Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse

Author(s): Homi Bhabha

Source: October, Vol. 28, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis (Spring, 1984), pp.
125-133
Published by: The MIT Press
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 Of Mimicry and Man:
The Ambivalence of
Colonial Discourse*

HOMI BHABHA

Mimicryrevealssomething in sofar as it is
distinct
from what might calledan itself
be
thatis behind.The effect ofmimicry is cam-
ouflage.... It is nota questionofharmoniz-
ingwiththebackground, butagainsta mottled
background, ofbecoming mottled-exactly like
thetechniqueofcamouflage practisedinhuman
warfare.
-Jacques Lacan,
"The Line and Light," Of theGaze.

It is outofseasonto questionat thistimeof

day,theoriginalpolicyofconferring on every
colony of theBritishEmpire a mimic represen-
tationof theBritishConstitution. But ifthe
creature so endowedhas sometimes forgotten
its real insignificanceand underthefancied
importance ofspeakers and maces,and all the
paraphernalia and ceremoniesoftheimperial
legislature,has daredtodefythemother coun-
try,shehas tothankherselffor thefollyofcon-
ferringsuchprivileges ona conditionofsociety
thathas no earthly claimtoso exalteda posi-
tion.Afundamental principleappearstohave
beenforgotten or overlookedin oursystem of
colonialpolicy- thatofcolonialdependence.
To givetoa colonytheformsofindependence
is a mockery;shewouldnotbea colony fora
singlehourifshecouldmaintainan indepen-
dentstation.
Sir Edward Cust,
-
"Reflectionson West AfricanAffairs. .
addressed to the Colonial Office,"
Hatchard, London 1839.

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126 OCTOBER

The discourse of post-EnlightenmentEnglish colonialism oftenspeaks in

a tongue that is forked,not false. If colonialism takes power in the name of
history,it repeatedlyexercisesits authoritythroughthe figuresof farce. For the
epic intentionof the civilizingmission, "human and not whollyhuman" in the
famous words of Lord Rosebery, "writby the fingerof the Divine" 1 oftenpro-
duces a textrichin the traditionsof trompe l'oeil,irony,mimicry,and repetition.
In this comic turn fromthe high ideals of the colonial imagination to its low
mimeticliteraryeffects,mimicryemerges as one of the most elusive and effec-
tive strategiesof colonial power and knowledge.
Withinthatconflictualeconomy ofcolonial discourse which Edward Said2
describes as the tension between the synchronicpanoptical vision of domina-
tion- the demand for identity,stasis- and the counter-pressureof the dia-
chrony of history- change, difference -
mimicryrepresentsan ironiccompro-
mise. If I may adapt Samuel Weber's formulationof the marginalizingvision of
castration,3then colonial mimicryis the desire for a reformed,recognizable
thatis almostthesame,butnotquite.Which is to say,
Other, as a subjectofa difference
that the discourse of mimicryis constructedaround an ambivalence; in order to
be effective,mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its
difference.The authorityof that mode of colonial discourse that I have called
mimicryis thereforestrickenby an indeterminacy:mimicryemerges as the
representationof a differencethat is itselfa process of disavowal. Mimicry is,
thus, the sign of a double articulation;a complex strategyof reform,regulation,
and discipline, which"appropriates"the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry
is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a differenceor recalcitrance
which coheres the dominant strategicfunctionof colonial power, intensifies
surveillance, and poses an immanent threatto both "normalized"knowledges
and disciplinarypowers.
The effectof mimicryon the authorityof colonial discourse is profound
and disturbing.For in "normalizing"the colonial state or subject, the dream of
post-Enlightenmentcivilityalienates its own language of libertyand produces
another knowledge of its norms. The ambivalence which thus informsthis
strategyis discernible, for example, in Locke's Second Treatise which splits
to reveal the limitationsof libertyin his double use of the word "slave": first
simply,descriptivelyas the locus of a legitimateformof ownership,then as the

* This paper was firstpresented as a contribution to a panel on "Colonialist and Post-

Colonialist Discourse," organized by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak for the Modern Language
Association Convention in New York, December 1983. I would like to thank ProfessorSpivak for
inviting me to participate on the panel and Dr. Stephan Feuchtwang for his advice in the
preparation of the paper.
1. Cited in Eric Stokes, The PoliticalIdeas ofEnglishImperialism,Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1960, pp. 17-18.
2. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York, Pantheon Books, 1978, p. 240.
3. Samuel Weber: "The Sideshow, Or: Remarks on a Canny Moment," ModernLanguage
Notes,vol. 88, no. 6 (1973), p. 1112.

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 of ColonialDiscourse
TheAmbivalence 127

trope foran intolerable, illegitimateexercise of power. What is articulated in

thatdistance between the two uses is the absolute, imagined differencebetween
the "Colonial" State of Carolina and the Original State of Nature.
It is fromthis area between mimicryand mockery,where the reforming,
civilizingmission is threatenedby the displacing gaze of itsdisciplinarydouble,
thatmy instancesof colonial imitationcome. What theyall share is a discursive
process by which the excess or slippage produced by the ambivalence of mimicry
(almost the same, but notquite)does not merely "rupture"the discourse, but
becomes transformedinto an uncertaintywhich fixesthe colonial subject as a
"partial"presence. By "partial"I mean both "incomplete"and "virtual."It is as if
the very emergence of the "colonial" is dependent for its representationupon
some strategiclimitationor prohibitionwithinthe authoritativediscourse itself.
The success of colonial appropriationdepends on a proliferation of inappropriate
objects that ensure its strategicfailure,so that mimicryis at once resemblance
and menace.
A classic text of such partialityis Charles Grant's "Observations on the
State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain"(1792)4 whichwas
only superseded by James Mills's HistoryofIndia as the most influentialearly
nineteenth-century account of Indian manners and morals. Grant's dream of
an evangelical system of mission education conducted uncompromisinglyin
English was partlya belief in political reformalong Christian lines and partly
an awareness that the expansion of company rule in India required a systemof
"interpellation"-a reformof manners, as Grant put it, thatwould provide the
colonial with"a sense of personal identityas we know it." Caught between the
desire for religious reformand the fear that the Indians might become tur-
bulent for liberty,Grant implies that it is, in fact the "partial" diffusionof
Christianity,and the"partial"influenceof moral improvementswhichwill con-
structa particularlyappropriateformof colonial subjectivity.What is suggested
is a process of reformthroughwhich Christian doctrines might collude with
divisive caste practices to preventdangerous political alliances. Inadvertently,
Grant produces a knowledge of Christianityas a formof social controlwhich
conflictswith the enunciatory assumptions which authorize his discourse. In
suggesting,finally,that"partial reform"will produce an emptyformof"the im-
itationof English manners which will induce them [the colonial subjects] to re-
main under our protection,"'5 Grant mocks his moral project and violates the
Evidences of central missionary forbade any
Christianity--a
tolerance of heathen faiths. tenet--which
The absurd extravagance of Macaulay's InfamousMinute(1835)- deeply
influencedby Charles Grant's Observations- makes a mockeryofOriental learn-

4. Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great
Britain," SessionalPapers1812-13, X (282), East India Company.
5. Ibid., chap. 4, p. 104.

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128 OCTOBER

ing untilfaced withthe challenge of conceivingof a "reformed"colonial subject.

Then the greattraditionof European humanismseems capable onlyofironizing
itself.At the intersectionof European learning and colonial power, Macaulay
can conceive of nothingother than "a class of interpretersbetween us and the
millions whom we govern- a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but
English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect'6- in other words a
mimic man raised "throughour English School," as a missionaryeducationist
wrote in 1819, "to form a corps of translatorsand be employed in different
departmentsof Labour."' The line of descent of the mimic man can be traced
throughthe worksof Kipling, Forester,Orwell, Naipaul, and to his emergence,
most recently,in Benedict Anderson's excellent essay on nationalism, as the
anomalous Bipin Chandra Pal.8 He is the effectofa flawedcolonial mimesis,in
which to be Anglicized, is emphaticallynot to be English.
The figureof mimicryis locatable withinwhat Anderson describes as "the
inner incompatibilityof empire and nation."' It problematizes the signs of
racial and cultural priority,so that the "national" is no longer naturalizable.
What emerges between mimesis and mimicryis a writing, a mode of represen-
tation, that marginalizes the monumentalityof history,quite simplymocks its
power to be a model, thatpower which supposedly makes it imitable. Mimicry
repeatsrather than re-presents and in that diminishing perspective emerges
Decoud's displaced European vision of Sulaco as

the endlessness of civil strifewhere follyseemed even harder to bear

than its ignominy. . . the lawlessness of a populace of all colours and
races, barbarism, irremediabletyranny.. . . America is ungovern-
able.10
Or Ralph Singh's apostasy in Naipaul's TheMimic Men:
We pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves
forlife,we mimic men of the New World, one unknowncornerof it,
with all its remindersof the corruptionthat came so quickly to the
new.11

Both Decoud and Singh, and in theirdifferent ways Grant and Macaulay, are
the parodists of history.Despite theirintentionsand invocations theyinscribe
the colonial texterratically,eccentricallyacross a body politicthatrefusesto be

6. T. B. Macaulay, "Minute on Education," in SourcesofIndian Tradition,vol. II, ed. William

Theodore de Bary, New York, Columbia University Press, 1958, p. 49.
7. Mr. Thomason's communication to the Church Missionary Society, September 5, 1819, in
The MissionaryRegister,1821, pp. 54-55.
8. Benedict Anderson, ImaginedCommunities, London, Verso, 1983, p. 88.
9. Ibid., pp. 88-89.
10. Joseph Conrad, Nostromo,London, Penguin, 1979, p. 161.
11. V. S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men, London, Penguin, 1967, p. 146.

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 of ColonialDiscourse
The Ambivalence 129

representative,in a narrativethat refusesto be representational.The desire to

emerge as "authentic" through mimicry- through a process of writing and
repetition-is the final irony of partial representation.
What I have called mimicryis not the familiarexerciseof dependent colonial
relations throughnarcissisticidentificationso that, as Fanon has observed,12
the black man stops being an actional person foronly the whiteman can repre-
sent his self-esteem.Mimicry conceals no presence or identitybehind its mask:
it is not what Cesaire describes as "colonization-thingification"13 behind which
therestandsthe essence of thepresence Africaine.The menace ofmimicryis itsdouble
vision which in disclosingthe ambivalence of colonial discourse also disruptsits
authority.And it is a double-vision that is a resultof what I've described as the
partial representation/recognition of the colonial object. Grant's colonial as
partial imitator,Macaulay's translator,Naipaul's colonial politician as play-
actor, Decoud as the scene setterof the opirabouffe of the New World, these are
the appropriate objects of a colonialist chain of command, authorized versions
of otherness.But theyare also, as I have shown, the figuresof a doubling, the
part-objectsof a metonymyof colonial desire which alienates the modalityand
normalityof those dominantdiscoursesin which theyemerge as "inappropriate"
colonial subjects. A desire that, throughthe repetitionofpartialpresence, which
is the basis of mimicry,articulates those disturbances of cultural, racial, and
historicaldifferencethat menace the narcissisticdemand of colonial authority.
It is a desire thatreverses"in part"the colonial appropriationby now producing
a partial vision of the colonizer's presence. A gaze of otherness,that shares the
acuity of the genealogical gaze which, as Foucault describes it, liberates mar-
ginal elements and shattersthe unityof man's being throughwhich he extends
his sovereignty.'4
I want to turn to this process by which the look of surveillancereturnsas
the displacing gaze of the disciplined,where the observerbecomes the observed
and "partial" representation rearticulates the whole notion of identity and
alienates it from essence. But not before observing that even an exemplary
history like Eric Stokes's The English Utilitariansin India acknowledges the
anomalous gaze of otherness but finally disavows it in a contradictoryut-
terance:
Certainly India played no central part in fashioningthe distinctive
qualities of English civilisation. In many ways it acted as a disturb-
ing force, a magnetic power placed at the periphery tending to
distortthe natural development of Britain's character. . . .5

12. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, WhiteMasks, London, Paladin, 1970, p. 109.
13. Aime Cesaire, Discourseon Colonialism,New York, Monthly Review Press, 1972, p. 21
14. Michel Foucault, "Nietzche, Genealogy, History," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice,
trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, p. 153.
15. Eric Stokes, TheEnglishUtilitarians
and India, Oxford, Oxford UniversityPress, 1959, p. xi.

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130 OCTOBER

What is the nature of the hidden threat of the partial gaze? How does
mimicryemerge as the subject of the scopic drive and the object of colonial
surveillance? How is desire disciplined, authoritydisplaced?
If we turnto a Freudian figureto address theseissues ofcolonial textuality,
that form of differencethat is mimicry-almost the same but not quite-will
become clear. Writing of the partial nature of fantasy,caught inappropriately,
between the unconscious and the preconscious,making problematic,like mim-
icry,the very notion of "origins,"Freud has this to say:
Their mixed and splitoriginis what decides theirfate.We may com-
pare themwithindividuals of mixed race who taken all round resem-
ble white men but who betraytheircoloured descent by some strik-
ing featureor other and on that account are excluded fromsociety
and enjoy none of the privileges.16

Almostthesamebutnotwhite:. the visibilityof mimicryis always produced at

the site of interdiction.It is a formof colonial discourse thatis utteredinterdicta:
a discourse at the crossroads of what is known and permissibleand that which
though known must be kept concealed; a discourse utteredbetween the lines
and as such both against the rules and within them. The question of the
representationof differenceis thereforealways also a problem of authority.
The "desire"of mimicry,which is Freud's striking featurethatreveals so littlebut
makes such a big difference,is not merelythat impossibilityof the Other which
repeatedlyresistssignification.The desire of colonial mimicry- an interdictory
desire-may not have an object, but it has strategicobjectiveswhich I shall call
the metonymy ofpresence.
Those inappropriate signifiersof colonial discourse- the differencebe-
tween being English and being Anglicized; the identitybetween stereotypes
which, throughrepetition,also become different;the discriminatoryidentities
constructedacross traditional cultural norms and classifications,the Simian
Black, the Lying Asiatic- all these are metonymies of presence. They are
strategiesof desire in discourse that make the anomalous representationof the
colonized somethingotherthan a process of "the returnof the repressed,"what
Fanon unsatisfactorilycharacterized as collective catharsis.17These instances
of metonymyare the nonrepressiveproductionsof contradictoryand multiple
belief. They cross the boundaries of the culture of enunciation through a
strategicconfusionof the metaphoricand metonymicaxes of the cultural pro-
duction of meaning. For each of these instances of "a differencethat is almost
the same but not quite" inadvertentlycreates a crisis forthe cultural priority
given to the metaphoric as the process of repression and substitutionwhich
negotiates the difference between paradigmatic systemsand classifications.In

16. Sigmund Freud, "The Unconscious" (1915), SE, XIV, pp. 190-191.
17. Fanon, p. 103.

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TheAmbivalence
of ColonialDiscourse 131

mimicry,the representationof identityand meaning is rearticulatedalong the

axis of metonymy.As Lacan reminds us, mimicryis like camouflage, not a
harmonization or repression of difference,but a form of resemblance that
differs/defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically.Its threat, I
would add, comes fromthe prodigious and strategicproductionof conflictual,
fantastic,discriminatory"identityeffects"in the play of a power that is elusive
because it hides no essence, no "itself."And that formof resemblanceis the most
to
terrifyingthing behold, as Edward Long testifiesin his HistoryofJamaica
(1774). At the end of a tortured,negrophobicpassage, that shiftsanxiouslybe-
tween piety, prevarication, and perversion, the text finallyconfrontsits fear;
nothingother than the repetitionof its resemblance "in part":
(Negroes) are representedby all authors as the vilestof human kind,
to which they have littlemore pretensionof resemblance thanwhat
arisesfromtheirexterior
forms(my italics).18
From such a colonial encounterbetween the white presence and its black
semblance, there emerges the question of the ambivalence of mimicryas a
problematicof colonial subjection. For if Sade's scandalous theatricalizationof
language repeatedlyremindsus thatdiscourse can claim "no priority,"then the
workof Edward Said will not let us forgetthatthe"ethnocentricand erraticwill
to power fromwhich textscan spring"''19 is itselfa theaterof war. Mimicry, as
the metonymyof presence is, indeed, such an erratic, eccentric strategyof
authorityin colonial discourse. Mimicry does not merely destroynarcissistic
authoritythroughthe repetitiousslippage of differenceand desire. It is the pro-
cess of thefixationof the colonial as a formofcross-classificatory, discriminatory
knowledge in the defilesof an interdictorydiscourse, and thereforenecessarily
raises the question of the authorization of colonial representations.A question of
authority that goes beyond the subject's lack of priority(castration) to a
historicalcrisis in the conceptualityof colonial man as an objectof regulatory
power, as the subject of racial, cultural, national representation.
"This culture . . . fixed in its colonial status," Fanon suggests,"(is) both
presentand mummified,it testifiedagainst its members. It definesthem in fact
without appeal.'"20 The ambivalence of mimicry- almost but not quite - sug-
gests that the fetishizedcolonial culture is potentiallyand strategicallyan in-
surgent counter-appeal. What I have called its "identity-effects," are always
crucially split. Under cover of camouflage, mimicry, like the fetish,is a part-
object that radically revalues the normative knowledges of the priorityof race,
writing,history. For the fetishmimes the formsof authorityat the point at

18. Edward Long, A HistoryofJamaica, 1774, vol. II, p. 353.

19. Edward Said, "The Text, the World, the Critic," in TextualStrategies,
ed. J. V. Harari,
Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1979, p. 184.
20. Frantz Fanon, "Racism and Culture," in Toward theAfricanRevolution,London, Pelican,
1967, p. 44.

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132 OCTOBER

which it deauthorizes them. Similarly,mimicryrearticulatespresence in terms

of its "otherness,"that which it disavows. There is a crucial differencebetween
this colonialarticulationof man and his doubles and that which Foucault de-
scribes as "thinkingthe unthought"21 which, fornineteenth-century Europe, is
the ending of man's alienation by reconcilinghim withhis essence. The colonial
discourse that articulatesan interdictory
"otherness"is preciselythe "otherscene"
of this nineteenth-centuryEuropean desire for an authentic historical con-
sciousness.
The "unthought"across whichcolonial man is articulatedis thatprocess of
classificatoryconfusionthatI have describedas themetonymyofthe substitutive
chain of ethical and cultural discourse. This results in the splitting
of colonial
discourse so thattwo attitudestowardsexternalrealitypersist;one takes reality
into consideration while the other disavows it and replaces it by a product of
desire that repeats, rearticulates"reality"as mimicry.
So Edward Long can say withauthority,quoting variously, Hume, East-
wick, and Bishop Warburton in his support, that:
Ludicrous as the opinion may seem I do not thinkthatan orangutang
husband would be any dishonour to a Hottentotfemale.22
Such contradictoryarticulations of reality and desire- seen in racist
stereotypes,statements,jokes, myths- are not caught in the doubtfulcircle of
the returnof the repressed. They are the effectsof a disavowal that denies the
differencesofthe otherbut produces in its stead formsof authorityand multiple
beliefthat alienate the assumptions of "civil"discourse. If, fora while, the ruse
of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetitionof guilt,
justification,pseudoscientifictheories, superstition,spurious authorities,and
classificationscan be seen as the desperate effortto "normalize"formallythe
disturbance of a discourse of splittingthat violates the rational, enlightened
claims of its enunciatorymodality. The ambivalence of colonial authorityre-
peatedly turns from mimicry-a differencethat is almost nothing but not
quite-to menace-a differencethat is almost total but not quite. And in that
other scene of colonial power, where historyturns to farce and presence to "a
part," can be seen the twin figuresof narcissismand paranoia that repeat furi-
ously, uncontrollably.
In the ambivalent world of the "not quite/notwhite," on the margins of
metropolitandesire, thefoundingobjectsof the Western world become the er-
of the colonial discourse- the part-objects
ratic,eccentric,accidentalobjetstrouvis
of presence. It is then that the body and the book loose theirrepresentational
authority.Black skin splitsunder the racist gaze, displaced into signs of besti-

21. Michel Foucault, The Orderof Things,New York, Pantheon, 1970, part II, chap. 9.
22. Long, p. 364.

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 of ColonialDiscourse
TheAmbivalence 133

ality, genitalia, grotesquerie,which reveal the phobic mythof the undifferenti-

ated whole white body. And the holiest of books - the Bible - bearing both the
standard of the cross and the standard of empire findsitselfstrangelydismem-
bered. In May 1817 a missionarywrote fromBengal:
Still everyonewould gladly receive a Bible. And why?- that he may
lay it up as a curiosityfora fewpice; or use it forwaste paper. Such
it is well known has been the common fate of these copies of the
Bible. . . . Some have been bartered in the markets, others have
been thrownin snuffshops and used as wrapping paper.23

23. The MissionaryRegister,May 1817, p. 186.

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