Obama Bhabha

Greetings, everyone, on this suddenly sunny Sunday. Anything that Zadie Smith writes would be news-worthy for this class, but you might find her recent lecture/article, "Speaking in Tongues," to be particularly relevant at this moment given that you're doing battle with Homi Bhabha's prose and coming to an understanding of hybridity theory. This article not only features some passages that are obviously germane to our discussions and course contexts, but it very interestingly depicts the new American president as a practitioner of the Third Space. See her description of "Dream City," and her rich assemblage of suggestive phrases and notions: multiplicity, complicated back stories, messy histories, crossing borders, multiple narratives, cultural contingency, plural selves. "Flexibility of voice," she concludes, "leads to a flexibility in all things."