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Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris. By Patricia A. Morton. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. Pp. 380. $40.00.
Patricia Morion's Hybrid Modernities very effectively chronicles and organizes the Paris Exposition Coloniale of 1931, but falls short of contextualizing it within the trope of hybridity. Ultimately, the conclusions she draws do not speak to the blending or incorporation of disparate elements into theme and expression during the Exposition, but instead are examples of polarization and ambiguity, making Hybrid Modernities a misnomer. Most important, Morion's categorization of the motivations of the organizers of the Exposition as in agreement with or resistance to hybridity seems too concrete and inconsistent with early twentieth-century Parisian thought, which raises considerable methodological concerns. The end of this review also specifically addresses issues useful to scholars of Africa.
In much of the book Morton seems more concerned with the ambivalence of the Exposition's organizers about juxtaposing modern and "traditional" architectural forms on the site, which is separate from the issue of "hybrid" design in the architecture itself. The argument for hybridity in the Exposition is far more problematic than Morton acknowledges, and in weaker portions of the text her use of the term is too loose to be helpful. Morion's liberal treatment of the concept is somewhat anachronous with the book's topic, since "hybridity" was eschewed in French colonial language and policy, so her assertions must be carefully placed within the historical context and...