Ikwan Setiawan

English Department
Faculty of Letters Jember University 2015 - 2016
 Common colonial discourses were constructed
through binary opposition/manichean category
which was always positioned the colonized as
the subordinate/inferior subject and the
colonizer as the dominant/superior subject.
 Through such opposition and category, the
colonizer with his ‘corrupted modernism’ got
and played authority in all aspects of colonial
life, while the colonized only had been passive
and powerless; had no agency capacity to
negotiate their cultures and interest.
 Under the dominated conditions, whether in
colonial and post-colonial times, the dominated
subjects have been not quite completely, but
have been playing cultural strategy to negotiate
their voices in the midst of cultural difference
constructed discursively by the dominant.
 Postcolonialism in Bhabha’s perspective:
dismantle the binary opposition and criticize
cultural complex as the product of ambivalent
and in-betweenness in colonial and post-
colonial times.
 ‘Beyond’ is not aftermath; also neither a new horizon
nor leaving behind of the past or something coming
from the past—residual or traditional cultures.
 As the discursive effect of colonialism and
contemporary displacements, many human beings
find themselves in the moment of transit where space
and time cross to produce complex figures of
difference and identity, past and present, inside and
outside, inclusion and exclusion.
 Beyond means “here” and “there, on all sides, back and
forth.

(Bhabha, 1994: 1)
 Theoretically, thinking from beyond creates
innovative perspectives that thinks beyond
narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and
to focus on those moments or processes that are
produced in the articulation of cultural differences.
 Such processes emerge “in-between space” which
provides the terrain for elaborating strategies of
selfhood—singular or communal—that iniate new
signs of identity, and innovative sites of
collaboration and contestation, in the act of defining
the idea of society itself.
(Bhabha, 1994: 1-2)
 Cultures, nationness, community’s interest are matters
of on-going negotiation in the emergence of “interstices”
in which the minority group may overlap and displace in
the domains of cultural difference.
 The representation of difference must not be read as the
reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the
fixed tablet of tradition.
 From the minority perspective, the social articulation of
difference is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks
to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in
moments of historical transformation.
(Bhabha, 1994: 2)
 In the midst of dominant power, the minority still
has the ‘right’ from the marginalized position to
signify, but does not depend on the persistence of
tradition; it is resourced by the power of tradition to
be reinscribed through the conditions of
contradictoriness—caused by the modern or
metropolitan values—that attend upon the lives of
those who are ‘in the minority’.
 The recognition of that tradition in such position is
a partial form of identification; estranges any
immediate access to an originary identity or
‘received’ tradition.
(Bhabha, 1994: 2)
 People as subject who lives under colonial or dominated
condition will experience in-between cultural space as
their oportunity to mimic the dominant subject/culture,
but not quite and completely.
 Ambivalence: love but hate. By having mimicry of the
colonized subjects can practice almost-the same-culture-
as-the colonizer’s own, but they do not believe completely.
 By mimicry with continously appropriation and
inappropriation, the colonized or the subordinate subject
has the capacity of agency for entering the dominant
power and culture; not quitely, still negotiating some
original different culture.
 The cultural doubleness and slippage of the
mimicry subject emphasizes uncertainty of cultural
difference in colonial or post-colonial space; the
surveillance function of the dominant toward the
mimicry-subordinate-subject is disturbed because
of the inappropriation and disavowal of cultural
truth and dominant power.
 A mimicry is also a mockery because the subordinate
subjects imitate the dominant culture, but this does not
make them quite at all ; still believe and practice their
mother culture although not at all anymore.
 The double vision of mimicry may become a menace
for the colonial or dominant power because it
subverts the unity and wholeness of dominant
discourse and knowledge as the base of its power
operation.
 Through their writing and practice the subordinate
subjects can appropriate the discursive model and
the dominant culture for doing a subjectivity
project in a doubleness that is at once to disavowal
the truth of host culture and its power for the sake
of enlarging their sovereignty.
(Bhabha, 1984: 128-129)
 Metonomy of presence, almost the same but not
quite, is a strategic goal produced beyond cultural
limitations through such kind of camouflage—a
resemblance that distinguishes a whole presence by
displaying a part—which really becomes at once a
mockery and a menace (Bhaba, 1984: 130).
 Mimicry, then, becomes a strategic choice for the
subrodinate subject in order to survive in the midst
of dominant groups that still consider them as the
others; disarticulating the voice of power as the
form of agency (Mitchell, 1995).
 Sustaining mother culture totally in the midst of
antagonism will threat the existence of minority
group because the dominant power will give a
special surveillance to them; oppositely, leaving
mother culture totally will emerge dread of memory
and belonging lost of their culture.
 The performance of mimicry with its doubleness
and metonimy of presence will produce a fluidity
for the subordinate subjects by developing social
agency that empowers their subjectivity in the
midst of continous contradiction and antagonism.
 When mimicry occurs in various representational
products and ordinary practices that disturb the
wholeness of discursive and knowledge construction
as the base of power operation using binary
opposition framework, its further implication is the
absence of pure or authentic culture and the
emergence of hybridity.
 However, hybridity is not merely discourse or
practice of cross-cultural mixture—such as in
assimilation, syncretism, or creolization; it brings
politico-cultural dynamics experienced by colonized
or ex-colonized subject.
 As the product of mimicry-mockery in double
articulation, hybridity enables the hybrid subject’s
perspective, behavior, and discourse in re-
understanding the claim of the difference
epistemological truth as the base of domination.
 Indeed, by having hybrid identity, the colonized or
ex-colonized subject places him/herself under the
easier control of the colonizer because he/she seems
following and practicing the dominant culture.
 However, such hybridity is a disavowal of
discriminatory-based-power, because she/he can
multiply her/his subjectivity and culture.
 In hybridity, the negotiation of local/mother culture
still occurs from which the resistant power in the
midst of ambivalence and deception of recognition
still exists.
 Dominant cultural aspects are appropriated no
longer as the symbol of authority, but as the sign
that may produce new slippage meaning and,
further, may destroy the foundation of cultural
difference essentially.
 While the dominant group considers the
subordinate one, hybridity may become a cultural
strategy to deceive meaning desired by the
dominant.