Homi Bhabha

Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse

Presenter- Pratima shekhawat

According to Jacques Lacan:
Mimicry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be called an itself that is behind.
The effect of mimicry is camouflage it is not a question of harmonizing with the background, but against a
mottled Background, of becoming mottled exactly like the technique of camouflage practiced in human
warfare

Bhabhas analysis of mimicry in his essay Of Mimicry and Man is largely based on the
Lacanian vision of mimicry as camouflage resulting in colonial ambivalence. He sees the
colonizer as a snake in the grass who, speaks in "a tongue that is forked," and produces a
mimetic representation that "... emerges as one of the most strategies of colonial power and
knowledge".
Mimicry in colonial and postcolonial literature is most commonly seen when members of a
colonized society (say, Indians or Africans) imitate the language, dress, politics, or cultural
attitude of their colonizers (say, the British or the French). Under colonialism and in the context
of immigration, mimicry is seen as an opportunistic pattern of behavior: one copies the person
in power, because one hopes to have access to that same power oneself. Presumably, while
copying the master, one has to intentionally suppress ones own cultural identity, though in
some cases immigrants and colonial subjects are left so confused by their cultural encounter
with a dominant foreign culture that there may not be a clear preexisting identity to suppress.
According to Sir Edward Cust:
.

A fundamental principle appears to have been forgotten or overlooked in our system of colonial policy- That

of colonial dependence. To give to a colony the forms of independence is a mockery; she would not be a colony
for a single hour if she could maintain an independent station

From the high ideals of the colonial imagination to its low mimetic literary effects, mimicry
emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge.
In his essay Of Mimicry and Man, Bhabha describes mimicry as something unintentionally
subversive. In Bhabhas way of thinking, , mimicry is a kind of performance that exposes the
artificiality of all symbolic expressions of power.
There is another, much more straightforward way in which mimicry can actually be
subversive or empowering - when it involves the copying of western concepts of
justice, freedom, and the rule of law. One sees an example of this in Forsters A
Passage to India, with a relatively minor character named Mr. Amrit Rao, a lawyer from
Calcutta, whom the British Anglo-Indians dread. They dread him not because he is
unfair; indeed, what is threatening about him is precisely the fact that he has learned
enough of the principles of British law to realize that those principles should, in all
fairness apply to Indians as much as to the British. As a foreign-educated, English
speaking Indian lawyer in colonial India, he might be mocked as a mimic man or a
babu, but it may be that that mockery covers over a defensive fear that the British
legal system is not quite as fair as it should be.
If colonialism takes power in the name of history, it repeatedly exercises its
authority through the figure of force. Many anti-colonial nationalist movements in Asia
and Africa emerged out of what might be thought of as mimicry of western political
ideas. According to Samuel Webers formulation of the marginalizing vision of
castration, colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable other, as a subject
of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say that discourse of
mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence, In order to be effective, mimicry must
continuously produce its slippage, its access, its difference.
If the Colonizer does not know how to differentiate between I and the Other
Then I will not be able to control the Other , so in order to manipulate the power of
Other , I the colonizer starts manipulating the discourse in that manner so that Other
will never be aware of that fact that he is imposing a false identity on himself. A
colonized continuously tries to become a subject by imposing a false identity on himself,

and he thinks that his mimicry is so perfect that others can recognize him as a changed
person and this change will be accepted and acknowledged.
Through this partial reform colonizer try to achieve a class of interpreters which is
Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and intellect. A mimic
man may be raised through English school as a missionary educationist To form a crop
of translators and be employed in different department of labor. According to Bhabha
mimicry is not an existential problem, it originates from colonized subjects peculiar
awareness of cultural, political, and social in authenticity of being ideological
constructed and fixed in representation. This sudden awareness describes Bhabha as
menace of mimicry.
Mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process in
which one believes. Mimicry is, thus, the sign of a double articulation; a complex
strategy of reform; regulation, and discipline which appropriates the other as it
visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference of
recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies
surveillance, and poses an imminent threat to both normalized knowledges and
disciplinary powers.
By adapting Freuds striking features, which says, people mixed and split origin
is what decide their fate. We may compare them with individuals of mixed race who in a
way resemble white man but who betray their color descent by some striking feature or
other and on that account excluded from society and enjoy none of the privileges.
Bhabha points out that desire of mimicry, which is Freuds striking feature that reveals
so little but makes such a big difference, is not merely the impossibility of the other
which repeatedly resist signification. The desire of colonial mimicry- an interdictory
desire- may not have an object, but it has strategic objectives which he calls the
Metonymy of Presence. In mimicry, the representation of identity and meaning is
rearticulated along the axis of metonymy. As Lacan reminds us, mimicry is like a
camouflage, not harmonization or repression of difference, but a form of resemblance
that differ presence by displaying it in part, metonymically.

According to Fanon, mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind its mask.

The menace of mimicry is its double vision, that is what Bhabha describes as the partial
representation of the colonial object.
Bhabha describes Hybridity as a subversive Tool whereby colonized people
might challenge various forms of oppression. For example British missionaries tried to
impose Bible in rural India in the 19 th century. Bhabha notes that despite the fact that
local Indians readily accept the authority of the missionaries book. And yet despite that
clear authority, they can only understand the Christianity they are being exposed to
through their own cultural filters. Perhaps instead of becoming simple Christian, the
local Hindus are simply adding the reference point of Jesus to a very crowded Hindu
pantheon. However the term Hybridity, which relies on a metaphor from biology, is
commonly used in much broader ways, to refer to any kind of culture mixing or mingling
between East and West.
Homi Bhabhas concept of mimicry has gained wide significance in Colonial
Discourse Analysis as defined by Bhabha is a complex phenomenon. It is not merely
the imitation of the human behavior but the attitude and temperament come into play. It
does not cultivate a positive and creative approach in the mind of the ignorant native
instead it hampers his growth. The native desires for something that he lacks and he
keeps on learning the new strategies of imitation to achieve the desired goal. But
Bhabha says that mimicry Repeats rather than re-presents. Bhabha says that this
process of imitation is never complete, and there is always something that he lacks.
There are always cultural, historical, and racial differences which hinder ones complete
transformation into something new. This desire of the colonized for the total
metamorphosis and have the power of the imperial master is never fulfilled and the
menace of mimicry is its double vision. The Mimicry obligation on part of the
colonized to mirror back an image of the colonizer produces neither identity nor
difference, only it is a sort of partial presence in him, which is the basis of mimicry.
The third world countries still look up towards the first world considering it
reformed, polished, mannered and civilized. Mimicry of the West has now extended to
the imitation of their way of speaking, clothing, and living. This unnatural and abnormal

mimesis of the West is a hindrance to third world countries complete development. The
influence of the western culture is very much obvious not only in our day today life but in
other fields like films, music, literature, customs, religion and our personal relationships
as well. In the name of modernity we have become blind adherent to it and keep
copying and mimicking whatever comes to our way.

According to Homi Bhabha the metamorphosis of the colonized black in the process
of being a White, makes him different from his own race and community and transforms
him only to resemble the White. Thus, he is excluded from his own society and belongs to neither his
own people nor to the Whites, and he is
almost the same but not white. Mimicry seems to be an opportunistic method of copying the
person in power. This suppresses ones own cultural identity and leaves the person to
an ambivalent and confused state. Bhabha says that the discourse of mimicry is
constructed around an ambivalence.

. Perhaps the person who did this best was Mohandas K. Gandhi. Gandhi took
symbols of Indian asceticism and simplicity (such as traditional Indian dress and fabric)
along with progressive western concepts of socialism, and used that new fusion of ideas
to mobilize the masses of ordinary Indians, most of whom had had little direct contact
with the British. Through Gandhi, Indian nationalism, which may have started as a
derivative of nationalism in the west, became something distinctively and uniquely
Indian.
. Homi Bhabha, in his essay Of Mimicry and Man, introduces the study of
Charles Grants Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of
Great Britain in which Grant has considered the Christianity as a form of social
control in a country like India where multi cultural people reside. Bhabha quotes the words of
Grant, that partial reform will produce an empty form of the imitation of English manners
which will induce them [ the colonial subjects] to remain under our protection
According to Bhabha mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that
is itself a process in which one believes. Mimicry is, thus, the sign of a double
articulation; a complex strategy of reform; regulation, and discipline which appropriates
the other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a
difference of recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial
power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both normalized
knowledges and disciplinary powers.

In Macaulays words, themimic men, created through the English schools, who
used the doctrines of the hegemonic power to construct their own identities as subjects
of Empire, were a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes,
in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.