Mimicry of man bhabha

colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizableOther, as a subjecto f a differencteh at is almost thes ame, but not quite. Which is to say,that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order tobe effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, itsdifference. 126

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. Mimicryis also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrancewhich coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifiessurveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both "normalized" knowledgesand disciplinary powers.126

For in "normalizing" the colonial state or subject, the dream ofpost-Enlightenment civility alienates its own language of liberty and producesanother knowledge of its norms.126

A classic text of such partiality is Charles Grant's "Observations on theState of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain" (1792)Grant's dream ofan evangelical system of mission education conducted uncompromisingly inEnglish was partly a belief in political reform along Christian lines and partlyan awareness that the expansion of company rule in India required a system of"interpellation"--a reform of manners, as Grant put it, that would provide thecolonial with "a sense of personal identity as we know it." Caught between thedesire for religious reform and the fear that the Indians might become turbulentfor liberty, Grant implies that it is, in fact the "partial" diffusion ofChristianity, and the "partial" influence of moral improvements which will constructa particularly appropriate form of colonial subjectivity.127

Insuggesting, finally, that "partial reform" will produce an empty form of"the imitationof English manners which will induce them [the colonial subjects] to remainunder our protection,"5 Grant mocks his moral project and violates theEvidences of Christianity-a central missionary tenet-which forbade anytolerance of heathen faiths. 127

Then the great tradition of European humanism seems capable only of ironizingitself. At the intersection of European learning and colonial power, Macaulaycan conceive of nothing other than "a class of interpreters between us and themillions whom we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, butEnglish in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect"6-in other words amimic man raised "through our English School," as a missionary educationistwrote in 1819, "to form a corps of translators and be employed in differentdepartments of Labour."128

The desire toemerge as "authentic" through mimicry-through a process of writing andrepetition-is the final irony of partial representation.129

What I have called mimicry is not the familiar exercise of dependenct olonialrelations through narcissistic identification so that, as Fanon has observed,12the black man stops being an actional person for only the white man can representhis self-esteem. Mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind its mask:it is not what Cesaire describes as "colonization-thingification"13 behind whichthere stands the essence of the presenceA fricaine.T he menaceo f mimicry is its doublevision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts itsauthority. And it is a double-vision that is a result of what I've described as thepartial representation/recognition of the colonial object.129partial presence, whichis the basis of mimicry, articulates those disturbances of cultural, racial, andhistorical difference that menace the narcissistic demand of colonial authority.129

mimicry, the representation of identity and meaning is rearticulated along theaxis of metonymy. As Lacan reminds us, mimicry is like camouflage, not aharmonization or repression of difference, but a form of resemblance thatdiffers/defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically.131

Its threat, Iwould add, comes from the prodigious and strategic production of conflictual,fantastic, discriminatory "identity effects" in the play of a power that is elusivebecause it hides no essence, no "itself."131

The ambivalence of mimicry--almost but not quite-suggeststhat the fetishized colonial culture is potentially and strategically an insurgentcounter-appeal. What I have called its "identity-effects," are alwayscrucially split.131

For the fetish mimes the forms of authority at the point at which it deauthorizes them. Similarly, mimicry rearticulates presence in termsof its "otherness," that which it disavows. 132

The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedlyturns from mimicry-a difference that is almost nothing but notquite-to menace- a difference that is almost total but not quite. And in thatother scene of colonial power, where history turns to farce and presence to "apart," can be seen the twin figures of narcissism and paranoia that repeat furiously,uncontrollably.In the ambivalent132