Of Mimicry and Men: A Chat by a Surviving Colonizee

This analysis originally took place in the class taught by Professor T-----, and I have posted it here:

“The discourse of post-Enlightenment English colonialism often speaks in a tongue that is forked, not false,” begins Homi K. Bhaba, in a chapter entitled, “Of Mimicry and Man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse,” taken from his The Location of Culture (1994).

If colonialism, albeit an initial attempt to look after the Imperial powers’ goods, relies on the desire to see itself in [an]Other, then Bhaba’s comment on such authority may be in fact more than mere observation and analysis. He asserts, “If colonialism takes power in the name of history, it repeatedly exercises its authority through the figures of farce” (85). Bhaba utilizing quotes from Lacan, Sir Edward Cust, Freud et al. positions his thesis alongside mimicry and repetition and suggests:

I want to turn this process [of man’s extended gaze] by which the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined, where the observer becomes the observed and ‘partial’ representation [re]articulates the whole notion of identity and alienates it from essence. (89)

This position of “essence” intrigues us here as readers and interpreters of text and culture, because it reemphasizes Lacan’s ideology of mimicry as distinction. Recall, mimicry as an itself, or subject of inquiry, is both distinct and camouflage. This is the “fork” of Bhaba’s discourse.

In this short analysis then, I wish to look at several interesting points that Bhaba raises in his chapter, and then provide some minor examples of critical allocation toward our present reading of Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints (New York: Vintage Books, 2004).

To begin, in utilizing the term, “mottled” in the quote taken from Jacques Lacan’s Of the Gaze, Bhaba subscribes, in my estimation, to what Deleuze and Guattari register, in terms of “history,” as that body of organs, wherein a rhizomatic impetus of alternating smooth and striated space[s] emerge. The position of the established O/order and its extended creation are at once part and parcel of the whole, and yet separate from its C/creator.

In other words, it exists to reflect, but its existence is altogether “itself.” Recall, at the onset of this class Professor T----- suggested that our discourse proper throughout these texts (novels, memoirs, and vignettes) would be construed as non-static; i.e. the voices of the story and its teller, in terms of race, geo-politics and body are constructed, [de]constructed and[re]constructed, but I digress—slightly. Let us return to the terms of mimicry, repetition, farce and so on.

Bhaba defines mimicry in terms of: “an ironic compromise,” “constructed around an ambivalence,” “coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both ‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers” (86).

Taking the earlier quote by Sir Edward Cust on p. 85 then, we argue that the Creator (the Imperial power) created the creature (the colonized space[s]), and that the latter is not at fault for its unmistakable cultural resemblance[s] in whatever capacity this can be noted. To be English and to be Anglicized then is, as Bhaba posits, “[to] desire to emerge as ‘authentic’ through mimicry—through a process of writing and repetition—is the final irony of partial representation,” and furthermore it [mimicry] “repeats rather than re-presents” (88).

Bhaba offers several examples of such mimicry and farce when observing Locke’s and Foucault’s panoptic gaze and self-policing mechanism, the “slippage produced by the ambivalence of mimicry (almost the same, but not quite),” Charles Grant’s partiality studies on “the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain,” James Mills’ History of India regarding religion and reform of the colonial subject, and Macaulay’s ‘Minute,’ which “makes a mockery of Oriental learning until faced with the challenge of conceiving of a ‘reformed’ colonial subject” (86-87).

Of further interest is the chapter’s usage of the phrase, “almost the same, but not quite.” In terms of science, I suggest this can be construed as an existence within the interstitial walls of an already—present and its established present O/order, within the greater integument system proper. In other words, those of the Anglicized exist as an “itself,” and yet resemble that which is English and Englishness.

In terms of authority the position of mimicry is one of intrigue and of repulsion, and the inter dicta, is what privileges the earlier assumption of Lacanian camouflage. Bhaba states it best as he turns to a Freudian reading of “colonial textuality,”as:

that form of difference that is mimicry—almost the same but not quite […] Writing of the partial nature of fantasy […] the very notions of ‘origins’ […] The desire of colonial mimicry—an interdictory desire—may not have an object, but it has strategic objectives which I shall call the metonymy of presence. (89)

The examples listed of this metonymy of presence, suggested by Bhaba are reflected on p. 90 at the top of the verso side. What is at stake here exactly? In one word—confusion, or perhaps a more cultural critical term, [dis]allocation—wherein, incertitude is more often than not—certain—and most certainly and often risked. Again, we turn to Bhaba as he suggests that this part for the whole (metonymy and synecdoche), “cross the boundaries of the culture of enunciation through a strategic confusion of the metaphoric and metonymic axes of the cultural production of meaning” (90).

In other words, where distinction is no longer factored how can one tell the colonizer from the colonized? What is more, who holds true authority when these lines of difference are threatened? Such violence is what “the work of Edward Said will not let us forget,” namely that “the ethnocentric and erratic will to power from which texts can spring is itself a theatre of war” (90).

With such a rhetoric of violence, in terms of disruption, it is no wonder then that the theatre goes unnamed; i.e. is this theatre one of private or public space; are its actors reflectors of a given whole; are its participants casual observers or otherwise than; lastly, who holds a higher affinity toward culpabilis within such drama. Mimicry may adhere to men, in following this chapter by Bhaba, but what of the position of a woman? I believe Nelly Rosario raises similar moments in her novel Song of the Water Saints, wherein the subject of authenticity rings true to Bhaba’s thesis of surveillance and re-appropriated gazing.

In the chapter titled, “Casimiro • 1920,” Rosario opens the novel with a simple construction of “boy—meets—girl, which of course turns into more than a mere meeting. Graciela, the protagonist of sorts opens herself up to this new man in hopes that he will not be like Silvio.

Of interest is the name of Casimiro as well as the novel’s scene of mirrors and reflection found on p. 54. A loose translation of the name Casimiro can be construed as: “almost—glanced,” or as the infinitive command: “to gaze in the not-quite.” This attempt to destabilize the name of Graciela’s new beau arrives full circle when the text alerts us to, “Casimiro was an innovator,” and that “part of his appeal was in the casual way he gave meaning to the trivial and stripped importance from the respectable” (54).

This analysis of his name and disposition, though occurring in some four short lines, speaks volumes in terms of the part of the whole for the position of the male [gaze] and the [fe]male’s attempt at such resolution. We note that Graciela herself is concerned with her identity, her image and the [mis]use of the mirrors.

The position of the mirror here reflects the earlier, part of/for the whole, observance of Bhaba’s mimicry turn to farce. Again, in terms of legitimacy, authenticity of the self Graciela is left to have “guessed at her appearance” (54).

At an earlier point in the novel one can also make the argument that the voyeurism episode, though initialized by Peter West, is sustained by both Silvio and Graciela. It is they who problematize his gaze. This problematization is suggestive of incertitude, or an ambivalence that at once reflects and refracts the onlooker, a form of authority behind the lens, but at once reliant on his [Mr. West's] two models, for such validation. Is this not then a viable example of Bhaba’s switch from mimicry to menace, or farce? You decide.