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‘Post’-Imperial Mimicry and Apropriation of Indian ‘Rasa’: Stoppard’s In the Native State and Indian Ink

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2002, 15(3), pp.3-102
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Seong Je Kim 1

1한양대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Tom Stoppard’s stage play Indian Ink is an adaptation of his own radio drama In the Native State. The two dramas foreground the conversation between a British female poet and an Indian male painter, backgrounding colonial India in the 1930s, when Indian civil disobedience and independence movement against British Empire arose and developed seriously. Stoppard appropriates post-colonial studies and deals with various colonial/imperial issues. However, Stoppard’s ‘post’-imperial representation mimics the discursive formation of the imperial hegemony, compromising the mystification of history and the ‘ethics of empire.’ Imperial discourse appropriated mimicries for strategic camouflage, creating the Other ‘as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite.’ Stoppard articulates the post-imperial mimicries which could be appreciated by the post-imperial audience. His adaptation, mimicry and gaze project the ‘ethics of empire’ Without criticizing the ‘ethics of empire,’ his ironic compromise resides in the universal signification of mythical ‘rasa’ of human relationship, getting rid of historical responsibility of imperial domination. Indian Ink juxtaposes the past of colonial India, and the present of post-imperial London and post-colonial India. This theatricality of juxtaposition lets the audience taste the mixed juice of postcoloniality, even though it should be still discursively and practically reflected.

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