Intellectual Mimicry and Its Discontents: Sartre, Self, and Postcolonial Iraq in Papa Sartre (2009)

Abstract

This paper looks at Ali Bader’s novel Papa Sartre (originally published in Arabic in Beirut, 2001, and  it was published  in English translation in 2009) through the ideas of intellectual colonialism and mimicry, with Homi Bhabha’s Theory of Mimicry from The Location of Culture (1994). This paper investigates how Bader’s protagonist, Abd al-Rahman, an Iraqi philosopher who follows Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, goes with Bhabha’s idea of mimicry. The analysis looks at Abd al-Rahman’s superficial assimilation of Sartre’s philosophy as a critique of intellectual colonialism. This colonialism involves rejecting local culture and blindly accepting foreign ideas. The study argues that papa Sartre, mimicry reveals the confusion and instability caused by trying to copy foreign concepts, this often leads to a fractured identity and cultural alienation. The research shows how Abd al-Rahman’s intellectual crisis highlights the dangers of coping western philosophy without understanding it or adapting it to local culture. The findings confirm that , in Papa Sartre, mimicry increases cultural conflict, leading to the rejection of both the foreign and local intellectual ideas. The paper provides a critical view of mimicry as harming way of engaging with foreign thought.