One extremely rich vein has been tapped by those attempting to theorize interstitiality and hybridity: in the postcolonial situation (Bhabha 1989; Hannerz 1987; Rushdie 1989); for people living on cultural and national borders (Anzaldua 1987; Rosaldo 1987, 1988, 1989); for refugees and displaced peoples (Ghosh 1989; Malkki, this issue); and in the case of migrants and workers (Leonard 1992). The "syncretic, adaptive politics and culture" of hybridity, Bhabha points out (1989:64), questions "the imperialist and colonialist notions of purity as much as it question[s] the nationalist notions." It remains to be seen what kind of politics are enabled by such a theorization of hybridity and to what extent it can do away with all claims to authenticity, to all forms of essentialism, strategic or otherwise (see especially Radhakrishnan 1987). Bhabha points to the troublesome connection between claims to purity and utopian teleology in describing how he came to the realization that