Exploring Hybrid Identity in the Novel: A Bhabhaian Perspective

Abstract

This study explores Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of cultural hybridity, with particular emphasis on the formation and transformation of hybrid identities in a postcolonial context. Drawing on Bhabha’s theoretical framework, the study examines how memory, cultural negotiation, and historical experience contribute to the reconstruction of individual and collective identities. Particular attention is given to emotional connections with the past and to the ways in which cultural displacement and historical ruptures influence the development of identity. The study adopts a descriptive qualitative approach, through which selected passages, narrative elements, characters, and linguistic expressions in the novel are closely examined to identify significant themes and meanings.  The findings further reveal that tradition, modernity, cultural dislocation, and memory function as important forces in shaping identity. Memory creates a link between lived experiences and historical consciousness, while nostalgia expresses an emotional attachment to the past. At the same time, nostalgia may generate uncertainty and complicate a stable sense of identity.  The study demonstrates that hybridity represents a fluid, dynamic, and continuously negotiated process of identity formation within postcolonial literary discourse.

 Keywords: Cultural Hybridity and Homi K, Post colonialism, Cultural Displacement, Memory, Identity Formation,