Mind the Gap. Mimicry and Subjectivation in Racialised Discourses

Migration and integration are highly controversial issues in Europe, not least in German-speaking countries (e.g. Riegel 2016; Spies/Tuider 2022; Siouti et al. 2022b). This contribution focuses on the latter, as this is where both our empirical work and we as researchers are situated. Within discourses on migration, integration and belonging in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, processes of Othering occur, as studies from various disciplines such as sociology, literature, history and education show (Siouti et al. 2022a, 11 f.).

Othering, as a central concept of postcolonial theorising, describes the construction of powerful differences that juxtapose a we with the Other. The decisive factor herein is that both groups are continuously produced, fixed and brought into a relation of power with one another through attributions and essentialisations in different areas of discourse (Riegel 2016, 51 ff.). This goes hand in hand with the creation of binary subject positions (Bosančić 2019; Keller 2011) that either address subjects as part of an imagined we-group or position them as the Other, outside of it. Across a range of disciplines, the markers of difference at work have been identified and explored, such as race and religion (Opratko 2019; Shooman 2014; Trucco 2025), race and gender (Fischer/Dahinden 2017; Lavanchy/Purtschert 2022), race, religion and gender (Dahinden/Manser-Egli 2023; Gasser 2020), race and dis_ability (Akbaba/Buchner 2023; Konz/Schröter 2022,) race and hegemonic language (Bjegač 2020; Pokitsch 2022; Rühlmann 2023) or race, class and gender (Spies/Tuider 2022).

In our contribution, we focus on the intersections of race and religion, as well as of race and hegemonic language, and ask to what extent othered subjects can gain agency within Othering processes. To this end, we use the concept of mimicry, which Homi K. Bhabha (1994) developed in the context of colonial power relations, and translate it to contemporary discourses. A specific feature of these racialised discourses is that a gap always remains between we and the Other. We discuss this gap in current ‘integration debates,’ using two research projects (Pokitsch 2022; Trucco 2025) as a basis to show how othered subjects gain agency in and through mimicry. Firstly, we provide a historical overview of the Other in the context of colonialism (2). We then explain the associated regime of subjectivation, which Bhabha conceptualises as mimicry (3), before transferring the dynamics of colonial power relations to postcolonial discourses (4). Thereby, we carve out continuities and ruptures that come to light in current racialised discourses and point out what we have termed ‘the gap.’ Finally, we illustrate the theoretical argument developed by means of two empirical studies (5): mimicry of a constructed religious Other (5.1) and mimicry of a constructed linguistic Other (5.2). We conclude with a discussion of the entanglement between subjectivation and Othering with regard to agency, and derive questions for subjectivation research that incorporates temporality to a greater extent (6).

European colonialism, which lasted for over 500 years, was not only a form of imperialism, but was also characterised to a large extent by a symbolic division of the world. It was accompanied by processes of difference making, i.e. the construction of Otherness as a complementary counterpart to Europe. ‘The West’ is therefore, as Stuart Hall (2019 [1992]) points out, “a historical, not a geographical, construct” (ibid., 142), which consists of the sum of discursively (re)constructed ideas based on the principle of difference (ibid., 155 ff.). Processes of Othering thus not only served the construction of the Other but were also essential for the construction of ‘the West’ and the consolidation of boundaries between these poles. The discursive construction of Othering has been described in detail by Edward Said (1979) in “Orientalism,” even if he does not use the term itself. In his discourse analysis of the academic discipline of Orientalism, which has existed in Europe since the 18^th century, Said works out how the Orient (and at the same time the Occident, as its counterpart in demarcation) was discursively constructed and thus also epistemically subjugated. Said (1979) understands the Orient as Europe’s “deepest and most recurring image of the Other” (ibid., 1) that “has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West” (ibid., 5). The construction of the Orient hence also serves the construction of a European identity and a hierarchical juxtaposition, in which Europe appears as the “superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures” (ibid., 7).

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her essay “The Rani of Sirmur” (1985), ultimately coins the processes described by Said terminologically as Othering. In her widely cited essay “Can the subaltern speak” (1988), she traces the mechanisms of this powerful practice of subjugation by focusing on marginalised women in the global South. As such, she makes a crucial contribution to anchoring Othering as an integral part of postcolonial theories. Spivak demonstrates in her work that othered subjects are not merely excluded (and silenced) through Othering, but also bound up in the (post-)colonial discourse of power. The continuous positioning at the margins serves as a counterpart to the ‘normal’ and therefore as the (epistemic) perpetuation of an imagined we. An essential characteristic of Othering lies in the dynamics of these construction processes, because the Other is continuously (re)produced and at the same time fixed in the position of difference. What does that mean for othered subjects?

In order to approach Othering from the perspective of subjectivation research, the strategy of splitting described by Hall (2019 [1992]) offers a starting point. Splitting means separating the ‘normal’ from the ‘abnormal,’ the Other from the we.

The world is first divided, symbolically, into good/bad, us/them, attractive/disgusting, civilized/uncivilized, the West/the Rest. All the other, many differences between and within these two halves are collapsed, simplified—i.e., stereotyped. (ibid., 171)

Stereotyping reduces a complex reality to a few characteristics, simplifies and fixes them and therefore essentialises and naturalises (Hall 1997, 258). We could also speak of subject positions: these are “positioning processes and ‘patterns of subjectivation’ which are generated in discourses and which refer to (fields of) addressees” (Keller 2011, 55). They can be understood as identity templates that make “certain self-relations appear desirable” and present others as “negative examples that are stigmatized or denied recognition” (Bosančić 2019, 93). One could therefore argue that Othering creates opposing subject positions through which the Other is perpetually addressed as different. The subject positions of we/the Other are dichotomous and can be understood as model subjects: ‘the West’ is the ideal model subject, the Other is the negative model subject or anti-subject. Among others, Andreas Reckwitz suggested that subject forms emerge through a process of differentiation from an anti-subject (Bosančić 2014, 128 ff.).¹ This anti-subject, Reckwitz states, is often a cultural Other towards which Othering is practised (Reckwitz 2008, 45).

At the same time, the anti-subject of the Other is also split into two dichotomous positions: the threatening or dangerous Other and the friendly or innocent Other (Hall 2019 [1992], 171). We can find this split and the emphasis on supposedly positive attributions of the Other in numerous colonial images, Western literature, and various knowledge productions about ‘the Rest.’ We encounter it in particular in the figure of the ‘noble savage,’ who was staged as a stereotypical central figure of European desire by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rudyard Kipling, Karl May, and many more. We therefore find both the good Other and the bad Other.

But does being addressed as the Other automatically lead to submission or is it also possible to develop agency in this process? In his concept of mimicry, Homi K. Bhabha (1994) has shown that Othering processes can be fragilised or used strategically as resistance. This will be examined in more detail below, before we look at transferring mimicry from colonial to postcolonial discourses.

The construction of binary opposites through Othering is often understood as fixed and stable. In his analyses of colonial discourses, Homi K. Bhabha attempts to move beyond this dichotomy and explores the in-between of these poles. One of the key concepts from his early period of work is of particular interest for our contribution: mimicry. Bhabha understands mimicry as a form of colonial control: the colonised subject is required to adapt to the values and norms of the occupier (Moore-Gilbert 1997, 119) or, in other words, to assimilate. Therefore, the Other is constructed “as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha 1994, 122; emphasis in original). This conceptualisation is compatible with Hall’s understanding of splitting within the construction of the Other (Hall 2019 [1992]). The subaltern subject should distance itself from the dangerous or threatening Other and instead invest in a position that attempts to adapt to ‘the West’ through assimilation. The Other should be like us, but by no means be identical—difference remains crucial in order to maintain power. Subalterns are encouraged to mimic, based on the assumption that they can never be like us. In other words, mimicry can be understood as a desire for a transformed, but still recognizable Other. These constructions must be constantly repeated and produced, which for Bhabha (1994, 94) suggests that they are not as securely established and fixated as they pretend to be.

However, Bhabha views mimicry not only as a form of colonial control. By producing subjects that are not quite the same, mimicry exposes an ambivalence at the centre of colonial discourses that constantly undermines them from within. The reason for this is that mimicry, as Bhabha explains, “in order to be effective, […] must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference” (ibid., 122). The Other is constructed as possessing the potential to be reformed under the coloniser’s leadership, but at the same time as ontologically different and inferior (Moore-Gilbert 1997, 120). The not-quite sameness “acts like a distorting mirror which fractures the identity of the colonizing subject” (Moore-Gilbert 1997, 121). The identity of those in power is thus simultaneously stabilised and undermined (Castro Varela/Dhawan 2015, 225). Consequently, mimicry must also be examined from the perspective of the subject who is mimicking. Because the Other is able to return the coloniser’s gaze (Bhabha 1994, 159 f.), mimicry “is at once resemblance and menace” (ibid., 123). Yet the colonised can refuse to return the gaze, or they can evade the “colonizer’s narrative demand” (ibid., 141). These two strategies can be understood as active and therefore conventional forms of resistance.

However, Bhabha also proposes ‘intransitive’ and passive models of resistance. We discuss these from a basis which outlines central critiques of Bhahba’s concept of mimicry from a (queer) feminist perspective. We believe that these criticisms not only reveal gaps and possible abbreviations in Bhabha’s work, but also possibilities for a deeper understanding. For this contribution, we consider the incorporated emphasis on the ambiguity of agency in connection with mimicry to be particularly productive.

The key points of criticism already formulated by Spivak (1998), among others, can be subsumed under the terms male gaze or male spots (in analogy to the ableist concept of blind spots). Bhabha completely ignores non-male positions in his work. This concerns the preliminary work on which he based his book, above all Luce Irigaray’s (1985) “The Sex Which is Not One,” in which Irigaray carves out the processes and structures of gendered mimicry (“mimétisme,” ibid., 220). She understands adaptation to a stereotypical femininity as a strategic and necessary “masquerade” (ibid., 84), in order to gain agency in a patriarchally structured society. “To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it” (ibid., 76). Irigaray therefore sees “undoing by overdoing” (Castro Varela/Dhawan 2009, 325) as a feminist strategy to challenge and shatter gender norms. This has been viewed with scepticism in feminist studies, as it runs the risk of strengthening rather than weakening binary gender logics. In particular, feminist studies highlight the omission of intersectionality in Irigaray’s work, above all the entanglement of gender and race (Castro Varela/Dhawan 2009, 325). This aspect is also crucial for a critical consideration of Bhabha’s understanding of mimicry, because Bhabha’s colonised subject is always a male subject who obtains agency through mimicry. He overlooks power relations that are structured along intersections of race, class, gender or dis_ability and which lead to completely different starting positions for subjects. As Spivak (1998) emphasises in her extensive critique, the basic prerequisite for mimicry lies in an “access to the so-called culture of the imperialism” (ibid., 191), which in a patriarchally structured system of oppression is also granted along gender lines. Or, as María do Mar Castro Varela and Nikita Dhawan (2009) subsequently summarise: “Mimicry as a strategy of resistance is only possible because the mimicking subject has ‘access’ to the subjects being mimicked” (ibid., 329 f.; emphasis in original).

This leads us to the second central point of criticism of Bhabha’s conception of mimicry, which focuses primarily on his understanding of agency. Bhabha explains his departure from Frantz Fanon’s idea of self-sacrifice or self-denial in the context of colonial assimilation, i.e. that the colonised subject, in the desire to be white, represses everything that is undesirable (Black) from a colonial perspective, which is tantamount to self-dissolution (Bhabha 1994, 126 f., 133 ff.).

[He] will be proportionately whiter—that is, he will come closer to being a real human being in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language. […] Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the other country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle. (Fanon 1986 [1952], 18)

Bhabha (1994), however, does not see an inferiority complex of the colonised subject in mimicry, but rather the resistance potential that is already inherent in the paradoxical logic of mimicry (“almost the same but not quite,” ibid., 127; “[a]lmost the same but not white,” ibid., 128). In becoming “almost the same,” the mimicking subject undergoes a transformation from object to subject and therefore acquires agency. Even if the colonised subject remains inferior, the status as subject enables a reflection of the colonial imagination, thus fragilising the discourses. According to Bhabha, this is how mimicry shifts discursive logics and creates cracks in discourses. It appears as a tool of resistance, even if no intentional actions are linked to it. Bhabha’s understanding suggests that mimicry is a kind of agency without a subject that unintentionally produces effects (Castro Varela/Dhawan 2009, 235)—a perspective that has been heavily criticised. The example of how colonial imagination is reflected reveals the vagueness of Bhabha’s concept of agency: does it involve an active return of the gaze or does this reflection happen automatically, passively, and not intentionally? His works suggest both.

In our opinion, this offers a starting point for a new perspective on agency. While the focus of contemporary empirical studies often lies with conventional forms of resistance—here, the return of the coloniser’s gaze or the refusal to return the gaze; in subjectivation research, the rejection of a subject position or its reinterpretation—, Bhabha’s passive form points to further possibilities. We therefore do not equate mimicry with agency, as Bhabha suggests at times, but we would like to demonstrate that mimicry can lead to more agency in the long term. Thus, agency can also lie in the adaptation to or the adoption of a subject position.

As mentioned, we have approached contemporary racialised discourses through the concept of mimicry. We consider it legitimate to apply mimicry to contemporary discourses, because Bhabha (1994) spoke of an “on-going colonial present” (ibid., 183).² He held the view that “the social, political and economic structures (and ideological forms of Othering) which characterised the colonial history” (Moore-Gilbert 1997, 122) persist to this day. At the same time, according to Étienne Balibar (1998), the practices of address in postcolonial discourses have changed. This leads Balibar to ask whether a “neo-racism” (ibid., 17) has replaced the ideological form of Othering in colonial discourses. In contemporary racialised discourses ‘race’ seems no longer to be the exclusive signifier, instead, “the insurmountability of cultural differences” (ibid., 22), comes into focus as a “dominant theme.” In this “racism without races” (ibid., 22), hierarchised group constructions are no longer argued qua naturae, but via the imagination of a collectivising and collectivised culture, which is to be protected from softening its boundaries, changes or similar. According to Balibar (1998), neo-racism is therefore characterised above all not by the fact that ‘racial affiliation’ is naturalised, but that racist behaviour itself is constructed as necessary, and therefore legitimate and natural.

In fact, what we see is a general displacement of the problematic. We now move from the theory of races or the struggle between the races in human history, whether based on biological or psychological principles, to a theory of ‘race relations’ within society, which naturalizes not racial belonging but racist conduct. (ibid., 22)

Hall (2019 [2000]) speaks of a shift away from biological racism, towards a “cultural differentialism” (ibid., 110), emphasising that these are not “two different systems, but racism’s two registers” (ibid., 111). Within a culturalized register of racism, the signifier “culture” is often used as “linguistic hiding place for ‘race’” (Leiprecht 2001, 103; translation by the authors), especially in German-speaking discourses:

The term Rasse remained ideologically tainted as a marker of the Nazi past, while race as a social category allegedly had no bearing on German life. Racial problems, it seemed, occurred only in other societies (Berg/Schor/Soto 2014, 802).

In current racialised discourses relevant to this article, such as those on migration, integration and belonging, the Otherness of the cultural Other is justified, for example, through a supposed religious or linguistic Otherness and staged as a threat to the imagined we. The racialised positioning practices within neo-racism (Balibar) or cultural differentialism (Hall) are compatible with the concept of racialised power difference put forward by Maureen Maisha Eggers (2009), in which she defines four constitutive practices (ibid., 57): within the framework of racialised marking practice, knowledge about the Other is generated and legitimised, while the difference to one’s own self is emphasised. First, the Other is marked as different. Second, this difference is naturalised, meaning the constructed knowledge about difference is institutionalised (by dominant speakers of the discourse) and made absolute in the form of racialised naturalisation practice. Third, through racialised positioning practice, the Other is positioned hierarchically, within a close relationship to the we. Finally, any subsequent form of racialised exclusion practice can be articulated as “necessary” (ibid., 57 f.). In short, in contemporary racialised discourses, the (cultural) Other is constructed through the inclusion of further orders of difference (e.g. class, religion, gender, hegemonic language) and positioned in close relation to the we in such a way that exclusionary practices are framed as necessary defensive reactions and thereby also legitimised.

If we now look at contemporary migration discourses within Europe, we first find, as in colonial discourses, a production of knowledge about we and the Other, “which [is] stereotypical but antithetically evaluated” (Bhabha 1994, 101). Secondly, we can identify a split within the subject position of the Other: the bad migrant‐the good migrant.³ The bad migrant is characterised as a threat to the existing social order, while the good migrant is presented as willing to ‘integrate’ and is therefore encouraged to engage in mimicry. Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley (2011) describe this as racialised neoliberalism that mobilises “the boundaries between the rational, self-managing citizen-subject and the wilful, dependent, resource-heavy subject” (ibid., 178). We localise Bhabha’s mimicry in contemporary racialised discourses at the level of subject positions addressing the Other. We thus understand the juxtaposition of a normalised, but mimicking subject (the good Other) and a deviant subject (the bad Other) as specific forms of subject position. In return for their integration efforts through mimicry, good migrants are promised recognition and social participation. However, the demands are constantly shifting, so that the required integration effort can never be completely fulfilled (see Hänggli/Trucco 2022, 444 f.). In line with the conceptualisation of mimicry, the Other remains positioned at the margins. Racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim racism, and antisemitism have been on the rise in recent decades and are increasingly framed by various (political) actors as a necessary defence of a we that needs to be protected from the Other (see Fassin 2005, 381)—both the good Other and the bad Other. Therefore, a gap between we and the Other persists. This reveals the hypocrisy of integration discourses. No matter how great the efforts to integrate or even assimilate are, they never lead to a stable position within the we. Rather, the Other remains fixed in a fragile position.

In our contribution, we have shown how Othering works as a powerful positioning practice in contemporary racialised discourses. We have highlighted continuities with regard to colonial power relations. By focussing on mimicry as simultaneously “resemblance and menace” (Bhabha 1994, 123), we were able to illustrate how othered subjects can also gain agency in and through mimicry—without, however, being able to completely bridge the gap between the we and the Other.

Racialised discourses work with a strong coercion to adapt. Furthermore, according to Tina Spies (2013), it becomes clear that whether there are any positioning options available at all is a consideration. And, as Moore (1994, 65) writes, “one’s interrelations with other individuals—intersubjectivity—will also determine what positions one takes up.” For othered subjects, it is not possible to be part of the we, rather, the subject positions are limited to the good and the bad Other. In our empirical examples, the overarching strategy seems to be remaining within the (national, educational) system: adaptation in racialised discourses means survival, sometimes even literally.

Conceptualising subjectivation as mimicry in the context of racialised discourses allows us to break away from reductive dichotomous interpretations: neither adaptation as subjugation and disempowerment, nor agency as open resistance (see Brodersen in this volume). In both empirical examples, we have shown that mimicry offers the potential to shift othered subject positions or at least to render them fragile. Nuances become visible. With Hall (1996), the question of whether subject positions are also strategically taken up comes to the fore. The subject does not remain permanently tied to them.

If a temporal dimension is taken into consideration (see Röhrer in this volume), it becomes clear that mimicry does not—and in some cases cannot—necessarily lead directly to ruptures in discourses. In our empirical findings, imams are potentially given the opportunity to (co-)shape the discourses on Islam in Switzerland through mimicry, i.e. to adopt a speaker position in mass media.⁶ Students, on the other hand, are hardly likely to reach a speaker position, but can still slightly shift the discursive ‘logic’ of (not) being a linguistic other. Their focus on the hegemonic language has an effect on educational discourses as well, because it increases the likelihood that they will be successful in education. With the concept of mimicry, it is therefore possible to recognise even the nuances of discursive shifts, even though racialised discourses clearly appear to be determined by Othering.

In our view, these temporally delayed possible ruptures or shifts in discourses cannot be captured with the usual approaches to subjectivation processes within Empirical Subjectivation Research. In conclusion, we therefore argue in favour of an empirical expansion of subjectivation research, that also takes temporalities into account and incorporates them into the iterative-cyclical research process. This raises the question of whether changes occur at the level of discourse or whether subjects have the opportunity at later points in time to reject or reinterpret certain forms of subject positions and to position themselves differently. In other words: will the gap be closed discursively or will subjects themselves find ways to bridge the gap?