The interdisciplinary aspect of the studies of transculturation and hybridization in comparative culture discourse

Abstract

On the basis of an expanded understanding of new literary comparativism, a transdisciplinary approach is used. Comparative methodologies are discussed in terms of comparative cultures. The basis for the use of theories of hybrid culture and transculturation is that the subject of comparative studies is  the analysis of the principles of interaction between two or more cultures, and the comparison and determination of the specifics of the general and the individual. The relevance of such research is determined by the fact that in the contemporary global world there is a transformation of the theories of multiculturalism, which has actually turned into different isolated cultural practices that are not interconnected. The concepts of transculturalism and hybridization are polemicized with multiculturalism as with the lack of interaction between cultures. The most important sign of transculturation is its imagological paradigm: the Other is seen not as an object to which efforts are being made to transform it into Mine, but as an independent subject of the dialogue of cultures. Hybridization is defined as the creation of new mixed types of cultures, based on the interaction of heterogeneous cultural elements, leading to the emergence of new cultural forms as processing at the local level of global, national and regional cultures. The article deals with the Caribbean tradition, which has formed hybrid models of transculturation in three paradigms of cultural difference: cultural differentialism, cultural convergence and cultural hybridization. It explains the theory of melange by Jan Nederveen Pieterse, who proposed to define globalization as hybridization, which gives rise to global melange, of mixing. Strategies for forming ideas about national identities, the cultural integrity of nations, and ways of intercultural communication based on the concept of «nation» – do not work in today's modern global world. The theory of hybridization, as well as the theory of transculturation – as a form of interaction between cultures – is the construction of a dialogue in the context of a contradictory global world, a combination of our and another culture.