Rethinking Hybridity, Interrogating Mixedness

This article discusses definitions and debates about the terms ‘hybridity’ and ‘mixedness’ across the natural and human and social sciences, including the work of the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha. Using the argonomic idea of homology, that refers to correspondences in both the quality and the states of a thing or phenomena, insights are offered into how we might think of the layers and processes of mixing that can be involved in the event of hybridity. This is particularly important because discussions of mixedness in the social sciences, and in everyday life, can run together different phenomena, strata, states, their sensual traits and their relative maturity or in/stabilities. In the process, different modalities of mixing can be subsumed or collapsed. The article also provides a summary of the key ideas and arguments made by contributors to the issue.