In raising this issue, Spivak was not advocating the suicide for sacrifice. Instead, she underlined the fact that neither the British nor the Indian asked the
widows’ perspective. The story was told, either in the voice of white males or Indian males. The female’s perspective was never been put into consideration. In her
opinion, these unheard voices are the true subaltern. According to Spivak, the link to the struggle of the subaltern is simply the
desire. In arguing this, she refers to the study of psychoanalysis. She elaborated the chaining relation between desire, object, fixed subject, and repression. According to
Spivak, it is either the subject that lacks desire or the desire that lacks a fixed subject. Whereas, there will be no fixed subject except by repression 68. Therefore,
repression creates the machine to produce desire, and it is the burning fuel for transgression of the subaltern. This is in accordance to Ammu’s desire that leads her
to transgress the boundaries of the Love Law.
E. Theory of Mimicry
The theory of mimicry is added in this chapter as a minor theory that helps explaining the characterization of Pappachi. Homi Bhaba in Location of Culture
captured the phenomenon in which native Indians tend to have English taste and therefore prefers Englishness in the identity markers they chose. The identity markers
among others are language, attitude, and clothing. According to Bhaba, these people are included in “…a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we
govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect 87.”
Born as an Indian, Bhaba witnessed and interacted with colonized Indians who adapt the Englishness in order to achieve higher level of identity. According to
Bhaba, this phenomenon occurs not as an attempt to minimize difference and gain peace with the colonizers, instead, it is a form of resemblance that acts as a
camouflage, so that the colonized that mimics the colonizer feels to be at the same class as the colonizer. Bhaba elaborates mimicry’s position as a camouflage in the
following quotation: In mimicry, the representation of identity and meaning is rearticulated
along the axis of metonymy. As Lacan reminds us, mimicry is like camouflage, not a harmonization of repression of difference, but a
form of resemblance, that differs from or defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically. Its threat, I would add, comes
from the prodigious and strategic production of conflictual, fantastic, discriminatory ‘identity effects’ in the play of a power that is elusive
because it hides no essence, no ‘itself’ 90
.
Bhaba also mentioned that English schools have a big role in forming generations of mimics. He noted that English schools in India educate natives to
produce translators that can work in colonizers’ offices 78. Encouraging mimicry therefore is a method in educating colonized people into a workforce for the
colonizers.
CHAPTER III AMMU’S IDENTITY CATEGORIES AND THE LOVE LAW
