Abstract
Hybridity is an old concept which goes back to European antiquity. The term originally denoted the mixing of biologically and/or culturally different species or human beings, and was typically used in a negative and condescending way, such as when referring to the offspring of a Greek or Roman man and a ‘Barbarian’ woman. In the 19th century, biological hybridity and its impact on cultures was a major concern in the emerging natural sciences, and most prominently so in the pseudo-science of raciology. The mixing of races was seen by most colonial physical anthropologists as a threat to the God-given natural order of human races, and not least also to the orders of Empire (see ch. 16) which it stabilized.
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© 2019 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature
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Bartels, A., Eckstein, L., Waller, N., Wiemann, D. (2019). Interlude: Hybridity. In: Postcolonial Literatures in English. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05598-9_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05598-9_10
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Publisher Name: J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart
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