000], xii). This change makes realizing and interpreting difference even more involved today than in an age of imperialism because there are no clear signifiers to denote alterity.

2 The discussion of hybridity is not new to the humanities. Integral to this work is the thought of the post-colonialist scholar Homi K. Bhabha, who argues that understanding identity, particularly that of the peoples of underdeveloped nations, demands a nuanced study that refuses to essentialize identity into any one static homogenous concept. For his work on the importance of the hybrid or the in-between spaces of identity in literature, semiotics, and culture, see Bhabha, , The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar For further analysis of hybridity, see Young, Robert J. C., Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar, and Kawash, Samira, Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African-American Narrative (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

3 Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Rendall, Steven F. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 115.Google Scholar

4 Samuelson, Robert J., The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement 1945–1995 (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1995), 4–5.Google Scholar

5 David Matthews, Crash, Dave Matthews Band, RCA 07863 66904–2, track 4.

6 Damasio, Antonio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999), 294.Google Scholar Damasio cites the pioneering work of James McGaugh; see McGaugh, , Learning and Memory: An Introduction (San Francisco: Albion Pub. Co., 1973).Google Scholar

7 Since September 11, 2001 there has been much discussion over how to protect the American people and secure U.S. borders; see, for example, the issues raised on the U. S. Congressional website, http://judiciary.house.gov/ (accessed September 24, 2006). In the June 24, 2003 hearing on the “Deadly Consequences of Illegal Alien Smuggling” before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, issues of ownership, human life, and equity were explored; see http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju87993.000/hju87993_0.HTM (accessed September 24, 2006). Such discussion relates mostly to the U.S. border with Mexico; questions of identity, alterity, and hybridity are at stake. For more on the politics of policing the border between Mexico and the U.S. and the complexity of hybrid identity at those borders, see Gutiérrez, David G., ed., Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996)Google Scholar; Lorey, David E., The U.S.-Mexican border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1999)Google Scholar; and Ross, Stanley R., ed., Views Across the Border: The United States and Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978).Google Scholar

8 Bhabha, , The Location of Culture, 5.Google Scholar

9 Gregor Mendel explored how hybrid crossings in plant-life yielded specific and predictable genetic ratios; see Mendel, , Experiments in Plant-Hybridisation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938)Google Scholar first published in 1866.

10 It is interesting that the idea of species is part of the discussion—a notion based on purity, which an embrace of hybrid existence refuses to allow. Although this essay is not about mixed species, but rather mixed stories, it could be argued that the discussion is even closer to Mendel's theory than one might first think. Indeed, debates within the scientific community about hybridity strangely parallel discussions in the humanities about identity and alterity. In the twentieth century a schism developed between researchers of animals and plants on the viability of hybrid offspring. As Arnold, Michael L. reports, “Two viewpoints concerning the evolutionary importance of natural hybridization crystallized during the period of 1930–1950. On the one hand, botanists emphasized the evolutionary potential of hybrid genotypes to occupy novel habitats and thus act as the progenitors of new clades. In contrast, zoologists championed the view that hybridization was maladaptive because the individuals produced fewer and/or less-fertile progeny” (Natural Hybridization and Evolution [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 10).Google Scholar Arnold resists the negative connotation of hybridity from a scientific perspective, and from a theological and cultural perspective it is urgent that we do so as well.

11 Bhabha, , The Location of Culture, 1–2.Google Scholar

12 Anzaldúa, Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 20.Google Scholar In addition to Anzaldúa, Roberto S. Goizueta makes clear the painful aspect of borders and exile as he recollects being forced to leave Cuba as a child; see Goizueta, , Caminemos con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001).Google Scholar

13 Anderson, Victor, Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (New York: Continuum, 1995).Google Scholar

14 Kawash, , Dislocating the Color Line, 6.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., 20.

16 Levinas, Emmanuel, Alterity and Transcendence, trans. Smith, Michael B. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 26.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.

18 For more on the importance of mourning, see Keshgegian, Flora A., Redeeming Memories: A Theology of Healing and Transformation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 41–42.Google Scholar While her work deals with transforming traumatic personal and political memories through mourning, the argument presented here is related more to mourning privilege.

19 Levinas, , Alterity and Transcendence, 28.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 179.

21 Ibid.

22 Crysdale, Cynthia S. W. argues for the need to understand and embrace ourselves not only as victims, but also as aggressors, and highlights the “fierce ambiguity” of living among these tensions within life (Embracing Travail: Retrieving the Cross Today [New York: Continuum, 1999], 50).Google Scholar Worldviews other than Christianity also explain the overlap and exchange of stories. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the non-duality of living another's story; see “Please Call Me By My True Names” in Being Peace, ed. Kotler, Arnold (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1996), 63–64.Google Scholar In that poem, among the many identities he assumes, he emphasizes that he is both the sea pirate who rapes the girl and the twelve-year-old refugee girl who is raped, thereby showing how our understanding of existence changes when we imagine ourselves as the victim, as well as the aggressor.