Alvin Lim

In his essay “Of Other Spaces” Michel Foucault explained that heterotopias, or spaces of otherness, “function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time.” This temporal otherness he described as “heterochrony.” In this article I will draw on the Sartrean ontology of the human being as temporal ecstasis to explain the transcultural phenomenon of hybridity as heterochrony, and in particular, how hybrid temporality is out of sync with local temporality. Heeding Virinder Kalra, Raminder Kaur, and John Hutnyk's admonishment that “hybridity is better conceived of as a process rather than a description,” I will attempt to explicate the multiple processes of hybrid becomings I witnessed as an academic migrant in Cambodia, Hawaii, and Nigeria, and as a member of a hybrid subculture in Singapore