This is a 3D scene (that you can rotate and zoom) that aims to represent our early understanding of Bhabha’s (1994) theory of Third Space. This was a postcolonial project that was originally conceptualised with coloniser and indigenous cultures in mind, offering potential for cohesion and understanding between cultures. The theory has since been expanded to incorporate social space, in more general terms.

In this 3D scene the rippling spheres represent the hybridity of ever-shifting cultures, the nebulous cloud the Third Space: a liminal space ‘in which different cultural, social, and ideological perspectives intersect, are translated, and are renegotiated’ (van der Hoek, 2026).

There is, however, a significant problem with this – or any other – visualisation. As Bhabha notes, the Third Space is a concept that is ‘unrepresentable in itself’ (p.55). As soon as one creates a concrete representation of spatial language the concept breaks, and ‘the innovative energy of the “third” space is lost’ (p.315).

Bhabha, H., K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.
van der Hoek, S. (2026). Third Space, Hybridity, and the Third Sector: Postcolonial Perspectives on Collective Identity in Global Social Welfare https://doi.org/10.1017/s0957876526000331