The Mickey Mouse kachina and other “Double Objects”: Hybridity in the material culture of colonial encounters

Abstract

Hybridity is a term used by anthropologists to characterize the amalgamation of influences from two (or more) different cultural groups. Hybridity has captivated archaeology in recent years, especially archaeologists investigating colonialism in Native American contexts. At the same time, a growing chorus of critics has begun to question anthropology’s devotion to hybridity and hybrid objects. These critics take issue with the term’s alleged Eurocentrism, implications of cultural purity, and evolutionary etymology. In this article, I address these critiques and advocate a more circumscribed use of hybridity in archaeology. I caution against the abandonment of the term entirely, because the archaeological identification of hybridity provides insights into both present-day (etic) and past (emic) perspectives on cultural amalgamation. Hybridity reveals the biases of contemporary researchers regarding the societies we study, as well as highlighting the ways in which power structures centered and marginalized colonial subjects in the past. To illustrate these points, I draw on case studies involving the Hopi Mickey Mouse kachina, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indigenous-colonial whips from the American Plains and southeast Australia, and seventeenth-century Pueblo ceramics from the American Southwest.

“Enactment of Sámi Past in School Textbooks: Towards Multiple Pasts for Future Making”

“…There is no single, monolithic postcolonial condition. Postcolonial scholars write from diverse theoretical perspectives drawn from many academic sources (Liebmann, 2015). However, postcolonial approaches challenge traditional colonialist epistemologies by questioning the knowledge and representation of colonialised "others."…”

“…The theory of hybridisation has challenged assumptions about what is indigenous and what is colonial. As an interpretive construct in the archaeology of colonialism, it offers a critique of previous versions of colonially situated theory (see Liebmann, 2015).…”

“…We can read diversity into the interpretation of the pits, emphasising heterogeneity both within and between groups of people. The representation of the subaltern actors is also given a more equal and important position in the interaction but still maintains the dichotomous worlds with a binary concept of creating a relationship of "us and them" (Liebmann, 2015). The boundary areas in Troms and Finnmark are also interpreted as "flowing," with Northern Troms as a mixing zone (Henriksen, 2000).…”

“…Theoretical attention to this has developed a more nuanced and richer practice that also incorporates the practice of various forms of hybridisation, especially when one moves from generalised statements to surveys on a micro level (Liebmann, 2015;Nilsen & Wickler, 2011). In most cases the graves are explained from the premise of two distinct groups, but this dichotomy has been challenged.…”

A requiem for hybridity? The problem with Frankensteins, purées, and mules

“…Moussette (2003) defines a similar process of hybrid mixing as me´tissage, which has been fundamental to the Me´tis themselves, descendants of Native American women and French male trappers who have been able to secure federal status as a recognized First Nations group in Canada. Finally, within the linguistic realm are Bakhtin's (1981) ideas about hybridity, which have influenced several archaeologists (Liebmann, 2013(Liebmann, , 2015Loren, 2013Loren, , 2015 and link nicely with postcolonial theory, especially the distinctions between organic hybridity and intentional hybridity. Bakhtin argued for a heteroglossia and the ''hybrid utterance,'' in which one speaker can mix the speech styles or languages of another to incorporate as their own.…”