“Of Mimicry and Men” -by Homi K. Bhabha Chelsea Dugger Writing 305 Reading student-led presentation

Author: Homi K. Bhabha

Date of publication: 1987

Publication format: Academic Journal

“Bhabha has a tendency to assume his reader has an intimacy with the texts he is examining and a tendency to refer to only parts of these texts and read them in a vacuum–a certain irony considering in this essay he takes up, among other issues of subjectivity, the notion of ‘partial presence’ (88)”.  (http://walkingwithbhabha.wordpress.com) “students who look at those essays, or glosses of those essays in books like Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, generally come away only more confused”. (http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2009/05/mimicry-and-hybridity-in-plain-english.html)

Consequently I am choosing to focus our discussion of the reading on complicating the “truths given” by re-contexualizing them in a modern perspective- thus determining if they can hold up or if they will collapse once removed from the colonial discourse.

Take a minute and determine at least 2 “truths” given in Bhabha regarding the importance of mimicry to colonialism and the method of operation for mimicry.

The importance of mimicry to colonialism “Mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge” (337). Mimicry as it operates within colonialism is the “desire for a reformed, recognizable Other” (338). Mimicry is both a) a way to promote reform, more regulation of non-colonial irregular (read unacceptable) behavior & to remind what is “appropriate” by providing kindle for mimicry but also b) presents an opportunity for contesting the “appropriate” by embracing and hyperbolizing the inappropriate (338). The ambivalence (uncertainty of who someone actually is) suggests that colonial culture has been fetishized (342). “The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry- a difference that is almost nothing but not quite, to menace- a difference that is almost total but not quite” (342).

The method of operation for mimicry “The desire to emerge as “authentic” through mimicry … is the final irony of partial representation [mimicking]” (339). “in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce … its difference [from the original it mimics]” (338). Essential to mimicry is the “form of difference that is mimicry- almost the same but not quite” (340). In mimicry the representation of the self through identity and meaning “is rearticulated along the axis of metonymy” (341). In colonialism, saturated with mimicry, there are two attitudes about external reality (of the colonized): a) reality exists and thus must be considered or b) reality is irrelevant and should be replaced by desired life which accepts and reframes “reality” as the mimicry presented (342).

Taken out of the colonial framework do these “truths” retain any insight or do they become farce (mockery of the idea that colonial idea could ever be “good” today)?

What you think of this rhyme’s use of mimicry? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Why? Can we even analyze it using the word “mimicry” as described by Bhabha because that would imply we are still bound to a certain extent to a colonial mentality/ordering of the world? How would you set up reading this book to people in a previously colonized country- how would you frame the fact that it is based on/practicing mimicry of another colonially influenced book of Mother Goose? Basically do you think we are living in a colonial system where Bhabha’s “mimicry” flourished and grew into a way to propagate colonialism)?