Hybridization in Mandailing Culture: An Overview of Willem Iskander's Text Si Bulus-Bulus Si Rumbuk-Rumbuk

This study examines identity issues in and among the Mandailing people, adapting Bhabha's argument that there is no stable identity, but that identity changes with every interaction in society. For this examination of identity, Bhabha's concept of hybridity has been adapted to investigate the mixture of identities among the Mandailing people.The hybridization in Mandailing is caused by several factors including: cultural contacts, Islamization, migration, and colonialism. The author uses a postcolonial review to see the process of hybrid formation in Mandailing through literary text written by a Mandailing writer, named Willem Iskander, entitled Si Bulus-Bulus Si Rumbuk-Rumbuk. The text consists of several poems and prose representing the identity of the Mandailing people in the colonial era. In order to realize the postcolonial, the author chooses a critical discourse analysis method for analyzing the data in the text. This critical analysis is able to unravel the colonial discourses that are metaphorically in the text. By combining with the postcolonial theory, especially proposed by Bhabha, this research results a finding, hybridization giving rise to the ambivalence of the Mandailing people. This ambivalence manifests in the social, cultural and political life of the people.