The location of culture is shifting. As Homi K. Bhabha has written, in his attempt to relocate the notion of Western modernity, “What must be mapped as a new international space of discontinuous historical realities is, in fact, the problem of signifying the interstitial passages and processes of cultural difference that are inscribed in the ‘in-between,’ in the temporal break-up that weaves the ‘global’ text.”[13] The relationship of globalization and the arts is not about “ecumenism or good will,”[14] or about political correctness, or even worse, guilt. Nor is it about finding an “insurance policy on humanness.”[15] The complexity of the issue resides in the terminology of the issue itself.
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The notion of thirdness, of in-betweenness, is central to the practices we are considering here as well as to larger theoretical constructs developed to analyze recent cultural shifts. For Homi K. Bhabha, thirdness is a key element in enunciating and conceptualizing a new international culture based on hybridity: “It is the inter–the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space–that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.”[27] He locates culture in what he calls a “third space,” a space that collapses new cultural practices and historical narratives.
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