BHABHA’S NOTION OF ‘MIMICRY’ AND ‘AMBIVALENCE’ IN V.S. NAIPAUL’S A BEND IN THE RIVER

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to study V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River through the lense of Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts like ‘mimicry’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘in-betweenness’. The entire postcolonial diasporic literature exhibits mixed feelings through the essential dichotomies marking the lives of émigrés. Love-hate relationships, contradictions between ‘self’ and ‘other’ native-alien clash of cultures, hybridity, creolisation, nostalgia, mimicking tendency, sense of alienation and ultimate disillusionment prevail throughout the novel in one way or the other. Here, the paper discusses the relevance of Bhabha’s perception to understand the typical postcolonial ‘halfness’ which gets a fair handling in the hands of Naipaul. Seemingly commonplace postcolonial jargon makes it convenient to penetrate deeper into the predicament of the people living their lives in flux. The absurdity of so called civilizing mission is exposed in the novel by satirizing the concept of ‘white man’s burden’. The natives feel perpetually trapped and shipwrecked in their native land for the destined wretchedness making them embrace borrowed culture, language, fashion and style only to experience ever-prevailing and ever-tormenting ambivalence which destablises their lives in entirety. The research paper intends to explore the theoretical nuances which may be applied in the reading of the novel with special focus on one of the most prominent postcolonial thinker Homi K. Bhabha.