Phrase: Bhabha

“The discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference” (86).

In other words, mimicry, or superficial resemblance, is based on simultaneous and contradictory attitudes, and is an effective form of social control when it produces a difference between actual and theoretical output. Mimicry does not "re-present." Bhabha goes on to state that “mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal” and is “a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizes power” (86).