One of the things that Edward Said's book Orientalism (1978), based on a Foucaultian critique of the discourses of colonialism achieved, was to demonstrate the essentialized portrayals of colonized cultures, whether through the lens of western positivism (modernity) or through Orientalism. Nationalism as an indigenous colonial discourse, had to create an independent place for itself within the interpellation of the west by identifying its own essentlalized and ahistorical features for the nation.

Postcolonial sociality in erstwhile colonized nations is still largely driven by the unfortunate identity politics of these discourses. Nationalism, as created by its founders, was largely thought of in its own time as a strategic essentialism, an invention of the soul-expression of a nation, to enable its identification and survival. But if such ahistorical descriptions become identity markers fossilized by institutional fiat, the resultant identity politics in an age of pluralism can only lead to violence and misfortune. Ongoing creative hybrid engagements are the way out of the postcolonial predicament. In this article, Swati Chattopadhyay, professor of Architectural History at UC Santa Barbara, shows how colonized nations create their own blind-spots based on the inability to classify the hybrid. At the same time, a situated social history of culture (here architecture) shows us that hybridity is the norm of human culture and its recognition leads us to the necessary evolution out of a phase of strategic essentialism into one of dialog and human co-existence.   more »