Liminal Spaces and Hybrid Identity: A Postcolonial and Deconstructive Reading of Bless Me, Ultima

Using postcolonial and deconstructive analysis, this paper explores hybridity, identity, and cultural negotiation in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972). The novel is set in New Mexico after the Second World War. It follows the character, Antonio, as he attempts to find himself in the borderlands between Mexico and Anglo-Americanized worlds, between indigenous religion and Catholicism. Using Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity and the “third space,” along with Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, and Foucault’s identity as discourse, the paper argues that Antonio’s hybrid self is the outcome of the interplay of different cultures, religions, and languages. Antonio’s guide on this journey, Ultima the curandera (folk-healer), not only represents the combination of the indigenous and Catholic traditions, but also she complicates the dualistic notions of good/evil and truth/falsehood. The paper also attempts to see how the community’s heritage, especially myths, folklore, and black magic as witchcraft, acts as a means to subvert cultural identities and is therefore discursive. In studying some selected passages of the novel, the paper contends that hybridity in Bless Me is a site of both power and conflict in the understanding of identity within a postcolonial world that is complex and multi-layered. The paper concludes that Antonio demonstrates the transformative power of hybridity by merging opposing forces into his identity, and warns, in the meantime, against the dangers of social fragmentation and personal destruction.