When you hear the word "hybrid" you might think of the latest vehicle that runs on both gasoline and electricity, or you may think of domestic plant or livestock varieties. Check out the results from a couple popular search engines.
Recently on a trip to Bloomington, Indiana (where I attended graduate school) I visited a friend of mine who is a farmer, yogini, and just a wonderful person. She also happens to be a black woman married to a white man. They have a child together. While picking blueberries our conversation turned to hybrids. I think the subject erupted as I was telling her about my work in progress series dealing with dehumanization. She in turn recounted a conversation she had with a white Indiana farmer who thought he was complementing her son by telling her that the son has "hybrid vigor!" His comment was based on the fact that the son is a combination of human beings (Homo sapiens) who happen to have different skin colors. Obviously, she was insulted because the farmer assumes the validity of race linked with the superficiality of skin color as an indicator of separate species! Stated another way, his implication is that Blacks and Whites are different species, which was a common belief in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Given America's history with race and the differences between the current presidential candidates, identity politics concerning race have resurfaced. Mainly, the question regarding Kamala Harris' identity of being Black or Indian troubles some. Which one is she? She can't be both say her detractors. She has to be one or the other say her political opponents. Perhaps she's a hybrid?!
When doing research for my dissertation in anthropological theories and histories of race to unpack "Coloured" identity in South Africa, I encountered numerous incidents of dehumanization, especially related to people who did not belong to the dominant category, whichever class, race, gender, or nation that may have been.
My own ethnic and racial background as a person with a South African mother in the "Coloured" category and a White father of German-Sicilian descent caused people to question my identity. "What are you?" was a common question I received growing up in NYC and when I would travel abroad. "You have such a unique look," they would say. As a young person it made me uncomfortable to have to unpack such heavy topics that I was still working through myself, but I got really good at explaining the differences between nationality, ethnicity, and racial identity. So good that I decided to get pursue the topic for my doctorate decades later and am now translating them into visual art.
People that do not conform to stereotypes (racial, gender, sexual, religious, etc.) make people who operate within the confines of those definitions as truth feel uncomfortable. Human identity in general is fluid as we move through various life stages. The more individual autonomy we humans have, free from the restraints of cultural tradition and conformity, the more fluid our identities. This is why America as a nation is an experiment and we are all subjects within the experiment. It is the first time in history where Indigenous peoples, Europeans colonizers and settlers, enslaved Africans, and indentured Asians were brought/stolen/forced/cajoled together on one land mass and left to figure it out! In 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, life on earth was changed forever. In 1493 the worlds collided and the opportunities for the mixing and mingling of human genetic material exploded. All the more opportunities for hybridization!
Ok, so, where did this term come from and how is it dehumanizing? Why was my friend offended when the white farmer told her that her son had "hybrid vigor"? Why does it matter what racial identity Kamala Harris claims if her father is Jamaican, and her mother is Indian? How are these incidents of dehumanization?
During the 18th and 19th centuries, when Europe was at the pinnacle of colonial exploits and The United States of America was coming onto the world stage. The young nation was attempting to form its intellectual and economic foundations in the face of the Old World, social, and scientific theories about the nature of human difference passed for truth to show USA was worthy of independence. Social constructions with race as the foundation was often taken for granted. The epitaphs that followed people whose parents did not fall within the same category of race or ethnicity were detrimental to how others perceived them and how the people conceived themselves. Using zoological terms to refer to creole, “mixed-race,” and indigenous people was a strategy of colonizers to dehumanize the colonized and exploit them for economic reasons. The idea that inter-cultural people are “hybrids” or hybridized implies an animal quality based on the etymology of the word. According to John D. Forbes (1993), the word “hybrid” evolves from the Latin word hibrida developed during Roman times to refer to the offspring of a wild boar and a tame sow. Over time the word came to signify the child of a Roman father and a foreign mother, or a freeman and a slave.
Though Forbes argues that during Roman times race was not a qualifier of peoples implying servitude, he does note the anachronism that many scholars engage when applying these terms to divisions of people which are based on genetic markers used to determine race. Using race to distinguish human beings came much later, during the scientific and industrial revolutions. The evolution of the idea that Africans, Natives, and Europeans were different species is illustrated by the Colonial Spanish obsession with classifying intercultural mixed people.
A more specific example is the depiction and naming of a person with one European parent and another African as mulatto “mule.” Individuals classified as such were linked to beasts of burden because they were a “hybrid” of two separate equine species – offspring of a mare and a male donkey. The implied incapacity to reproduce spoke to the socially constructed racial divisions and mistaken belief that European and African races were different species!
Not true, we are all human beings one species!
There is a reason that there is a pairing of Arts and Sciences at many universities across the America. They go hand in hand. In this tradition, I use social science histories and theories to create artwork that challenge people's perception of the world around them and the ideas they may take for granted. Using the symbology and etymology of the term “hybrid” as a foundation I reflect on my ongoing research and observations as an American citizen to create art as a teaching tool. For the piece that will be titled hibridia I began researching ways to manifest this sculpture. I began looking at the physiology of wild boars and domestic pigs hoping for some inspiration that will drive the visual elements.
As luck and persistence would have it, I ran across a blog post titled "Why do some domestic pigs have foreheads?" on the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog. Check out some interesting photos of a variety of pig skulls. From here, the vision became clearer.
Rather than try to depict a hibridia as it might have appeared as a live animal and just like a pig, I would capture the act of creating a hibridia, using the skeletal elements (the high and sloping frontal cranial bones) of both animals to show the interbreeding. From there I will transpose the variety of historic and contemporary research related to hybridization as it applies to human beings.
Now, that I've done the research and have the vision, all that's left is to sketch and sculpt.
Wish me luck and watch this space!
Thanks for accompanying me on this journey.
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