If you hear the word " hybrid work", chances are you'll think " semi-face-to-face, semi-remote "... And not long after : " Oh ! My god ! How complicated it is, these meetings where part of the team is in the room, another on the other end of the line and still others behind a screen (forgetting to put the microphone back on every other time when it is time to speak ! ".
If hybridization (of work as elsewhere) has never manifested itself as concretely as it does today through the mix of real life/videoconferencing/metaverse and so on, the phenomenon is nothing new. Let's shed light on what hybridization means to ask ourselves the right questions and find the best answers.
Bastardy and passion
The term hybridization draws its etymology from the Latin " ibrida " which is itself derived from " iber ". Iber is the mule, half donkey half horse. Ibrida is of mixed blood. A bastard, in short.
But where does this " h " that begins the word as we spell it today come from? And that " y " that has nothing to do with a Latin word? Is it to look chic (and earn more points at Scrabble) that we would have Hellenized the hybrid at the time of its passage into French ? The hypothesis is not absurd : a certain number of French terms were artificially marked with the imprint of Greek civilization during the Middle Ages, possibly embedding some misinterpretations in the process. Here, the Greek " hubris ", a flow of excess and passion, expressed with violence, connotes our perception of what is hybrid. In summary, we could say that the hybrid is a mix of bastardy and passion that produces a certain discomfort, not to say a frank fear.
Different but compatible
It was the natural sciences that first developed the notion of hybridization to name the crossing between two taxonomic ranks within a species, or even between two different species. Hybridization can be the result of a natural union or the product of human experimentation.
Natural hybridizations include the mullet and the hinny, the pizzly (a cross between the polar bear and the grizzly bear), the turkoman (a cross between a dromedary and a camel), the narluga (a cross between a narwhal and a beluga) as well as many breeds of lepidoptera (butterflies) that do not see any disadvantages in mixing their genes within the species.
More common are cases of hybridization resulting from human intervention: among the plants, we can mention triticale (wheat + rye) or clemenvilla (clementine + tangerine); On the animal side, all kinds of crosses between felids intended mainly to amuse the gallery of circuses and menageries (the ligre, the tigron, the tiguar), to offer agriculture beasts of burden (the dzo), to produce farmed meat (the beefalo for the steak, the mulard for the foie gras, the coquard for the roti) or to satisfy the taste of lovers of original domestic animals (the savannah, the Bengal, the crocotte...).
Sterility or superpower ?
While it is possible, to a certain extent, to cross the species barrier, nature still defends its prerogatives by providing that the crusaders are sterile. Spontaneous hybrid creatures are generally unfit to reproduce... And those that humans create are only created by genetic manipulation. But by the way, why do you want to reproduce and industrialize the hybrid ?
Because what often motivates their creation is the quest for specificities that increase the qualities of living things : a hybrid cereal is expected to be more productive, richer in nutrients, better resistant to diseases ; We hope that a hybrid draught animal will be more robust, more powerful...
It is this fantasy of increased power that is found in the figurations of hybridization that feed the imagination and populate mythologies. The fantastic bestiary is full of hybrids : griffins, sphinxes but also werewolves, mermaids, centaurs and other manticores. When man mixes with the beast, beware of his superpowers ! The hybridized has the best but also the worst of the species that compose it: it seduces irresistibly, but it manipulates easily ; he is swift but can be threatening; it is strong but sometimes terrifying etc.
A metaphor for work as it is transformed ?
Can we relate to these mythologies the hybridization of work that we hear so much about? Certainly, our world is becoming hybrid, says the philosopher Gabrielle Halpern, describing how today a telephone is also a camera, an alarm clock, a radio, a dictionary ; as our consumer habits mix online purchases from our sofa, visits to shops, home deliveries or click & collect ; As our shopping centres offer goods and services as well as sensory experiences, entertainment and even participation in communities.
And work is not to be outdone : skills must consist of know-how and soft-skills (which combine different and possibly contradictory qualities); the working methods combine the artisanal with the industrial, the handmade with the ultra-technological ; performance is measured by individual productivity but also by the ability to cooperate ; Intelligence must be cognitive, emotional, situational...
It has become impossible to label anything or anyone. And what makes up the condition of the individual is no longer the sum of his identifiable markers (gender, age, social condition) but the ultra-plastic composite resulting from his successive adaptations to the changing environment.
Inclusion and the challenge of hybridization
This approach challenges the paradigms of inclusion. Not only do the " criteria " of diversity explode as the intersections multiply (as the notion of intersectionality had already highlighted), but the dynamic of hybridization also makes each of us the creator of our shifting identity, in constant transformation. In other words, we are above all beings in the making, who take hold of what the context offers us to define and redefine ourselves.... And in the process, we transform what surrounds us.
Gabrielle Halpern takes the example of the newborn. This being is endowed with two superpowers : the first, that of absorbing the contributions of his environment to build his personality and forge his place ; the second, that of shaking up everything in this environment, from family organization to intergenerational relationships, including the identity of those who become parents, brothers/sisters or uncles/aunts by the sole benefit of their presence in the world, etc.
In other words, hybridization induces systemic changes that do not support conservatism. If we approach inclusion from this angle, then it is a profoundly revolutionary movement that reshuffles the cards and redefines the rules of the game... This is a far cry from approaches relating to the integration of minorities, or even the assimilation by the " different " of the majority's codes.
