2. The notion of mimicry
In general connotation, ‘mimicry’ refers to the imitation of one species by another. Webster’s New World College Dictionary further defines the term as “close resemblance, in colour, form, or behaviour of oneorganism to another or to some object in its environment … it serves to disguise or conceal the organism frompredators.” The disguising of the organism in the process of mimicry brings the term closer to the warfaredevice of camouflaging which, according to Webster’s Dictionary, implies “the disguising of troops, ships,guns, etc. to conceal them from the enemy, as by the use of paint, nets, or leaves in patterns merging with thebackground.” Jacques Lacan establishes the relation between mimicry and camouflage in his essay ‘The Lineand Light”:
Mimcry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be called an itself that is behind. The effectof mimicry is camouflage…. It is not a question of harmonizing with the background, but against a mottledbackground, of becoming mottled— exactly like the technique of camouflage practiced in human warfare.(Bhabha 1994: 121)
Bhabha’s analysis of mimicry in his essay ‘Of Mimicry and Man’ is largely based on the Lacanian vision of mimicry as camouflage resulting in colonial ambivalence. He sees the colonizer as a snake in the grass who, speaks in "a tongue that is forked," and produces a mimetic representation that "... emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge"(Bhabha 1994: 122).
In postcolonial studies ‘mimicry’ is considered as unsettling imitations that are characteristic of postcolonial cultures. It is a desire to severe the ties with ‘self’ in order to move towards ‘other’. Salim, the hero of Naipaul’s A Bend in the River, expresses his penchant for colonial mimicry when he wishes to desert his roots. He says: “I wanted to break away. To break away from my family and community also meant breaking away from my unspoken commitment....” (Naipaul 1980: 31)