Mimicry, Hegel Interpretation, and Mimetic Theory of Language

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with critically analyzing Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry in the colonial, racially hierarchical context. He develops Fanon’s psychological analysis in terms of the ambivalence of mimicry, but its psychological limitation lies in discarding Fanon’s discussion of Hegel’s theory of master and slave. In theological context, Moltmann utilizes Hegel’s notion of death of God for his political theology of theologia crucis in a trinitarian sense. But my concern is to reinterpret Hegel’s notion of religion in terms of unhappy consciousness and elaborate his linguistic, critical dimension for the postcolonial political theology. I seek to revisit Hegel’s dialectical theory and his critique of religion (in reference to Nietzsche) in terms of labor, recognition, and discourse of resistance in order to cut through the psychological confinement. Moreover, a notion of mimicry can be renewed in reference to a critical theory of mimesis in Adorno and Benjamin. It is substantial to take into account Benjamin’s mimetic theory of language and a messianic history of materialism as an alternative to a psychological notion of mimicry. This perspective reinforces the political theology and its discourse ethics of responsibility and the Other (Levinas).