The ambivalence he identifies also helps us analyze contemporary developments, which see increasingly complex globalized networks alongside fiercely proclaimed identities that face off against each other. However, his discussion of examples from the colonial archive is not only of historical relevance. Drawing on many demanding theorists and covering a range of histories and cultures, Bhabha’s work elaborates a series of concepts that capture the ways the colonized resisted the authority of the colonizer, an authority that was from the start ambivalent and anxious. His work remains an essential reference for anyone interested in the hybrid cultural perspectives associated with colonialism and globalization. The influential ideas and terms explored in his essays-such as hybridity, ambivalence, and mimicry-were formative for postcolonial theory, but they have also inspired work in management studies, art theory, architecture, human rights, development studies, theology, and many other unexpected fields. Developing the work of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist thinkers, Bhabha has been a profoundly original voice in the study of colonial, postcolonial, and globalized cultures.

Born in Bombay, Bhabha was educated and taught in British universities, before moving to the University of Chicago and ultimately Harvard, where he teaches in the Department of English and is director of the Humanities Center. While easily understood as a postcolonial theorist, the range of his interests means it is perhaps better to characterize his work in terms of vernacular or translational cosmopolitanism. Bhabha (b. 1949) is a literary and cultural critic, influential theorist of postcolonial culture, and engaged advocate for the humanities.

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