Colonial Ambivalence Analysis

1.2.4. Mimicry in Colonial discourses

This term was used to describe the ambivalent nature between the colonizers and colonized in colonial and postcolonial discourses. In these discourses where the colonized subjects mimic by repeating their colonial master’s cultural habits, assumptions, language, institutions, values, voices etc. the result is never a simple re-presentation or reproduction of those traits but rather a ‘ blurred copy’ a ‘camouflage’ which can be quite disruptive. Mimicry is an overt goal of imperial policy. Mimicry is the process by which colonized subject reproduced as ‘almost same, but not quite’. Mimicry is at once resemblance and menace. The copying of the colonized culture, behaviours and values contains both mockery

Mimicry occurs as result of ambivalence. Ambivalence arouses complexity and attraction towards a colonial subject to mimic, but it ruptures the colonial authority and authenticity. Ambivalence suggests Ambivalence characterises the way in which colonial discourses relates to the colonized, for it may be exploitative and nurturing. Ambivalence suggests both complexity and resistance in a colonized

Power

Power is a complex strategic situation in a given society. Power may be defined as the more or less unilateral ability or potential to bring about significant change, usually in the lives of people, through the actions of oneself or the others. Power manifests itself in a relational manner and always operates reciprocally. Marx had equated power with domination and exploitation later Foucault explains power that validates knowledge and truth and which invalidate certain knowledge and truth. For Foucault, power is not conceived as the property or possession of the dominant class, state or sovereign but as strategy.

According to Michael Foucault “power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society”. To him power is not coercive in the sense of direct threat of violence, power is a set of relations and, “power is everywhere not since it embrace everything, but because it comes from everywhere”. Thus power can be defined as a mode of action that does not directly and immediately on others, but instead it acts upon their