Traces of Mimicry and Hybridity in Defoe's Novel, Robinson Crusoe

This research aims to read the first novel in the history of English literature, Robinson Crusoe (1719) from a recent vogue of criticism, postcolonialism, with concentration on two main notions of postcolonial theory, put forth by Homi Bhabha: mimicry and hybridity to reveal the ambivalence inherent in the text and cast doubt upon the seemingly unquestionable power of Crusoe.This study intends to put forth the idea of 'hybridity' by showing that although Crusoe does his best, not to contaminate his culture with the culture of the natives whom he regards inferior and barbaric, in practice, he cannot prevent mingling of these two seemingly opposing cultures. At the same time, this study intends to elaborate on the notion of 'mimicry'. Friday becomes a copy of Crusoe, but this copy is not an exact one; it is blurred and distorted. This mirror-image―Friday―is a distorted one, a neither-nor: one that is ambivalent.Mimicry by making a blurred copy of Crusoe and hybridity by making a mixture of Crusoe and Friday's cultures, make the colonial discourse deprived of its originality and disclose the contradictions inherent in it in order to highlight the colonizer’s ambivalence in respect to his position toward the colonized Other.

کلیدواژه ها:

postcolonialism ، otherness ، ambivalence ، mimicry ، hybridity