MIMICRY AND MIRROING: A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY OF IDENTITY IN KHALED HOSSEINI’S THE KITE RUNNER

This study seeks to demonstrate the mimicry techniques that bring into light the postcolonial underpinning of the text. The novel exhibits a paradoxical combination of colonial and anticolonial discourses which are violently yoked together. The characters conform to a well-constructed stereotypical structure of mimicry derived from the colonial authority. The protagonist and the antagonist of the novel function as collaborators, or intermediaries, who assist the colonial power in exerting its authority. In other words, Amir, the narrator, being an Afghan, departs drastically from his cultural and conventional heritage. Amir and his father, Baba, exhibit features that associate them more with the colonizers than the colonized. On the other hand, these intermediaries paradoxically challenge and destabilize their own self-identical authority via economy of resemblance and menace. In doing so, they assert colonizer’s established and original identity as a myth. This unconscious act of mimicry renders the characters to dismiss any source of true identity and invests in a site of ambivalence. The ambivalent nature of the prominent characters in this narration is a result of the character’s unremitting attempt to define their identity in the battlefield of resistance to colonizer’s power and its ultimate mimicry. This study reveals these contradictory features of the work that, on the one hand, assert the status of the novel as a best-seller in America, which is in line with its conformity to colonial power, and on the other hand, subtly, function as a critique of colonial authority through the mimicry strategies. Finally, it is argued that the whole system of colonial subjugation is irrefutably challenged and questioned once the mimic men come across the futility of their attempt to retain their supremacy over those they other. Thus, not only do they prove to be ambivalent in nature and lacking a fixed meaning, but also, they prove the colonial authority to be shaky. This demonstrates a secret fear of the colonizer who tries to create colonial subjects that most resemble him but are constantly removed from arriving at subjectivity. In order to remain subjugated, the colonial subjects should be constantly rejected as others while they can enjoy a mimic nature to reflect the supremacy of their masters. This construction proves to be feeble and frail because there is always a fear of a point of intersection where the two might meet as one entity. This fear is defined as insurgence of the colonial subject for liberty.

کلیدواژه ها:

mimicry ، Bhabha ، colonial subject ، double ، ambivalence