Toward a Resuscitation of Postcolonial Theory: Reshaping Homi Bhabha's Colonial Discourse Within an Arabic Context

Abstract

This thesis explores the colonial/postcolonial discourse articulated by Homi Bhabha, with a specific emphasis on the concept of mimicry as it is performed in Arabic contexts. Departing from the conventional method of applying theory to literary texts, I utilise fiction to both challenge and augment Bhabha’s notion of colonial mimicry within the Arab world in light of his totalising tendency to broaden the scope of his study (both spatially and temporally) without adequate consideration or contextualisation. To achieve this, four writers and texts are selected: Ali Bader’s The Tobacco Keeper (2008; trans. 2011), Yasmina Khadra’s What the Day Owes the Night (2008; trans. 2010), Sahar Khalifeh’s The End of Spring (2004; trans. 2008), and Sayed Kashua’s Dancing Arabs (2002; trans. 2004). These emerge from diverse geo-political locations such as Iraq, Algeria and Palestine, with distinctive histories of colonialism and its afterlives. I investigate the extent to which Bhabha’s conceptualisations of ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ resistance materially translate into effective forms of opposition for the colonised. In this, I seek to expose, what I, along with other critics, see as Bhabha’s mythologisation of some excessively abstract concepts. I do so by foregrounding and analysing the concrete hurdles that confront the mimic men featured in my chosen novels as they are performing and/or existing in various interstitial positions/locations. The thesis proposes that these writers and their work demonstrate some inherent complexities and/or risks when it comes to applying Bhabha’s resistance tool/s. They encompass, but are not limited to, the emergence of degrees of mimicry ranging from resistance to complicity, the conditions of mimicry, the act of authorisation, the distinction between mimicry and camouflage, and self-hatred as an aftermath of mimicry. These are all core preoccupations of this study. This thesis identifies the performance of mimicry within Arabic contexts as ensnared by hindering factors that directly impede its efficacy. It asserts that this process commences with the imposition of prerequisites, progresses through stages of exclusion and estrangement, and ultimately concludes with experiences of rejection and self-revulsion.