While in the throes of mourning the tragic denouement of the 1997 film Selena, I push past the tears and the hiccupping sobs of watching my favorite Tejana performer, portrayed by my favorite contemporary Latina artist, DIE.
Yep, Selena was the first Chicana artist to make it big in what was traditionally called CHICANO music. I want to talk about her identity as a “Tejana”—in the 1700s, much of what is now Texas was settled by Spanish descendants. The sort-of hybridity begins to make itself obvious. And can perhaps be best explained by this short clip from the film Selena.
MEXICAN-AMERICANS
In this clip, we see Abraham, Selena’s father talking about being Mexican-American, and what it means, not only in America, but in Mexico! You have to be more Americans than Americans and more Mexican than Mexicans! He says “Our family has been here for centuries, but they treat us as if we just swam across the Rio Grande!” In the Kraidy article, we talk about how the mestizaje identity largely began as an imperialist-led movement to talk about the inter-marriage of South Americans and Spanish people.
Hybridity is the study of multi-ethnic demographics bumping and rubbing. What is Kraidy’s discourse on purity and how does it relate to Abraham’s concerns about traveling to Mexico for Selena to perform?
I thought that Abraham's concerns about going to Mexico were very legit. But whats interesting is why do those concerns even exist? I had a similar experience when I went to the Philippines with my mother for the first time. Before I left all my cousins told me to be careful out there and they told me to try not to talk as much, because they would easily see that I was not originally from the Philippines. They even told me to watch what I wear...Some of my cousins told me to not talk when buying things, that I should let my mom or aunt from the Philippines do it since they knew tagalog and probably wouldn't be ripped off.
ReplyDeleteAs Kraidy states, "As a Latin American "foundational theme" (Martinez-Echazabat 1998), mestizaje was an attempt to
mitigate tensions between the indigenous populations and the descendants of Spanish colonists by positing the new nations as hybrids of both worlds."
This relates to Abraham's concerns because he himself has taken on living and having to deal with a hybrid culture. Just like our discussions on citizenship and authenticity, in order for a Mexican American to have such cultural citizenship in the United States and in Mexico, he has to prove something to both worlds in order to be accepted or in order to be seen as an authentic Mexican or an authentic American. This is why I understood where he was coming from when he said that he has to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans.
I feel that the discourse presented in the Kraidy article is one of full disclosure and an effort at fully comprehending the source of labels and their goals in the current dominant society. Although the effort was made as a "..."foundational theme", mestizaje was an attempt to mitigate tensions between the indigenous populations and the descendant of Spanish colonists by positing the new nations as hybrids of both worlds", it was never quite achieved. We are aware of this because of Abraham's speech regarding their efforts to satisfy both sides of Selena's career.
ReplyDeleteThere is no true conceptualization of hybridity because neither side will ever consider your space of authenticity as personally relevant to them. The societal goal has somehow become to think about ourselves as either one or the other and usually that's impossible. Abraham's justification came in the fact that although mestizaje's goal is to create a sense of cohesion, the dichotomy of the two originals will always exist and beg to be quantified.
In Kraidy's text he talks about how Hommi Bhabha "emphasizes hybridity's ability to subvert dominant discourses and reappropriate them to create what he calls 'cultures of postcolonial contra-modernity'" (58).
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, in this example the hybrid identity of Mexican Americans is represented as a struggle. Selena's father is trying to protect her from the discourses of purity of both Mexicans and Americans... hybridity for Selena represented both the opportunity to succeed or failed. As it turns out Selena hybrid identity was accepted... but my question is what borders, bridges she had to cross in order for her hybridity to be subversive?
Did she prove to be 'worth' to be accepted by Mexicans, Americans and Mexican- Americans? It seems that her embodiment of both cultures, through language, music, dancing and personality turn out to be subversive, perhaps because the audience was looking for what she had instead of what she lacked... what made her Mexican, or Chicana, and what also made her American.
I really agree with Nibia in regards to the article and the video clip. when I was younger i always found that part so weird it wasn't till i was older that i actually understood why it was such a big deal to be authentic to both cultures. I undergo this a lot when I go to Puerto Rico so I 'm familiar with the fear her father had for her because my father always feels the need to give em a prep talk before i land on the island (smile). I do really agree with Nibia in the case of Selena hybrid identity was very well accepted both in the U.S and in Mexico and it wasn't a matter of what she couldn't do but what she could do and how she did it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of the comments above.Because there is a major discourse when it comes to authenticity and having to prove yourself. I have lots of Latin American friends and they always talk about how they feel out of place when they visit Mexico.They say that they always feel less "Mexican" but at the same time when they are in the states they don't feel as if they are fully American.Which goes back to what classifies authenticity.
ReplyDeleteThis video is interesting! It well demonstrates how people have pure Mexican blood can also have a very Americanize lifestyle. And in my opinion, it is not fair to say that hybridity is unauthentic. If we define “Mexican” and “American” as groups that are authentic, we should also define Mexican-American as authentic. Since both Mexico and America had been colonized by other countries in the history, both cultures are like culture combos, which have a lot of different cultures mixed together. From my point of view, being diverse and multicultural does not necessarily mean that it cannot be authentic. If the “authentic” equals to the traditional and local, then the first Mexican-American should probably be a good representative of authenticity considering that s/he is the first one of the kind. Besides, I think Mexican Americans should not think in the way that they belong to neither groups but that they have their own group and unique identity.
ReplyDeleteHybrid culture is the notion of double identity or rather double consciousness, which is this veil of proven both culutres. I remember my close friends pointed out that you have to be a full-blooded Mexicans or not at all. In order to get that right you have to be from Mexico. People have been disconnected from their cullture to please the American society, which called "American Dream".
ReplyDeleteKraidy (2005) for me complicated ideas around hybridity for me. In one part, the author talks about the mixing of cultures and practices, in another how this is complicated by power relations brought on by the realities of global capitalism, and perhaps even about how the concept itself is a bit ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea that there's no such thing as, Kraidy who quotes Said (1994) says, "cultural forms are hybrid, mixed, impure, and the time has come...to reconnect their analysis with their history." Connecting it to this example, I want to know more about the tejana/o identity and what that is a hybrid of. Then again I still think it is funky to consider that if there are no pure forms then what goes into creating a new-ish form?
The clip to me represents power relations and who decides what is authentic and allowable within the realms of the identities of "American," "Mexican," "Tejano," and all of the complexities inside of, and between them.
The purity issue is interesting. My reading of this issue (surely informed by Kraidy's chapter that addresses many many ideas from other theorists) is that all cultures are constructed from heterogeneous sources. Thus when one labels a cultural/ethnic/racial group as "pure" s/he is conflating the diverse origins of the group, instating a sort of immaculate conception creation myth, thereby mystifying its historically constructed nature.
ReplyDeleteThis problematizes the hybridity concept in that we typically conceive of a hybrid as being the product of two distinct elements that are perceived as 'pure' in our common semiotic code. Therefore in calling something a hybrid, we have already asserted the purity of the the progenitors of the hybrid. This effectively situates each of the elements involved in hybridization (progenitors and hybrid) in power relations with respect to one another (each progenitor being more powerful than the hybrid).
The more nuanced hybridity of recent theorists is interesting, in that they attempt to avoid thinking of the progenitors as 'pure.'
Edward Said wrote “all cultures are involved in one another, none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic” (1994, xxv). The dichotomy of the West/white and non-West/non-white is a construction and a product of colonialism and imperialism. The concepts of racial, ethnic, and cultural “purity” are actually social, political, and historical construction. How can we “measure” the purity of the “Mexicanness” (both biologically and culturally) of somebody? We actually have no tools to do that.
ReplyDeleteThis clip from Selena seems to counter Marshall Sahlin's claim that hybrid identities serve as a bridge that can overcome colonial power relations in some way. (These were not his words, but this is my inference from the Kraidy essay). While a hybrid culture can certainly exist - like that of the Tejana/o - this identity does not necessarily function as a bridge between two cultures. Rather, it can create even more complex problems of identity, for hybridity is impure. It is not a whole identity in and of itself.
ReplyDeleteKraidy offers a discussion of different ways to theorize purity in identity. For, what is so impure about a Tejana/o identity? Ultimately, questions of power are important to consider when thinking through identity. Kraidy argues that hybrid cultures are socially constructed by a "hegemonic national framework."
Abraham's concerns demonstrate the family's position as far as power relations in society. They are not fully American, though their family has been in the United States for generations. They are also not authentic Mexicans because of they are Mexican-American and tejana/o.
I think that the discussion is moving in an interesting direction that we will address in class today. Mike is raising in a provocative issue in that Kraidy and others recognize that discussion of hybridity and its related corollary authenticity are imbued in and across relations of power. Kraidy suggest that hybridity is a political intervention when it leads to power transformations and moves towards cultural citizenship. If that is the case, then where does Selena fit in? How does hybridity trouble commodification?
ReplyDeleteKraidy sees the hybridity of cultures as a necessary means of binding together different cultural or racial groups through a shared identity. In almost every Latin American country this leads to a newly defined race and culture of people. However, in the United States this is much more complicated because there is not necessarily a strong prevalence of mixing biologically between the Anglo-Saxon Americans and the Latino people. There is also the problem of language, which, as the clip shows, can cause feelings of alienation from both worlds. I think that Selena was most prominently an example of "transculturation", which Kraidy described as the blending of elements from two cultures which usually manifests itself in music or literature. Selena's music was combining elements of her culture of music into the mainstream.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great example of hybridity, since we can call Selena a hybrid figure. As this clip, and Kraidy emphasizes, this concept of hybridity, or the mixing of different cultures, is a very complex concept to swallow. Abraham in this clip very much so understands it because no one really knows what it is like to be apart of a culture, but not really, with the same culture not even accepting your identity. Hybrids have to constantly prove how "pure" of a culture they are, when in actuality, everyone is a hybrid of some sort, for no one, at least in America, is purely just one culture. I think this clip shows, not only the complexity of hybridity, but also the relativity as well. I am sure other ethnicities feel the exact same way about their culture, not just Mexican-Americans.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both poxiejunior and Tichina’s comments. Selena had the task being dually authentic within two cultures, Mexican & American culture. Like Kraidy discusses in the article, that people have a responsibility to represent a pure image of the cultures they are hybridly associated with. However, one can never be a true authentic breed of a culture because to a certain degree others will always associate you with the culture you most closely resemble. In Selena’s case she looked Mexican so that is how people would initially associate her. I do believe that it is important to display a consciousness of American culture in order to succeed on the America. This falls into the ideology of double consciousness and double identity which is also represented in her father’s statement of being both Mexican and American.
ReplyDelete