Bulbeck’s readings of “Fracturing Binarisms raises several important questions which are controversial and probably some of the most debated issues in culture, history and feminism. She starts by drawing a distinction between the first world and the third world the former being ‘modern’ while the later being ‘backward’. It is important to realise that modernity is a relative term it changes over time eventually causing tradition to modify according to it. The interpretation of tradition is then a fluid term since we associate tradition with certain rituals, beliefs etc that don’t change and define our identity. Our definition of our identity then is as fluid as tradition because it keeps on changing

This leads us to the debate of ‘declension narratives’ of colonialism where it is argued that ‘colonised women lost their power and status under the white patriarchal rule of colonists’ (19). It is a blame game played by the colonisers as well as the colonised who hold each other responsible for the way it has made them to be. Bulbeck aptly puts forward both sides of the coin, by saying that colonisation is not just an imposition of a super structure on top of an already existing culture, neither it is always a smooth transition from backward to modern. Examples of countries where there theories have been true, include India and China. Women since always have been known to be the carriers of culture and those who refuse to return to tradition are attacked as ‘dupes of imperialism, manifested as western feminism.’ White women are not only stereotypically considered to be liberated, they are the “other” replacing veiled women which represent subjugation or oppression.

Hybridisation in our context involves mixing of two cultures the culture of the colonised and the already existing culture in society. It also presumes a superiority of one over the other, bringing the debate to the binary. The reading not only agrees that these binaries exist, it places the power in the court of the superior culture stating that they overlap and then combine and because of hybridisation they become part of the culture. As was the case when India was colonised under the British, they not only had to learn their language, give up religious practices of satti which were ‘barbaric’ for the British, their life chances depended on their relation with the British.

What this chapter left me with, was a thought that we cannot judge people from our yardstick, our differences make us who we are. But in capitalistic societies of the world, it is almost impossible to believe we can all be equal, that we can shed our differences, take off our masks behind whom we judge others and get judged by others. In judging others, we feel superiority over them and as George Orwell in his book Animal Farm, aptly says “some are more equal than others,” we assume we have a right to be  more equal than those whom we consider inferior or “below us.” I know it is difficult to change habits overnight but if we make a concious effort to start socializing these habits in the comming generations, we just might make the world a better place to live in.  

-Madiha