LL306 Hybridity Ambivalence and Mimicry

Three major terms adapted into colonial discourse theory by Homi Bhabha:

• Ambivalence• Hybridity• Mimicry• In these lectures we examine these terms and you will be

expected to apply them to the following: stories, poems and articles in “Dreadlocks Interrupted”:

• Des-pora (Seona Smiles)• The Case of the “White Lady with the Towel”… (Regis

Stella)• Afakasi Checklist (Selina T Marsh)• Street Poets Black-2005 Remix (Rev. Mua Strickson-Pua)• Seawall (Subramani),

and to the works of your choice in To a Young Artist in Contemplation.

LL306 Theories and Theorists

HOMI BHABHAAmbivalence

• A term first developed to describe a continual fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its opposite. It refers to attraction toward and repulsion from an object, person or action.

• Adapted into and repucolonial discourse theory it describes the complex mix of attraction lsion that characterises the relationship between coloniser and colonised.

• The relationship is ambivalent because the colonised subject is never simply or completely opposed to the coloniser.

• Rather than assuming that some colonised subjects are complicit and some are resistant, ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance exist within a fluctuating relation within the colonial subject.

• In Bhabha’s theory, ambivalence disrupts the clear cut authority of colonial domination because it disturbs the simple relationship between coloniser and colonised.

• What instances of ambivalence do you find in the works outlined from Dreadlocks Interrupted?

• Why are they examples of ambivalence?• How is ambivalence treated by the writers?• Are there any resolutions to the ambivalence?

LL306 Theories and Theorists

LL306 Theories and Theorists

HybridityIn horticulture it refers to cross-breeding of two species

through grafting or cross-polination to produce a third, hybrid species

Linguistic examples include pidgin and creole languages.In the colonial context there is a mix of cultures which for

Bhabha makes him sceptical of the claim to cultural purity but not of cultural difference.

He sees hybridity as empowering not as weakening.Hybridity was sometimes seen as the basis of the way

forward for postcolonial societies caught up in the conflicts of life in a multicultural societies.

What sort of difficulties can you see for such a proposal?What are some current examples from events around you

that exemplifies hybridity, or is based on its rationale?

LL306 Theories and Theorists

LL306 Theories and Theorists: Hybridity

MimicryAgain, describes the ambivalent relationship between the coloniser and

the colonised.When colonial discourse encourages the colonised subject to mimic the

coloniser by adopting the coloniser’s cultural habits, assumptions, institutions and values, the result is never a simple reproduction of those traits (139).

Rather the result is a blurred copy of the coloniser that can be quite threatening. This is because mimicry is never very far from mockery, since it appears to parody what it mimics (139).

Mimicry has often been a overt goal of imperial policy . The irony was that it produced a hybridised class of people - Indian in blood and English a taste (139-140).

You can get a similar examples in the transformations in Sailosi Atiu in Epeli Hau’ofa’s short story “The Second Coming:

For Bhabha, mimicry is the process by which the colonised subject is reproduced as ‘almost the same, but not quite’ (140). This is disrupting to the monolithic colonial discourse (140).

The threat inherent in mimicry, then, comes not from an overt resistance but from the way in which it continually suggests an identity not quite like the coloniser (141).

LL306 Theories and Theorists

Bhabha sees mimicry and hybridity as forms of opposition (p.9).

For Bhabha it results in an excess – it is this difference which has agency. 

According to Bhabha: ‘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 the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference’ (1994: 86).

LL306 Theories and Theorists

LL306 Theories and Theorists: Hybridity.

Ambivalence, Mimicry

• The English themselves are mimic men and women who imitate a certain idea of ‘Englishness’; it is not as if English identity and tradition are solid themselves.

• Beyond those ethnocentric limits are a range of other dissonant histories and voices.

• According to Spivak: ‘the construction of an English cultural identity was inseparable from othering the native as its object’ (Parry p.38). 

• Ralph’s mimicry of the coloniser’s culture draws attention to his difference.

• This is because one never arrives at the desired location or transformation because of one’s excess.

• Bhabha proposes that even while one is making a duplication, that duplication will be more than the double which suggests its limits.

• Authority is questioned through its lack of a fixed centre, solidity and authenticity. 

• These are questions that you need to examine in some detail when we study Salman Rushdie’s Midnights Children

LL306 Theories and Theorists

ARGUMENTSSubaltern Studies group

The Subaltern Studies group formed by Ranajit Guha is a group of historians who aimed to promote a systematic discussion of subaltern themes in South Asian studies.

The ‘subaltern’ in this case referred to subordination in South Asian society in terms of class, caste, age, gender.

They believed that accounts of Indian history and nationalism were dominated by the colonialist and nationalist elite which were a product of British colonialism (Ashcroft 217).

Hence, their purpose was to address the politics of the people and reinsert their stories into history.

They have particular interest in the discourses and rhetoric of emerging social and political movements, uprisings and demonstrations (peasant insurgency).

If they watched Temple of Doom they’d be interested in the narrative of the silent masses, they wouldn’t be concerned with Indiana!

• Salman Rushdie’s Midnights Children moves beyond the usual narrative devices, towards providing the “voice” to a range of characters, some of whom are arguably subaltern, particularly Padma, Saleem Sinai’s confidant.

LL306 Theories and Theorists

Spivak’s controversial essayThree arguments:1. essentialismThe idea of the subaltern became an issue in postcolonial

theory when Spivak critiqued the assumptions of the Subaltern Studies group in her essay ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ (essay in your Reader). This essay became a founding text of postcolonialism.

The assumptions, she argued were based on essentialism – the subaltern were defined by their difference to the ruling elite (A 218).

Spivak drew attention to the fact that their essential subjectivity was constrained by the discourses within which they were constructed as subaltern. Meaning that the subaltern’s voice is not isolated from the discourses and institutional practices that give it its voice (A 79).

LL306 Theories and Theorists

LL306 Theories and Theorists