This paper assumes that daily-life practices are permeated by hybridity. This assumption is corroborated by various specific examples selected from Moroccan culture., which point out the proliferation of these hybrid processes throughout the social body; sometimes in the least expected places. Taking into consideration the ambivalence and heterogeneity of hybridity, it will argue for the need to approach and elaborate the concept through a strategy similar to that of deconstruction, in the sense that though the term may deployed in an efficient manner to explore social, ideological , cultural and conceptual practices, it will be interesting not to turn it into a powerful paradigm which fixes meanings and set limits. The productive aspect of the term lies, in fact, in its contradictory, open and dynamic character ; that is in its ability to introduce instability and to resist theorizations in the form of grand narratives and closed systems. The paper will also explore a network of concepts which can be attached to the semantic field of hybridity, and which all of them suggest activities of opening up, mobility, exchange, paradox, and métissage.
Last modified: 7 May 2001