I would like to thank Stephan Feuchtwang for his sustain ing advice, Gayatri Spivak for s ugg~sting that 1 should further develop my concept of coJorual mimicry; Parveen Adams for her impeccable critique of the text; and Jacqueline Bhabha, whose political engagement with the discriminatory nature of British immigration and nationaliry law has convinced me of the modesty of the theoretical enterprise. [Bhabhal 'Bhabha's title duplicatos the title ora [983 bOok by com paralist Franco Morelli , but given that the "English book" is the Bible, it seems rather to point to a biblical phrase. "signs aDd wonders" (probably a hendiadys for "wondrous signs") (hal appears about thirty limes throughout the Old and New Testaments. Hendiadys (Greek for "one by means of two") is a figure of speech in which two words. joined by "and," are actually joined in a more intimate way (one of the nouns, usu ally the second, is secretly bei.ng used as an adjective). As when Edmund says 10 Edgar in King Lear: "I have told you what 1 have seen and beard but faintly, nothing like the image There is a scene in the cultural writings of English colonialism which repeats so insistently after the early nineteenth century -and, through that rep etition. so triumphantly inaugurates a literature of empire -that I am bound to repeat it once more. It is the scenario, played out in the wild and word less wastes of colonial. India, Africa, tbe Caribbe an, of the sudden, fortuitous discovery of the English book. It is, like all myths of origin, mem orable for its balance between epiphany and enunciation. The discovery of the book is, at once, a moment of originality and authority, as well as a process of displacement that, paradoxi cally, makes the presence of the book wondrous to the extent to which it is repeated, translated, misread, displaced. It is with the emblem of the English book -"signs taken for wonders"as and horror of it. " (whcre "image and horror"= "horrible imagc"). Or Lady Macbeth: ''To be the samc in thine own act and val our/As thou arl in desirc." (act and valor= valorous acl.)
BHABHAISIGNS TAKEN FOR WONDERS
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