International Relations of Post-Hybridity: Dangers and Potentials in Non-Synthetic Cycles

The term hybridity is losing its critical potential in the study of globalization, both because no one is not hybrid anymore and because awareness of hybridity might encourage violence. Whereas hybridity initially appeared as either cosmopolitanism or post-coloniality, it has however turned into a subversive celebration of unavailing indoctrination of any orthodoxy or canon. It is also the evidence of sited subjectivity or agency, whose unique genealogy cannot be entirely subsumed by simulating the sanctioned orthodox. This paper instead advocates the emergence of post-hybridity, which is different from hybridity in its assumption of multilayeredness, memory, reconnection, and, most importantly, non-synthetic and yet cyclical historiography. It uses the example of Hong Kong, where both dialectical and cyclical modes of existence are central, to clarify post-hybridity. The paper is primarily a pedagogical reminder of, and a remedy to, the problem of the term hybridity for the teachers and students of International Relations.