Returning the “Gaze”
Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John is an attempt at writing back to a hegemonic colonial discourse. The protagonist of this postcolonial bildungsroman, Annie, is struggling to form an identity while adhering to colonial ideologies forced upon her. However, her ability to write and speak back is limited to the colonial culture, specifically English literature and language. She uses the culture that is oppressing her as a means of liberation. Similarly, Homi Bhabha argues that a person’s identity is constructed by the perception of how others see this person; this perception is referred to as the “gaze,” which he also argues is unstable. This could be seen in Annie John, in which the protagonist returns and reverses the white gaze; she appropriates the colonizer’s gaze and turns it against them. With the use of the gaze in both Kinkaid and Bhabha’s texts, they elucidate the fact that colonial culture is a form of oppression as well as potential liberation for the colonized subject. In Annie John, Annie …show more content…
Mimicry is the appropriation of the culture of the colonizer in an attempt to gain the kind of power that the colonizer possesses. In Bhabha’s “Of Mimicry and Man,” he defines colonial mimicry as “the desire for a reformed recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man”153). Annie yearns to resemble Jane Eyre and be a Brontë protagonist, but she is confronted by the fact that she will never really be able to become that protagonist because of her racial origin and skin color; she reads about it, but it is not her space. This confrontation creates a tension between “self” and “other.” Annie wants to resemble the image of the white independent woman, and yet, she simultaneously rejects the colonial powers in various ways and on many different occasions, namely with her rejection of Columbus as a
Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John is an attempt at writing back to a hegemonic colonial discourse. The protagonist of this postcolonial bildungsroman, Annie, is struggling to form an identity while adhering to colonial ideologies forced upon her. However, her ability to write and speak back is limited to the colonial culture, specifically English literature and language. She uses the culture that is oppressing her as a means of liberation. Similarly, Homi Bhabha argues that a person’s identity is constructed by the perception of how others see this person; this perception is referred to as the “gaze,” which he also argues is unstable. This could be seen in Annie John, in which the protagonist returns and reverses the white gaze; she appropriates the colonizer’s gaze and turns it against them. With the use of the gaze in both Kinkaid and Bhabha’s texts, they elucidate the fact that colonial culture is a form of oppression as well as potential liberation for the colonized subject. In Annie John, Annie …show more content…
Mimicry is the appropriation of the culture of the colonizer in an attempt to gain the kind of power that the colonizer possesses. In Bhabha’s “Of Mimicry and Man,” he defines colonial mimicry as “the desire for a reformed recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man”153). Annie yearns to resemble Jane Eyre and be a Brontë protagonist, but she is confronted by the fact that she will never really be able to become that protagonist because of her racial origin and skin color; she reads about it, but it is not her space. This confrontation creates a tension between “self” and “other.” Annie wants to resemble the image of the white independent woman, and yet, she simultaneously rejects the colonial powers in various ways and on many different occasions, namely with her rejection of Columbus as a