stross- the hybrid metaphor, from biology to culture

The Hybrid Metaphor: From Biology to CultureAuthor(s): Brian StrossSource: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 112, No. 445, Theorizing the Hybrid (Summer,1999), pp. 254-267Published by: American Folklore SocietyAmerican Folklore SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/541361Accessed: 23/08/2010 13:44

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BRIAN STROSS

The Hybrid Metaphor From Biology to Culture

This article introduces and briefly discusses a few conceptual considerations common to

biological and cultural hybridity and examines the biological concept of "hybrid vigor" as it can be applied to the cultural realm of hybridity, illustrating this with a hybrid form of communication in cyberspace. The notion of a hybridity cycle is introduced, along with

stages in the cycle whereby a hybrid form becomes a purebred and then parent of another

hybrid.

"THE SPECIAL FABRIC IS STRONG AND ULTRA-SOFT. If cotton and suede had a baby, this would be it!": So says a recent newspaper advertisement for sportswear. Whoever wrote the ad mated biology with culture to create and describe the hybrid cloth. This cultural hybrid between cotton and suede has no name yet, but one day it might. It

may have neither cotton nor suede in its composition, but it has implicitly been given these purebred parents, and it has been perceived as a hybrid form by someone.

Perhaps, once named, it will one day become the purebred nomenclatural parent of another hybrid. The word hybrid is generally used today to refer to several kinds of

things, all of which are abstractly heterogeneous in origin or composition. Our word hybrid with its somewhat abstract meanings has rather concrete origins. In

Latin the hibrida was the offspring of a (female) domestic sow and a (male) wild boar. The semantic range of the word hybrid has expanded in more recent times to include the offspring of a mating by any two unlike animals or plants. The cultural hybrid is a

metaphorical broadening of this biological definition. It can be a person who represents the blending of traits from diverse cultures or traditions, or even more broadly it can be a culture, or element of culture, derived from unlike sources; that is, something heterogeneous in origin or composition. While some pejorative connotations still cling to the word hybrid, as can be seen in such descriptive terms as half-breed, half-caste, mutt, mongrel, and so on, the concept is here considered in just the opposite light.

I will introduce and briefly discuss a few of the paradigmatic conceptual considerations common to biological and cultural hybridity and then examine one of the

relationships linking biological to cultural notions of hybridity. Specifically, I ask whether the biological concept of hybrid vigor (heterosis) can be applied to the cultural

Brian Stross is Professor of Atthropology at the University of Texas at Austin

Journal of American Folklore 112(445):254-267. Copyright ? 1999, American Folklore Society.

Stross, The Hybrid Metaphor 255

realm of hybridity. The answer provided is that it can, establishing the relevance of classification and context (or environment) to the hybrid, and this answer is given concrete realization through an example of hybridity in cyberspace. Finally, the impor- tance of classification is implicitly reiterated by a consideration of what can be called the "hybridity cycle," in which a hybrid form transforms itself into a "pure" form prior to helping generate another hybrid. This cycle is dependent on naming and conceptual contrast, and thus on classification, for its existence.

Perhaps it is already clear to the reader that classification provides the basis for, as well as the justification of, the notion of hybridity and all things considered to be hybrids. The human being is sometimes referred to as a classifying animal, and indeed our very survival depends on our ability, usually quite out of awareness, to divide and organize the welter of information that we perceive about our environment into classes of

things so that we can treat one thing like another that we perceive, or believe, to be in the same class. We also appear to have a more conscious drive to classify, one that is

especially well developed in taxonomists perhaps, but it is a drive that we all share, as evidenced in our use of names, both proper and common. The drive is strong enough that when it is difficult fitting things into specific categories we become aware of the constructed (as opposed to discovered) nature of what we are doing and ultimately of all classifications. Some would say that although cultural categories are thus con-

structed, categories in nature are actually out there and that the only social process involved lies in our attempts to find out and properly name the real natural categories that truly exist. But in fact, whether or not natural categories exist, our named

categories are all socially constructed. This characterization of classification and the

approach taken here to hybridity find common ground in the work of Boas on the

arbitrary and perspectival nature of classificatory systems, work dealing with race, language, culture, and even seawater (1911, 1948).

Folklorists are as aware as anyone of the constructed aspect of classification systems and are quite familiar with metaphor and its utility in constructing models of reality that simplify by creating redundancy as well as through their heuristic properties. Whereas notions of cultural hybridity derive from prior concepts of biological hybridity by means of metaphoric extension and through analogies founded on the metaphor, it is through classification that we can hope to bridge biology and culture in under-

standing how legitimate the metaphor might be and how many points of analogical similarity can be adduced.

A Paradigmatic Model of Hybridity Concerns

The difference between the biological hybrid and the cultural hybrid is perhaps not as great as one might at first think. Even biological models are socially constructed, after all. But there is a difference, if only because biology is not culture; so words must be selected with prudence, and concepts contemplated carefully, to avoid confusing conclusions drawn from one arena with those applicable to the other.

One way to embrace biological and cultural hybridity together, and to sample them at analogous loci, is to focus in turn on different components of hybridization: first on the hybrid itself; then on its parents; focusing next on the relations between the hybrid

256 Journal of American Folklore 112 (1999)

and its parents; then on the relations between the hybrid and its environment; next on the mechanisms by which parents produce hybrid offspring; and focusing finally on the

hybridization cycle itself, a cycle in which purebred parents produce the hybrid that in time becomes a purebred parent, again to mate with another in the production of yet another hybrid. The topics subsumed as relevant to each of these components of

hybridization serve thus as individual indexes of the aptness and utility of the cultural

analogy to biological hybridity (Table 1).

Hybrid Offspring Focus

Focusing on the hybrid itself (the result of hybridization), one can describe or measure its qualities. Topics such as heterogeneity and hybrid vigor fit well within the

purview of this focus. Biologically, heterogeneity refers to genetic heterozygosity (different variants of

genes occupying the same location on corresponding chromosomes), which is much easier to imagine than to measure. Heterozygosity is in essence variability, and variabil-

ity generally can be seen as potential for adaptation to new circumstances. Culturally,

heterogeneity is more difficult to describe, define, and measure, but here, too, hetero-

geneity of relevant elemental factors contributed by the "parents" is the hypothetical norm for the ideal hybrid. Here, too, other things being equal, it would seem that variability and variation allow for greater adaptability. While recognizing that biological and

Table 1. A paradigm of focal hybridity concerns and the topics they imply.

Focus Topics

1. Focus on the hybrid itself, including heterogeneity, hybrid vigor description or measurement of its qualities.

2. Focus on the parents of the hybrid and their homogeneity (purity), boundaries

qualities.

3. Focus on relations of hybrid and parents and tracking ancestry, hybridity and belonging, hybridity and

of their respective qualities. mediation

4. Focus on relations of hybrid and the environmental facilitators, hybrid vigor environment in which the hybrid is created and

develops.

5. Focus on hybridization process and hybridizing mechanisms (breeding: mating, invention, mechanisms by which hybrids are brought about. borrowing, learning)

6. Focus on cycle of hybridity from "hybrid" birth of hybrid, naming the hybrid, refinement of hybrid,

form, to "pure" form (from heterogeneity to contrast with another category, "mating" with contrasting

homogeneity), to parenting a new hybrid. Note purebred category how in time the hybrid offspring of two divergent

"pure" strains comes to be (seen as) more

legitimate and "purer" itself as it adapts to its

environment, becoming conventionalized and

more homogeneous, until it is finally perceived and defined by social construction as "pure" enough to interbreed with other purebreds.


cultural heterogeneity are only imperfect analogues, it appears that the notion of

heterogeneity can nonetheless be usefully extended from the biological realm to the

cultural, and it is heterogeneity that most efficiently characterizes the nature of the

hybrid.

Hybrid vigor, or heterosis, is a phenomenon well known to plant and animal breeders. It refers to the empirically observed phenomenon of increased vigor or

capacity for growth often displayed by hybrid animals or plants (Baker 1965:83-88;

Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1979, 1:364 and 8:817). The hybrid maize industry, for exam-

ple, is based on hybrid vigor caused by crossing inbred strains of maize, which has

greatly increased productivity in the corn belt of the United States. The mule is a good example of an animal hybrid. Offspring of a male jackass and a female horse, the mule is large, hardy, vigorous, and strong, able to withstand hardships and working conditions too severe for other pack and draft animals. It displays hybrid vigor. The natural

question here is, In addition to animals and plants, can the notion of hybrid vigor apply also to cultures, discourse genres, languages, and other cultural phenomena? I argue below, in discussing the fourth focus, on relating the hybrid to its environment, that the answer is yes.

In addition to increased vigor, plant and animal breeders have noticed increased

growth rate, size, fertility, or yield of a hybrid organism over those of its parents, which differ genetically from one another and which tend toward homozygosity (genetic sameness at the same locations on corresponding chromosomes) for relevant traits. These breeders exploit the phenomenon of heterosis by mating different purebred organisms with specific desirable traits. First-generation offspring not infrequently demonstrate, in greater measure, the desired characteristics of both parents. Interest-

ingly enough, if the hybrids are then mated together, this "vigor" decreases in succeed-

ing generations (though not below the level of the individual purebred parents), so the desired traits can be maintained only by crossbreeding the parental lines over and over

again (Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1979, 14:499-500; Schery 1972:415). A question that arises from this phenomenon as well is, If hybrids that are mated together decrease in

"vigor" (correlative to an increase in homogeneity), does this imply that a similar

metaphorical decrease would apply also in the cultural domain?

Biologically, cross-pollinated species are naturally hybrid (heterozygous, more het-

erogeneous) for many traits, and they tend to lose vigor as they become purebred (more homozygous, homogeneous at specific chromosome locations). Self-pollination tends toward homozygosity. Heterozygosity makes for more variation and thus probably more adaptability. One can see how each of these terms might be useful metaphors in

the cultural domain: "cross-pollination" of genres or of cultures, "self-pollination" or

"purity" of genres or of cultures, "variation" within genres or cultures. If the analogy between biological and cultural holds up, it would follow that increasing the "mating" of hybrids together would theoretically increase cultural homogeneity in the offspring and so might be seen to decrease the potential for adaptability and, in a very subjective sense, the vigor, when compared to the original hybrid form.

However, the analogy breaks down because biological mating is different from cultural procreation. There is no limit on the number of traits or features that can be

generated in a cultural hybrid form; the biological hybrid has only two possible


alternatives at any given gene locus and has only a limited number of chromosomes.

Moreover, adaptation to new contexts can be so much faster in the cultural domain. In

short, increased homogeneity (generally not as adaptive as heterogeneity in a changing environment) and a decrease in vigor are not a necessary outcome of hybrid forms

"interbreeding" in the cultural domain.

Purebred Parent Focus

Instead of focusing on the hybrid "offspring" itself, one can look at the qualities of the parents of the hybrid, considering then the associated notions of homogeneity (or "purity") and boundary. Ideally the parents of a hybrid are individually internally homogeneous and differ in composition from one another. Crossing "pure" cultural traditions yields hybrids, just as does crossing "pure" biological breeding stock, and

ultimately the "parents" in these crossings are individual organisms or individual cultural features manipulated by individual people. The likelihood of progeny exhibit-

ing heterosis (hybrid vigor) when plants or animals are bred increases with increasingly different "pure" parents. In biological terms "purity" results from breeding stock "isolation" (or "inbreeding"), leading to biological homozygosity (or genetic homogeneity). In cultural terms, "purity" results from "refinement" or "conventionalization" of a tradition-processes sometimes assisted by authoritarianism, by small community size, and by a selection for speed in adapting to new environments-and implies minimizing variability within the cultural tradition, a condition associated with cultural

homogeneity. Pure in this context means relatively more homogeneous in character (homozygous

in biological terms), having less internal variation. Hybrid, the opposite, is of course

more heterogeneous in character, having more internal variation. One might say that

there are no truly "pure" forms, completely homozygous (biologically) or completely

homogeneous in composition (culturally), and perhaps never have been. Thus every-

thing is a "hybrid" of sorts. Yet the term has both utility and meaning for most of us. It

may not survive close or philosophical scrutiny, but it is quite adequate for communi-

cating in general terms, particularly with the realization that we construct the notion of

purity. Moreover, the empirical observation of hybrid vigor appears to render quite

meaningful and with a high degree of consensus the cultural construction of the notion

of "purebred." Humans are remarkably adept at subjectively detecting and referencing

degrees of "purity" (or homogeneity)-far more so than they are capable of measuring in any objective sense-and sometimes with remarkable consensus. And so it is that we

can talk about it and believe that we know what we and others mean; but we can also

get quite confused when it comes down to objectifying the notion of purity. Boundaries also pertain to a focus on the parents of the hybrid. The topic of

boundaries includes boundary creating and maintaining mechanisms and boundary

crossing. The biological hybrid is a cross between different "strains, races, varieties,

species, or genera" of animals or plants, indicating a range of degrees of difference which the parents can or must exhibit and therefore implying the existence of upper and lower boundaries for that range. Below one boundary the parents will not be

different enough from one another to produce a hybrid. Biologically, a white dwarf


floppy-eared rabbit mating with a spotted dwarf floppy-eared rabbit will not produce progeny that would generally be called hybrids between the two. These animals are too similar. Nor would the progeny of an albino Kuna Indian of Panama and a nonalbino Kuna be called hybrids.

The shifting nature of that lower boundary becomes clear, however, when we note that some persons would refer to as hybrid the child of an Italian and a German, while others would not. Some would opine that the child of a European and an American Indian must be a hybrid, while others would say no. Different as a Creek Indian of North America might look from an Inca of South America, some would say that

progeny produced by a Creek and an Inca would not be hybrids. Apparently not only do individuals differ in the judgments they might make of the hybrid or nonhybrid status of various other individuals, but these judgments also vary according to different situations.

In the nonbiological arena of culture there are similar lower boundaries: a mixture of

jazz funk with jazz fusion, for example, might not be seen as a hybrid musical genre, at least today. The "parents" are too similar, so no intermediate genre is developed, and one might add that this is because there is no context to support a need for it. When that context arises the hybrid will be recognized or created.

Above the upper boundary, in the biological arena, the parents will be too dissimilar to produce any offspring at all. An elephant, for example, cannot successfully mate with a canary and produce progeny; and, culturally, who would think to unite an escalator with a baseball bat and call the result a hybrid? Boundaries of these sorts are applicable to both biological and cultural hybridity, and of course they are culturally defined in both kinds of cases. I am of the opinion that with respect to that part of the biological universe that includes nonhuman animals and plants the boundaries are likely to be less fluid and shifting than when humans are involved. Even more fluid and capable of depending strongly on context are the upper and lower boundaries for hybrids in the cultural realm. Nevertheless, the extension from biological to the cultural of the notion of hybrid appears to be both useful and justified with respect to having upper and lower boundaries.

Relating Offspring to Parent, Hybrid to Purebred

One can explore the relationship between (qualities of) the hybrid and (qualities of) the parents. Topics such as tracing ancestry, belonging, and mediation are relevant here. With this focus come the immediate and problematic questions of what and how much the hybrid gets from each "parent" and how one could one measure this. These questions are part of the topic of tracing ancestry.

Tracing ancestry, usually an important endeavor in human societies, involves untan- gling, sorting, and classifyring the multiple strands from which the hybrid cloth was woven. In the hybrid, heterogeneous in composition, offspring of at least two "parents," how many and what kinds of characteristics derive from which parent become legitimate questions. They are questions whose answers are always "constructed" and usually with respect to some social considerations. How the purebreds and the hybrids inde- pendently construct their answers is often as interesting as the construction produced


by the historian or by the anthropologist interested in diachronic change.' With nonhuman animals, tracing ancestry appears to be cut and dried, but it is not. A mule's

parentage, for example, is usually traced to a female horse and a male ass. A hinny, on the other hand, comes from a male horse and a female ass. The naming of these hybrids according to gender distinctions of the parents is a clue, however, to the culturally constructed nature of hybrid ancestry. With many other animals the parental gender distinction is not made in naming the hybrid. Similarly, hybrid plants are never, so far as I know, variably named depending on the gender of the parents. Further, horses and asses are classified as such in accordance with a Linnean system of biological classification that is totally constructed and based on a binomial system of nomenclature

developed by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linne), and this system has even changed through time as biologists have constructed different measures for classification and developed different names for individual items classified. Recognizing an individual as a horse, an ass, or some hybrid between the two is again a social matter, even when great consensus is possible.

With humans it is even more obvious that social considerations are involved in the construction of named hybrid categories. For example, Mexican social categorization constructed in colonial times and framed as part of a biological model of interbreeding resulted in such complexities as a Salta atrds social category, which is the perceived hybrid result of a union between a Chino man and an India woman. The Chino man in

turn is a hybrid result of mating a Morisco man to an Espahiola woman, while the India mother in the primary union just mentioned was a "pure" category of Amerind. The Morisco that helped produce the hybrid Chino resulted from the union of a Mulato man and an Espafiola woman, and that Mulato man was himself a hybrid result of

uniting an Espaifol man with a Negra woman. And this does not begin to tell the

complex story of categories created by interbreeding in colonial Mexico (Olien 1973: 94). Regarding culture, ethnographers of Middle American societies during the 1930s

and 1940s often attempted to answer the question of which components of the hybrid cultures were Indian and which were derived from Spanish culture. This question fell into disfavor with the increasing popularity of the concept of syncretism, which included the notion that such cultures were totally new creations, interweaving the

"parent traditions" inextricably, relating to Spanish and Indian parent cultures in ways analogous to the way salt relates to sodium and chlorine-that is, having their own

characteristics that are different from those of their constituents and not being reducible to the sums of their parts (Madsen 1967). Hybridity, which implies origins and

processes, and parentage may yet resurrect some of the old questions of "parentage" of

cultures, however, finding new value in seeking the qualities of the parent in the

reflected constructions of the hybrid "daughter" cultures. Seeking origins and recon-

structing the evolution of forms has, after all, major heuristic and even explanatory value. Furthermore, members of the "daughter" cultures on occasion find it rewarding to (re)construct "stories" or traditions in which such parentage is discovered and

disentangled, traditions with which the ethnographer must deal.

Hybridity or belonging is a sensitive subject in some cases. The hybrid must belong somewhere eventually, and it must be classified somehow. Does a mule belong to the horse category, to the jackass (domestic ass Equus asinus) category, to both, or to


neither? Hybrids, whether plants or animals, can be seen as belonging simultaneously to both (or more) parent systems or to neither. Sometimes they are assigned to one or the other of the parents on the basis of gender, power, or some other quality. Cultures,

genres, and other products of human "culture" are treated in the same way by human

classificatory perceptions and constructions. It happens, for example, in some contexts that a child of "mixed race" can be

ostracized from both (socially constructed) "racial" groups to which the parents belong; in other contexts it can be just the opposite, however, in which case the hybrid (positively regarded for some achievement or for some other positively valued attri-

bute) is claimed by both groups. Sometimes it is one or the other of the groups to which the hybrid belongs. A "hybrid" born of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father is, by Jewish tradition at least, considered to be Jewish. If the mother is Catholic and the father is Jewish, however, the child will be considered born Catholic. The category to which a hybrid is said to belong depends on whose perspective one takes.

Mediation by a mediator would seem to imply hybridity. A mediator, for example, a

cacique mediating between Spanish and Indian culture in Mexico, must be a hybrid of a sort in order to communicate with both even if not for other reasons. Communicating with both implies possessing at least some characteristics of both. It is at least in this sense that a hybrid could be said to mediate categories to which the "parents" belong.

Relating Hybrid to Environment and Context

A fourth focus relates the hybrid to the context in which it occurs. Because it is the context (or environment) that interacts with the hybrid to extinguish, maintain, or

modify its characteristics and reproductive ability, it is always important to specify the attributes or qualities of the context that are relevant. Environmental facilitators are attributes of the environment that allow for or facilitate the "birth" and maintenance of a hybrid form and shape the direction of its development.

It is my proposition that hybrids, particularly in the cultural domain, are often created to fulfill environmentally sanctioned functions, to fill contextual needs, or to take advantage of opportunities created by new situations. If the environment changes, introducing new parameters, humans seem to devise new forms and formats, and with

every introduction of something new to the environment, the environment is somehow changed, with new parameters, new needs, and new opportunities. The hybrid forms that fill new niches in the environment are usually designed, and certainly selected for or against, on the basis of their exhibited characteristics, which are usually advantageous over, in this sense superior to, characteristics of either "parent." Other- wise one or the other "parent" would probably have served the purpose. That is why hybrid vigor, a topic as relevant to this focus as it is to the focus on the hybrid itself, can be seen to fit both literally in the biological domain and metaphorically in the cultural domain. An example should clarify what is meant here.

Located somewhere in cyberspace on the Internet, one can find several different sorts of "chat" groups including the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) group and various Multi- User Dimensions (MUDs), Multi-User Dimensions Object Oriented (MOOs), and Multi-User Shared Hallucinations (MUSHes), all of which are interesting examples of


relatively new hybrids between written and spoken forms of communication. These

hybrids between written and spoken communication operate in the environment of

"cyberspace," and to do this effectively they utilize abbreviations, "emoticons," and other symbols that communicate in fewer keystrokes and convey some of what voice inflection and facial expression normally do in a face-to-face conversation. These

hybrids are in the process of refinement, and one can see numerous ways in which they have been and are being constituted in adaptation to the cyberspace environment.

Moreover, they are amazingly successful hybrids, adapting to the context of cyberspace almost to perfection.

It may be worth describing just a bit more about the operation of one example, the IRC chat rooms. The chatters themselves are continually refining and redefining the actual operational characteristics of the hybrid program that was written precisely for use in cyberspace. To chat on IRC, one adopts a nickname, fittingly abbreviated to

"nick," because time is at a premium in the effort to emulate oral face-to-face conversation in a written mode and at a distance, as cyberspace dictates. Additional

economy is gained when the nick conveys something about the person's habits,

gender, or interests (as, for example, with the nick Miss Dog-lover). One's nick is automatically displayed on-screen when one chooses to join a particu-

lar group of participants in cyberspace by "entering" a chat room, such as, for example, "Surfside Restaurant," so all six to 20 participants know immediately that someone has

joined them and can react to this information accordingly. The participants can register actions as well as words, so that on-screen one might see such things as "[hoss] ambles over to a chair and plops down in it, putting a friendly hand on the new guest's arm,"

perhaps followed by, "[Loreen] brings tray w/ cookies of all kinds, offering one with a

wry smile and a chuckle," and then maybe "[Miss Dog-lover] I'll take a chocolate

chip, thanks Loreen." In addition to actions and discourse, one finds also the use of "emoticons" (a word

hybrid crossing emotions with icons, employing the meanings of both). Examples include the smiling faces made with keyboard characters and other iconic representations of human faces exhibiting various affective states: for example, :<) :-) ;-}.

Letter (and number) abbreviations (e.g., "18r" for "later") also help the "chat

language" adapt to the requisites of immediacy. The chat rooms have moderators and are monitored by "sysops" and "admins."

A complete word-for-word transcript (including actions) of a chat room's operation during the time it is monitored by an individual can be saved by that individual (Table 2). Unlike a screenplay, another sort of hybrid between speech and writing that also

employs "actions" as well as dialogue which a chat transcript sometimes resembles, the chat room "text" is interactive, like a multiparty conversation, and multilaterally emergent (i.e., nobody can know where it will go because the ongoing chat provides and thus modifies input).

With chat groups, individuals can hide their real identities and take on new characteristics, nicks, and identities. "Role playing," as it is called, is something for which

cyberspace is ideally suited. The IRC program is a hybrid communicative format, birthed into cyberspace from

parent forms of written and spoken communication and currently being fashioned on a


Table 2. First of an eight-page IRC chat room log.

Start: Fri May 29 09:33:40 1998 *** Now talking in #iRoNiC #iRoNiC topic is abusers will have their accounts terminated #iRoNiC topic set by LiamOasis on Fri May 29 07:27:09 *** ^bAdgIrL has quit IRC (Ping timeout for AbAdgIrL[j28.kchl6.jaring.my]) <Yobshogot> hello everyone <sU I Ty> ahahahahah <sU I Ty> denison you fall down kah *** PAC-MEN has quit IRC (Leaving) <'0}-MiC-> but she's closer to me ma *** Az[oN]iC' is now known as Azo-away <'0}-DeN-> name 1 person who doesn't suck to u? <sU I Ty> no

<'O)}-MiC--> eh??? <sU I Ty> cannot like that

<'O)}-MiC-> i tot u dowan to b my fren *** I iLsAndiE has quit IRC (Ping timeout for I iLsAndiE[stm-45-56.tm.net.my]) *** UnIqUeGaL ([email protected]) has joined #iRoNiC <sU I Ty> dont want <sU I Ty> dont want *** dee_dee ([email protected]) has left #iRoNiC <sU Ty> no mood to sleep <'0 }-MiC--> JEEFF!

continuing basis to fit the multiple needs of the environment to which it is adapting. This ability to channel and amend a response to environmental needs within a single generation is the reason one can say that heterosis or hybrid vigor applies not only to the biological provenance of hybridity but also to the cultural, while at the same time it is something that sets the cultural hybrids apart from the biological ones (to which natural selection applies, leaving only those that have responded genetically in an

appropriate manner to the environment to survive and reproduce). It is tempting to generalize here and assert that cultural hybrids are usually fashioned

with characteristics intended to allow them to respond optimally to environmental needs, and they are revised and refashioned as these needs dictate until they satisfy the cultural perceptions of the developers, whether these perceptions be economic or ideological. Cultural hybridization implies a fertile and creative response to environmental

pressures and opportunities, and one could go further and say that the hybridization itself engenders new fertile and creative contexts in which new things can come into being, at least by virtue of modifying the environment. Hybrid animals and plants are not infrequently more hardy than their purebred progenitors, and they also exhibit desirable characteristics. It seems, too, that when different cultures or different aspects of a culture mingle their influences, an efflorescence of creativity often results. As the example of communicative hybrids discussed here illustrates, when something new in the environment either allows for or facilitates new means of exploiting the environmental


potential, a hybrid form is created to engage the needs and exploit that potential. The

hybrid exhibits a close analogy to the hybrid vigor noted in biological reproduction, and it is almost necessarily so in the cultural domain, for if either (or any) of the parent forms had been as successful in exploiting the potential, then the hybrid would not have developed.

Hybridizing Mechanisms

One can examine and describe the immediate mechanisms by which hybrids are

brought about. These include the processes of sexual reproduction, construction, borrowing, and learning, among others. It is here that we see some clear differences between biological and cultural hybridity, here that we see reasons for not immediately accepting conclusions drawn in one arena that are based only on observations made in the other.

Biologically, hybrids are created through mating, or sexual reproduction, and usually involve only two parents. Through this process half of the father's set of paired chromosomes are combined with half of the mother's set to create the hybrid, according to the currently accepted biological model (Hardin 1959). This process of

genetic recombination along with mutation provides the genetic variation that is

operated on by natural selection through the phenotype (the "visible" properties of an

organism that have been produced through interaction of the genetic structure and the environment) of the hybrid and in specific environments. It bears repeating that

any inferred models of this process and any classification of the hybrid results of

biological mating are social constructions usually done on an ideological basis. Cultural "mating" and hybrid production occur differently and in more ways than

biological hybridization, and the cultural hybrid can have more than two "parents." Because of this the hybrid metaphor can be seen more clearly here as metaphor. Rather than through the sexual reproduction that produces biological hybrids, cultural

hybrids are created through such processes as diffusion (or borrowing), invention,

learning, cultural assimilation, and construction, among others. Human institutions or activities that deliver these processes include trade (commerce), warfare (conquest), travel (tourism), education (school), marriage, friendships, ethnography, and other forms of social interaction. All of these promote heterogeneity, thus contributing to the

production of hybrids and through them hybridity. Whereas a person's genetic heritage, her or his biological attribute, remains pretty

much the same throughout the individual's lifetime, this is not the case with cultural

attributes. We continue learning such things as our own language and sometimes other

languages as we mature. We continue learning other things as well while growing older, diversifying and expanding what might be called our cultural repertoire. With the right experiences in life, the relevant input, we can become sociocultural hybrids ourselves, and of course we can also create hybrid cultural artifacts.

Biological evolution is considered to be Darwinian, and thus acquired characteristics

(as opposed to characteristics fixed in the genetic makeup of an individual) are not inherited. Cultural evolution is more Lamarkian, thus involving the "inheritance"

(through traditional transmission) of acquired characteristics, whereby the positive


attributes engendered by adaptation to new environments can be reproduced and

multiplied voluntarily. The mechanics of hybridity, then, leading to different kinds of

evolutionary change constitute a major difference between the biological and cultural domains and are a large part of the reason for the far greater speed with which cultures evolve. It is the area where biological notions of hybridity are not as appropriate for extending to the cultural domain.

Hybridity Cycle

Finally, one can also examine the larger diachronic process of what could be called a

"cycle of hybridity": a cycle that goes from "hybrid" form, to "pure" form, to

"hybrid" form; from relative heterogeneity, to homogeneity, and then back again to

heterogeneity. We can investigate and document how over time the hybrid offspring of divergent "pure" strains can come to be (seen as) more legitimate and "purer" themselves by inbreeding or by adapting to the environment, becoming conventionalized and more homogeneous, until finally "pure" enough to interbreed with other

purebreds (which are themselves probably former hybrids), thus beginning anew the cycle of hybrid production.

Biological hybrids, once enough of the same kind are created, can be inbred to

develop the increasing homogeneity and legitimacy that one day will be sufficient for them to be called purebreds. For example, the Chinese foo dog, extinct by the beginning of the 18th century, must at one time have been a hybrid dog. But when Dutch traders brought them to England, they were considered a pure "breed" of dog, and when a few of them were crossed with English bulldogs, a new hybrid was created, the pug. Currently the pug is its own breed of dog, and one can find many purebred pugs, with their square builds, small size, short muzzles, and tightly curled tails.

The stages thus implied, which could be called "birth of the hybrid," "naming the hybrid," and "refinement of hybrid"-that is, the process through which the initially (perceived as) heterogeneous hybrid becomes progressively more homogeneous through such processes as adapting to environment, adopting formats, adapting conventions, creating rules, generating traditions, and in the case of biological entities, inbreeding or "self-pollination"-contrast with another category by virtue of which the hybrid becomes a constructed purebred, "mating" with a contrasting purebred category, and so to the end of the cycle and beginning of another with the birth of a new hybrid. These stages can be seen in an example of cultural hybridity, too. By many, jazz is considered to be a hybrid music form created by crossing European and African musical traditions in the new environment of the United States, where these different forms (or genres) encountered one another. By now, of course, jazz is considered by many aficionados to be a "pure" form that has itself in combination with classical music engendered the hybrid that is often called "third-stream" music or "third-stream jazz." And jazz combined with rhythm and blues (or according to some, funk) has engendered "fusion" or "jazz fusion." The concept of"belonging" is clearly evident here, for third-stream music is certainly not claimed to be a kind of classical music by the classical crowd, but jazz bufls are usually willing to claim it as a form ofjazz.


Regarding one of the above stages of hybridity, naming the hybrid not just as a

hybrid with pejorative epithets but with an actual name makes it more palatable, tending to give it a preliminary legitimacy and even a kind of "purity" that can lead it sooner or later to take one of the "purebred parent" roles in engendering a new

hybrid. While refinement of the hybrid (sometimes in adaptation to changed environmental requisites) is perhaps more obviously important in developing a "pure" type, "naming the hybrid" indicates societal recognition of the hybrid as a legitimate entity and constitutes a similar kind of facilitation.

Conclusion

An examination has been conducted of how apt the metaphorical extension of the

concept of hybridity from biology to culture might be. This was accomplished by considering several topics associated with six different conceptual foci associated with the components of hybridity. Many of these topics proved to be analogically similar in both biological and cultural domains, particularly those subsumed under the first four foci (on the hybrid, on the parents, on relating hybrid to parents, on relating hybrid to context) and under the sixth (on the hybridity cycle). In part this can be seen as related to the fact that most of what we call the biological domain and our interpreta- tions of it are socially constructed, not to mention the fact that the whole notion of

hybridity (biological and cultural) is socially constructed and interpreted along ideo-

logical lines. In short, notions of heterogeneity, homogeneity, boundaries, ancestry, belonging, mediation, and hybrid vigor were found to be legitimately transferable from the biological to the cultural domains and valid concepts in both domains. Charac- teristic of all these notions in both domains is that they are variable, imprecise, and

perspectival. Yet despite this, or maybe because of it, they are also well fitted for

human thought, discourse, and communication of ideas. With the fifth conceptual focus of hybridity components, on the hybridization

process, the underpinnings of the biological metaphor are not as closely mirrored in the

cultural domain. The actual mechanisms of the hybridization process, while roughly analogous and terminologically transferable, were seen to be different, with different

rates of response to environmental change. I hope also to have pointed out above that there is a cycle of hybridity, the stages of

which are worth delineating in more detail and exemplifying with fuller documenta-

tion at another time. It has also been noted here that the context or environment in

which a hybrid is produced is so important to interpreting the meaning of the hybrid, as well as for shaping the form and destiny of the cultural hybrid, that it cannot be

ignored. Moreover, the success of the hybrid in occupying the environmental niche to which it is adapted allows us to carry the biological concept of hybrid vigor quite neatly over to the domain of cultural hybridity as an appropriate and useful concept.

The concept of the hybrid in a cultural sense, even considered in terms of the

paradigm of multiple foci for investigation that was outlined above, still falls short of

being able to deal adequately with the empirical as opposed to the constructed facts of variation. There are after all no "pure" individuals, no "pure" cultures, no "pure"

genres. All things are of necessity "hybrid." Of course we can construct them to be


relatively "pure," and in fact we do so, which is precisely how we manage to get (new) hybrids from purebreds that are (former) hybrids.

Note

1At first sight it may seem that the answer to the question "What traits from whom?" might not always be constructed, appearing to be more relevant to the cultural domain while perhaps much less so in

biological hybridity. Upon reflection, however, it becomes apparent that the difference in "constructed- ness" between biological and cultural hybridity with respect to traits and their sources may be relatively insignificant after all. When one sees a child's face and says, for example, "She looks so much like her father," it is clearly a comment and perhaps opinion that is constructed. The subjectivity involved in this evaluation in the biological domain is easy to see, and the traits involved may be multiple, complex, and difficult to isolate. Taking a specific trait like eye color could seem less subjective and less "constructed," but our folk theories of how eye color is passed on are often different from the theories that geneticists have constructed and operate from to explain inheritance of phenotypic traits; and still we are dealing with constructed answers to biological questions regardless of whose theory we are applying. Dealing with humans might be more obviously a matter that would involve social considerations and constructed input, but even when looking at the colors of flowering plants and their offspring we find that we are likely to be dealing with a theory deriving from Mendelian genetics that was constructed through inference and still does not explain all that is required of it.

References Cited

Baker, Herbert G. 1965. Plants and Civilization. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc. Boas, Franz. 1911. Introduction. In Handbook of American Indian Languages, ed. Franz Boas, pp. 1-83.

Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. . 1948. Race, Language, and Culture. New York: MacMillan.

Encyclopaedia Brittanica. 1979. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Brittanica Inc. Hardin, Garrett. 1959. Nature and Man's Fate. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Madsen, William. 1967. Religious Syncretism. In Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 6, ed. Manning

Nash and Robert Wauchope, pp. 369-392. Austin: University of Texas Press. Olien, Michael D. 1973. Latin Americans: Contemporary Peoples and Their Cultural Traditions. New York:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Schery, Robert W. 1972. Plants for Man. 2nd edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

stross- the hybrid metaphor, from biology to culture

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