Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2004 Claiming the (N)either/(N)or of ‘Third Space’: (re)presenting hybrid identity and the embodiment of mixed race TORIKA BOLATAGICI Deakin University, Australia ABSTRACT As a multiracial artist, I am interested in how people of mixed race have been represented in popular culture and how mixed race image-makers can redress popular representation and facilitate a movement beyond the dichotomy, which seeks to reduce us to the sum of our parts. In the footsteps of Evelyn Alsultany I advocate the creation of a new cartography—a space that is inclusive and beyond existing notions of race. To this end I embarked on a project of exploration of the representation of multiracial identity, drawing from Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of Third Space. Background As a mixed race woman of Indigenous Fijian and Anglo-Celtic Australian ancestry, I find myself frequently intrigued by the (mis)perception of my ‘racial’ make-up. It is a racial ambiguity that enables a fluidity of identity that is situationally dependent. Culturally, the most common way to deal with hybridity is to hyphenate (e.g. Australian-Fijian). But the hyphen does little to reveal the complexities of mixed race identity. Instead, it simplifies and reduces the individual to the sum of their parts and the hyphen stands to represent a juncture; a chasm that cannot be united. This has led to the negative perception that people of mixed race are the embodi- ment of an inherent internal division and has been perpetuated in literature and cinema through the stereotypical ‘tragic mulatto’ narrative (Berzon, 1978; Sollors, 1999; Young, 1996). In an attempt to make sense of this in-between, hyphenated existence and resist the tragic narrative, I have sought the work of theorists and visual artists whose work explores the cultural phenomenon of racial and ethnic hybridity; artists and theorists who claim the ‘in-between’ as a liberating location of progressive resistance. Much of the writing about mixed race identity has emerged from the USA (Camper, 1994; Gaskins, 1999; O’Hearn, 1998; Penn, 1997; Sollors, 1999), Britain (Ifekwunigwe, 1999; Werbner & Modood, 1997; Young, 1996), Australia and New ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/04/010075-11  2004 Centre for Migrant and Intercultural Studies DOI: 10.1080/07256860410001687036