Signs+Taken+for+Wonders

Bhabha examines how the English book (typically the Bible) serves as a locus of power and ambivalence, ultimately becoming an unintended vehicle of hybridization and resistance. He starts by highlighting and juxtaposing several scenes from postcolonial literature where the native has the “sudden, fortuitous discovery of the English book” (29). Bhabha initially seems to suggest by this that the // fetishized //‘book’ represents the fixed nature of colonial rule (i.e. Truth and Light) and its discursive power to ‘narrate’ and disseminate European culture. However, he writes that this initial cultural experience changed as it underwent // Entstellung // – “a process of displacement, distortion, dislocation, repetition” (32). In this way, the book paradoxically becomes an emblem of colonial ambivalence – no longer the sign of European dominance but rather a symbol of the weakness of colonial discourse in large part due to its susceptibility to “mimesis”. Therefore, instead of presenting the fixed nature of Colonial rule, the book becomes the site for colonized empowerment – a repetition leading to a hybridization of the word turned against imperial oppression, turned against the Maker. Bhabha concludes that, “the colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference” (32). [As a side note, this makes me think of Ho Chi Minh’s use of the US Declaration of Independence and the French // Déclaration des droits de l’homme // to declare Viet-Nâm as independent…] What is interesting to me is that it seems Bhabha is also ‘mimicking’ the ‘English book’ – but in this case, the English book is really French poststructuralism. His ‘mimetic repetition’ then becomes a means of opposing the seemingly Eurocentric closed club of intellectuals and relocating critical thought to the ‘subaltern’.
 * =Title= || "Signs Taken For Wonders." In //The Post-Colonial Studies Reader//, edited by Bill Ashcrosft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 29-35. ||
 * =Author= || Homi K. Bhabha ||
 * =Date= || London: Routledge, 1995. ||
 * =Summary By= || deRaismes ||
 * =Summary= ||  ||

Also, is it problematic that Bhabha's subversion stems from colonial discourse, i.e. the means of contestation is done through the Colonizer's discourse rather than a 'native' one? || = = = = = = = = = = = =
 * =Discussion points= || How might Bhabha's article compare to Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

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