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chairmanbernanke's review against another edition
3.0
The author clearly has some great writing talent. Perhaps some sections could have been worded differently albeit to another effect.
kam14505's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
Difficult to parse... At times I grasp a sense of genius in the text and think I've struck gold, at others I am left feeling wholly stupid. I think that there is much to mine out of the text despite my experience, but the frequent use of terms that are assigned meaning only within the text, or terms that have totally arbitrary meanings without an intratextual sense of what they connote makes getting through this hard. Had to re-read sentences at least once a page to try to understand what was being said on the basis of terminology being used in this opaque way. Many times I just gave up, but again, maybe that's just me.
megmro's review against another edition
4.0
Bhabha's essay, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse" is one of the best pieces I've read on mimesis and imperialism. The idea that the more our charitable projects look and act like us, the more we yearn for clear boundaries and exposition of their "otherness" is something that colors my thinking about history, ethics, cultural relationships, religion, and even science and science fiction--"uncanny valley", anyone?
Loved this essay.
Loved this essay.
tdwightdavis's review against another edition
4.0
A foundational text in postcolonial theory. It’s important to realize that it was originally published almost 30 years ago and that the field has shifted and grown significantly in the meantime, so some critiques that I have feel a little unfair since I’m approaching with the benefit of a lot of hindsight. My main concern is his insistence that translating cultures descralizes them. I think it’s supposed to be a liberating move, but I can see that same logic being applied, for instance, by white culture in America to black culture, a move that is always going to be colonial. I think there’s something about the sacredness of cultures that needs to be retained, a certain protective move against colonizers that retains the specificity and, indeed, untranslateability of certain cultures in order to protect against homogenization.
emilyenigmatic's review against another edition
2.0
Of Mimicry and Man: in which colonized peoples and mixed race peoples feel like a pee pee that's been chopped off. Castration is everything. Freud. Or something. I'm already dead inside from everything else I've read all semester, so it's fine. I don't have to enjoy anything anymore.
Bhabha has my respects as an academic (I guess?), but the unreadability of this book—and the over-done, pretentious complication of literally everything—is almost funny.
Here's some gif-memes from The Office to lighten the depressing mood since it's finals week and I'm almost done with my first semester of grad school. RIP my last two brain cells.
reading this book:
me every time I read a word of critical theory:
Critical theorists whenever they write something:
The nightmare of critical theorists:
When I get assigned chapters of Lacan, Foucault, or Derrida:
Bhabha has my respects as an academic (I guess?), but the unreadability of this book—and the over-done, pretentious complication of literally everything—is almost funny.
Here's some gif-memes from The Office to lighten the depressing mood since it's finals week and I'm almost done with my first semester of grad school. RIP my last two brain cells.
reading this book:
me every time I read a word of critical theory:
Critical theorists whenever they write something:
The nightmare of critical theorists:
When I get assigned chapters of Lacan, Foucault, or Derrida:
katrinadalythompson's review against another edition
4.0
Only gave this 3 stars in grad school, but bumping it up to 4 stars today. It's a challenging read, but his conception of hybridity and third space are very useful.
catherineofalx's review against another edition
3.0
Unforgivably, unnecessarily obtuse. Infuriatingly impenetrable. Rubbish.