Summary/Notes of Homi Bhabha's "Mimicry and Man"

Bhabha elaborates on how the subjects of a colonial state adopt a new culture and ways of life, and ends up imitating the colonizer in a way that is almost identical. This exposes the desire of the colonizer to reform the colonized to become like the colonizer, but using a way that still preserves a clear sense of difference. The colonizer's biggest fear is the disappearing of this difference and wants to prevent the colonized becoming the same as them. 

Mimicry challenges the idea of a fixed identity because anyone could be "almost white but not quite," showing that no one could ever be white, which threatens the colonizer as their identities are slipping.

The colonial subject becomes a "partial presense" because the manipulator sees a partial representation of himself through the colonized; thus, the colonized is not the exact same as the original "partial presence," the colonizer.

Bhabha explains the colonized is in an ambivalent position between mimicry and mockery because there is a parody-like effect. Everything the colonized does shows the nature of the colonizer, showing that the colonizers are incomplete, needing the colonized to look dominant. 

Bhabha also says there is a "double vision," which means the appearance of the civilized other partially reflects the colonizer's appearance, creating a kind of a distorted mirror image. The mimic can never fully reach its perfect presence, revealing its lack-there-of. Thus, the colonized and the colonizer are both found in the mirror image. Eventually, the colonized returns the colonizer's gaze: "the observer becomes the observed" (Bhabha 89).