Mimicry and racism in our sister killjoy or reflections from a black Eyed squint by Ama ata aidoo
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Date
2022
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Université De Larbi Ben M’hidi Oum EL Bouaghi
Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine mimicry and racism in Ama Ata Aidoo novel Our Sister Killjoy; or, Reflections From a Black Eyed Squint. My reason for writing is to reexamine the historical and cultural effects of colonialism on decolonized countries both in past and present time. Also, I intend to clarify an image of the African immigrants in the West, and how they suffer from racism and deprivation. Hence, the study seeks to expose the lies developed by the x-colonizer in his colonial discourse. Besides, it aims at raising the decolonized people awareness about their lost dignity and forgotten past. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's theorization of mimicry, hybridity, ambivalence, and Frantz Fanon's psychoanalytic theory that analyze the psyche of both the colonized and the colonizer people, and his analysis of neocolonialism, black inferiority, decolonization process, racism, and colonial mentality, and Edward Said's thoughts discussed in his book Orientalism, and his concepts that are included in his book Cultural and Imperialism. Aidoo manages to illustrate the African immigrants in the West, and she gives a true image of colonialism and its bad repercussions on decolonized people. The study results confirm that the colonial discourse is ambivalent, and it is composed of colonial mimicry and a set of racist ideas about the x-colonized. The colonial discourse is imperfect and virtual because of its duality and double vision: From one hand, it aims at reforming the colonized fork through the different representations of its principles. From the other hand, it disguises the reality beyond its masks in order to avoid the full copy of the x-colonizer. As a result, the colonized people develop a mottled identity that can threaten them. Also, the colonial discourse develops a set of stereotypes that glorify the white people, and distinguish between people in terms of the privileges granted to them. Racism is constructed in four dimensions that are: historical, structural, institutional, and individual racism.
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Racism, Reflections, Mimicry