Interlude: Hybridity

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.