205 : Cultural Studies
205 : Cultural Studies
Queering the Logic of Globalization: Hybridity, Performativity, and the Transcultural Subject
Personal Information
Name : Shruti Sonani
Batch : M.A ,Sem - 3 (2024-2026)
Enrollment number: 5108240033
E - mail address : shrutisonani2@gmail.com
Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction: The Theoretical Synthesis
Challenging Wholes: Queer Theory and the Critique of Discrete Culture
Hybridity as Queer Condition: Analyzing Transcultural Flows and Identity Formation
The Politico-Economic Logic: Biopolitics, Global Media, and "Hybridity without Guarantees"
Conclusion: Critical Transculturalism as a Queer Methodology
Abstract
This essay performs a major theoretical synthesis between Queer Theory and the critical study of Cultural Hybridity and Transculturalism, using the work of Marwan M. Kraidy and Judith Butler. It posits that queer subjectivity, by its anti-essentialist nature, is inherently a synthetic and transcultural formation, fundamentally constituted by the global "moving through spaces and across borders" that Kraidy describes. By rejecting the "holistic" subject and the "discrete" culture simultaneously, this framework argues that the visibility, language, and politics of non-normative identities are synthetic outcomes of global communicative flows. Crucially, the analysis applies Kraidy’s concept of “Hybridity without Guarantees” to queer life, demonstrating how global structures—specifically global capitalism and state biopolitics—mediate the potentially liberating effects of hybridity, often resulting in its appropriation and domestication. Ultimately, the essay contends that Critical Transculturalism provides an essential methodology for queer studies, offering the integrated politico-economic tools necessary to analyze the power dynamics governing queer subject formation in the era of globalization.
Introduction: The Theoretical Synthesis
The landscape of contemporary identity is defined by two simultaneous forces: the philosophical crisis of essentialism and the material condition of globalization. Queer Theory, since its inception, has dedicated itself to the former, destabilizing the foundational categories of sex, gender, and desire to reveal their contingency and regulatory function. Parallel to this, Marwan M. Kraidy’s critical work on cultural hybridity addresses the latter, arguing that globalization fundamentally challenges the notion of discrete, singular cultures. The central argument of this essay is that these two theoretical projects are not merely analogous but mutually constitutive. Queer identity, as a radical critique of the discrete subject, finds its methodological and geographical framework in Kraidy’s Critical Transculturalism, a concept which views culture as a “synthetic, not holistic, entity.” The synthesis reveals that queer subjectivity is, by default, a hybrid condition, constantly in motion, and defined by "moving through spaces and across borders." However, this essay’s core critical effort lies in applying Kraidy's crucial caveat, “Hybridity without Guarantees,” to the queer experience, demonstrating that the progressive potential of this synthetic condition is perpetually negotiated, mitigated, and sometimes neutralized by global politico-economic forces. This integrated analysis of discursive and material power is indispensable for understanding the global circulation and regulation of non-normative identities.
Challenging Wholes: Queer Theory and the Critique of Discrete Culture
Queer Theory and Critical Transculturalism share a fundamental anti-essentialist parallel: both disciplines are founded on the strategic rejection of the “whole.” Kraidy’s framework dismisses the outdated notion of “cross- or intercultural communication,” which, as he notes, “tends to study contacts between individuals from different cultures that are assumed to be discrete entities.” In its place, he champions transculturalism, asserting that all cultures are “inherently mixed” and that the proper object of study is culture as a “synthetic, not holistic, entity.” This critical posture mirrors the founding moves of post-structuralist and queer thought.
Michel Foucault’s genealogical work challenged the notion that sexuality is a natural, repressed essence, instead demonstrating how the category of the homosexual was historically produced through juridical, medical, and religious discourses. Similarly, in her seminal work, Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler dismantles the coherent subject of feminism by arguing that gender is not an internal essence but an ongoing, often regulatory, performance. For Butler, there is no pre-discursive gender to express; rather, gender is the stylized repetition of acts that cite and consolidate the myth of a stable interior identity. The subject is thus perpetually un-whole, produced through an iterative series of regulatory failures that expose the constructed nature of the binary.
The theoretical move in Queer Theory is thus a direct parallel to Kraidy's vision of culture. Just as Kraidy rejects the holistic culture, Butler rejects the holistic subject—the unified self that is assumed to precede its social articulation. Both assert that their object of analysis is already mixed, defined by its relationship to the outside and by its constitutive movement. When Foucault posits that the "homosexual" is a historically specific creation rather than a timeless type, he is, in a profound sense, defining non-normative identity as a synthetic practice.
Therefore, queer identity formation is, by its very nature, a form of synthetic cultural practice that "moves through spaces and across borders" of normative identity. To be queer is to synthesize elements that are legislated as separate: to mix assigned sex with desired gender, to mix same-sex attraction with cultural expectations of partnership, or to mix a radical rejection of identity with the political necessity of group affiliation. The very act of performing gender is a form of cultural mixing—the deployment of symbols, aesthetics, and codes drawn from disparate social archives. This establishes the queer subject not as an essence, but as a dynamic and perpetually hybrid product of social and discursive forces.
Hybridity as Queer Condition: Analyzing Transcultural Flows and Identity Formation
Moving from the theoretical parallel to direct application, Kraidy’s framework of transculturalism provides the essential lens for understanding the global circulation and formation of queer subjectivities. Transculturalism, as he defines it, is centered on the process of “moving through spaces and across borders, not merely between points.” This distinction is critical: it shifts the focus from discrete cultural contact (interculturalism) to continuous flow (transculturalism), a flow that is intrinsically tied to global media and communication infrastructure.
The global flow of media, cultural products, and digital communication acts as the primary engine for this transcultural process, fundamentally shaping the visibility, language, and self-ascription of queer subjects worldwide. The availability of global media texts—from television shows and films featuring out characters to digital platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Grindr—circulates specific aesthetics, political terminologies (e.g., “coming out,” “Pronouns,” “Pride”), and models of identity. A young person in Jakarta, for instance, does not contact a Western gay identity; rather, they consume, appropriate, and synthesize fragmented queer discourses that are in constant motion, resulting in a synthetic self-ascription that is neither purely Indonesian nor purely Western, but transcultural.
In line with Kraidy’s demand to analyze hybridity at the social—not individual—level, the most compelling application lies in the hybridization of political movements. The global history of queer politics is often characterized by the rise of a Western, rights-based, largely middle-class, identity politics. When this narrative travels and intersects with local cultural traditions, it creates a new, transcultural political subjectivity.
Consider the dynamic in South Asia, particularly in relation to the Hijra identity. The Hijra, historically and culturally recognized as a third-gender community, does not fit neatly into the binary categories of Western-style transgender (T) or gay/lesbian (LGB) identities. However, when activism pushed for state and legal recognition, activists strategically hybridized their ancient identity with the modern, legalistic framework of the global LGBTQ+ movement. The resulting political and legal category—often recognized as a "third gender" or included in broader LGBTQ+ coalitions—is a prime example of social-level hybridity. It is a synthetic political form that leverages international rights language (the transcultural flow) to anchor a locally specific identity, demonstrating how “trans- reflects moving through spaces and across borders” to establish a relevant political existence. This process affirms that the very concept of what counts as a queer identity is a synthetic outcome of global communication flows.
The Politico-Economic Logic: Biopolitics, Global Media, and "Hybridity without Guarantees"
The most crucial convergence between Queer Theory and Kraidy’s framework is the shared necessity for critique, embodied in his concept of “Hybridity without Guarantees.” Kraidy explicitly cautions that hybridization is not inherently progressive, possessing "unsavory implications." This critical posture is essential for queer studies, which must analyze how hybridity's power is often captured or neutralized by dominant structures, integrating both “discursive and politico-economic analysis.”
The unsavory implications of queer hybridity are most evident in the phenomenon of homonormativity and homocapitalism. The global marketplace, driven by the forces of neoliberal capital, appropriates the hybrid, visible queer aesthetic (the Rainbow flag, Pride parades, queer celebrity culture) and renders it legible for consumption. This is a form of hybridization: the radical potential of queer thought (which challenges fixed identity) is synthesized with the stable, easily marketable identity category of the "consuming gay subject."
This process is profoundly politico-economic. Capitalism does not simply tolerate this hybridity; it produces it, offering a specific, demobilized form of queer life to a market niche that can afford to purchase it. As Jasbir Puar argues in her work on homonationalism, this marketable, “good” queer subject—often white, wealthy, and stable—is then absorbed into the biopolitical apparatus of the state. This absorption functions as a tool of exclusion, where the state uses its acceptance of this "safe" queer hybridity as a marker of modernity to justify other repressive practices (e.g., Islamophobia, or the targeting of non-normative, racialized, or poor queer communities). Here, hybridity's potential for “mitigating social tensions” is corrupted into a regulatory mechanism, reducing diverse queer experiences to a single, easily managed enemy in the global political field.
Conversely, the progressive and hopeful potential of queer hybridity manifests in acts of resistance that leverage transcultural flows against state power. In regions with repressive media and political regimes, hybridity emerges as a strategic survival tool. For instance, the use of coded language, digital aesthetics, and circulating memes—all products of transcultural digital flows—allows local queer communities to communicate their existence without triggering overt political repression. This is a synthetic resistance: it is an emergent political form that combines local knowledge of state surveillance with the global technological infrastructure. This fulfills Kraidy’s idea of hybridity expressing the “polyvalence of human creativity” and, in turn, provides “a context of empowerment in which individuals and communities are agents in their own destiny.”
The task of Critical Transculturalism, then, is to perpetually interrogate the conditions of hybridity. It must ask: is this particular queer hybridity—this specific mixture of identity politics and traditional aesthetics—serving to enhance the prospects of social agency and challenge structural inequality (progressive), or is it merely being co-opted as a new regulatory mechanism for global consumerism and state biopolitics (unsavory)? The answer is always without guarantees, contingent upon the integrated analysis of both the discursive flow and the underlying politico-economic structures.
Conclusion: Critical Transculturalism as a Queer Methodology
The conceptual synthesis between Queer Theory’s anti-essentialism and Kraidy’s Critical Transculturalism provides a robust and necessary framework for PG-level inquiry into global identity politics. By rejecting the discrete, holistic subject and the isolated, holistic culture, the two disciplines find common ground in the notion of synthetic cultural practice. Queer subjectivity is revealed as a state of perpetual hybridity, formed not in isolation, but in the constant process of “moving through spaces and across borders.”
Kraidy’s call for a Critical Transculturalism that integrates “both discursive and politico-economic analysis” offers a powerful methodological antidote to the naive cultural relativism that can sometimes plague the study of global hybridity. It compels the scholar to move beyond simply celebrating cultural mixing to rigorously scrutinize the structural conditions—global capitalism, media ownership, and state power—that determine who gets to hybridize, what forms of hybridity are legible, and who profits from their circulation.
In an era where global media simultaneously enhances queer visibility and fuels targeted homophobic political campaigns, the need for this critical framework is paramount. The enduring lesson of “Hybridity without Guarantees” for queer studies is that liberation is not an automatic byproduct of visibility or fluidity, but a goal that must be fought for by critically negotiating the terms of one’s own synthetic existence. Critical Transculturalism thus preserves the radical potential of queer thought, providing the tools to analyze the global logic of domestication and to identify and support forms of hybridity that genuinely promise social transformation. The future of queer critique lies in this critical negotiation of transcultural flows.
References :
Kraidy, Marwan M. “Cultural Hybridity and International Communication.” Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization, Temple University Press, 2005, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bw1k8m.5. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
Kraidy, Marwan M. “Hybridity without Guarantees: Toward Critical Transculturalism.” Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization, Temple University Press, 2005, pp. 148–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bw1k8m.11. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
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