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The Urban Spaces and Politics of Hybridity: Repoliticizing the Depoliticized Ethnicity in Los Angeles Koreatown  

Park, Kyong-Hwan (Department of Social Studies Education, Ewha Womans University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korean Geographical Society / v.40, no.5, 2005 , pp. 473-490 More about this Journal
Abstract
The term hybridity has recently emerged as one of the most popularized leitmotivs in contemporary diasporic and transnational problematics on migrants' nomadic experiences. Especially, in postcolonial politics, hybridity is argued to provide a critical 'third space' on which to challenge discursive boundaries and redescribe power-embedded history However, this paper suggests that the hybrid subject position can be easily articulated in producing new cultural discourse and empowering hegemonic subjects in certain spates. Based on distinguishing the intentional, conscious hybridity from the organic, lived hybridity, this research Intends to investigate the Janus-faced, double-edged nature of the postcolonial politics of hybridity in the case of Los Angeles Koreatown. First, I discuss how a place of organic hybridity in Koreatown can lead to challenging invented and depoliticized ethnicity. At the second half of this paper, 1 focus on understanding the ways in which new Korean American professionals and elites employ the discourse of '1.5 generation' as an intentional hybridity for empowering their own political position at a local scale. I conclusively suggest that hybridity should be a deconstructive strategy to unlearn dominant socio-spatial boundaries rather than bring about the third space as a reterritorialized political position.
Keywords
hybridity; ethnicity; 1.5 generation; Los Angeles Koreatown; postcolonialism;
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