Mimicry, Mockery, and Identity Crisis: The Postcolonial Subject in Little America

Abstract

This research explore the internal and external conflict of the postcolonial subject with reference to mimicry, mockery, and identity crisis in Zain Saeed’s novel Little America. Through Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry, this study examines how the hero Sharif Barkati’s mimicry of Western ideologies (freedom, love, and modernity) calls into question and at the same time reinscribes the colonial power relations that guide the conduct of his life. Sharif’s aspiration to transplant an American ideal into Pakistan creates a crack identity, torn between two cultural specification of good. Little America, an utopian enclave that also subverts conservative Pakistani customs, serves as a zone of resistance and domination a reflection of the complicated terms of neocolonial influence. When Sharif dons Western idioms of expression and ways of life, his copying turns to spoofery, unmasking the thinness of veneers on copies and the copier. But far from setting him free, this act of simulation only draws him deeper into a chaos of social constraints, class differences and self-estrangement. This study will also explore the ways in which Rawles’ vision is crushed underneath cultural backlash and uncompleted selfhood. In this way, using the critical cultural and postcolonial perspective, the study will reveals a dual character of mimicry enhancing as well as disintegrating tool for postcolonial subjects. For today’s readers, the article encourages a sober rethinking of the form of identity construction at issue, the province of a cultural consumer, and the psychic expense of dwelling between pre-inheritances and borrowed modernity.