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On Mimicry and Man:

The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse

Homi K. Bhabha

Colonial Mimicry

The "Partial" Subject

Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other.

In between the Mimicry/Mockery the reforming mission is threatened by the displacing gaze of its disciplinary double.

A subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite.

Constructed around an ambivalence. The sign of a double articulation:

The ambivalence of mimicry (almost the same but not quite) fixes the colonial subject as a "partial" presence.

Born 1949 in Mumbai, India

Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English

Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard

He is one of the most important figures in contemporary post-colonial studies

Coined neologisms such as hybridity, mimicry, difference, and ambivalence

Christian missionaries encouraging "partial reform"

Strategy of Reform, Regulation, and Discipline. "Appropriates" the Other.

Disobedience, intensifies surveillance, poses an immanent threat to disciplinary forces.

"Inappropriates" the Other.

Mimicry and Mockery

Conflictual Economy of Colonial Discourse

(and the tension therein)

Subversive Effects of Mimicry

In normalizing the colonial state, the dream of post-Enlightenment civility alienates its own language of liberty.

Edward Said's idea of the tension between

Causes doubt in the Colonizer's "naturalized" notions of racial/cultural superiority and of their power over their subjects.

Synchronic Panoptical Vision of Domination

Diachrony of History

"Slave"

Legitimate form of Ownership

Identity

Stasis

Difference

Change

Trope for an intolerable, illegitimate exercise of power.

Compromise

Mimicry

Colonizer's identity, or even "confidence in their own essence" is called into question, and therefore, the mimicry of the colonized "ruptures" the discourse of colonialism.

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