Living in the Third Space: Postmodern Hybridity in Meyer’s Twilight Saga

Abstract

The present research explores the ways in which the popular literature reflects and comments upon contemporary dilemmas. Through the textual analysis of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga under the theoretical lens of hybridity and third space as proposed by Homi K. Bhabha, the research highlights and establishes the dominance of hybridity over essentialist worldview. It draws upon the notion that hybridity creates a limitless third space where human subjectivity can simultaneously take two oppositional identities to create a new, exhilarating existence. Globalization has blurred the boundaries between preconceived oppositional cultural, racial and linguistic territories. This has transferred the world into a mighty third space. The research demonstrates how popular fiction reflects this reality through its seemingly unreal character of werewolf. Werewolves are studied as the inhabitants of the hybrid third space on account of their in-betweenness between humanism and animalism. As werewolves are the creatures with the potential to be both human beings and animals, they are the hybrids belonging to both categories yet pledging their alliance to none. Resultantly, this situation provides them with certain level of freedom. The qualitative study aims at challenging the world’s stereotypical assumptions by the existence of werewolves in the third space in contemporary postmodern world.