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Mon 17 Mar, 2014 08:44 pm
Because mimicry shares the same meaning with mimesis.
First, you say "imitating the coloniser to elevate above the jungle status", and then you say the mimesis is subverted? I failed to see the consistency within.
Context:
Colonial Mimicry and Lawrence's Arab Masquerade
In his Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon observes, "Every colonized people... finds itself face to face with the language of the civilized nation; this is with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness." For Fanon, one of the primary ways in which colonialism operates is through instilling in the colonised subject the desire to imitate his coloniser. Homi Bhabha further complicates this theoretical paradigm by introducing the notion of "mimicry', a category which includes a whole range of parodic strategies whereby mimesis is subverted and its power relations redefined.
@oristarA,
Well, this thread is abandoned.
Thanks for paying attention.