Mimicry And Man By Homi Bhabha Analysis

The term Mimicry underlines the gap between the norm of civility presented by European Enlightenment and its colonial imitation in distorted form. .This notion is based on Foucault‘s term that was based on Kant‘s notion. Bhabha‘s term mimicry is a part of a larger concept of visualizing the postcolonial situation as a kind of binary opposition between authority and oppression, authorization and de-authorization. He states ahead that all modes of imposition including the demand on the colonized to be like the colonizer results in mimicry. According to him, the mode of asserting authority over the colonized gave rise to mimicry. He further asserts that mimicry can be taken as a way of eluding control that also gives rise to postcolonial …show more content…
He notes that when English administers dreamed of converting India to Christianity at the end of the 18th century; they did not want their colonial subjects to become too Christian or too English. Their discourse foresaw a colonized mimic who would be almost the same as the colonist but not quite. However, since India‘s mimicry of the English blurred the boundary between the rulers and ruled, the dream of anglicizing Indians threatened to Indianite Englishness- a reversal the colonists found intolerable. Mimicry is therefore a state of ambivalence and undermines the claims of imperial discourse and makes it impossible to isolate the racialized essence of either the colonized or the colonizer. …show more content…
This anxiety is matched by mimicry, with the colonized adopting and adapting the colonizer‘s culture. But this mimicry is not slavish imitation and the colonized is not being assimilated into the supposedly dominant or even superior culture. According to Bhbaha, mimicry is an exaggerated copying of language, culture, manners and ideas. And this exaggeration means that mimicry is repetition with difference, and so it is not evidence of the colonized‘s servitude. This mimicry is also a form of mockery as Bhabha‘s postcolonial theory is a comic approach to colonial discourse because it mocks and undermines the ongoing pretensions of colonialism and empire. In short, mimicry is one response to the circulation of stereotypes. The comic quality of mimicry is important because colonial discourse is serious and solemn, with pretensions to educate and improve. Bhabha says that mimicry represents an ironic compromise between two ideas- that things are eternally the same and that there is continual change (1994:86). Homi Bhabha finds mimicry as central to colonial discourse. He defines colonial mimicry in following