Mimicry Unveiled: Asserting Agency through Mimicry as a Form of 'Resistance' in V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The concept of identity is central to contemporary Race and Ethnicity studies, particularly in the multicultural and diasporic Caribbean context, where no singular notion of “Caribbeanness” exists. In such a liminal space, immigrants experience displacement and the erosion of both identity and homeland. Postcolonial discourse challenges fixed and monolithic identities, replacing them with pluralized and hybridized constructs. Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry becomes a crucial means through which diasporic individuals navigate their marginalization, transforming it into a site of resistance rather than assimilation. This paper elucidates how ‘mimicry’, rather than serving to reinforce authority, unsettles rigid constructions of identity and cultural purity. By reading Naipaul’s novel through postcolonial theory, it brings to the fore the nuances of identity construction in liminal spaces, where mimicry ruptures colonial hegemony and facilitates new possibilities of discovering the ‘self’.
Author: Shruti Ghosh
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W6930896731
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