By Ahsan Javed

A Greek take on this is better than a grief to a man of mimicry, which says, ‘a boundary is not from which something ends but a point from which something begins’, at the outmost we should consider the question of culture in the realm of ‘beyond’. The reason of why we are raising this question is the modern man by itself, a mimic man inside the boundaries. We must admit and admire that both the modern man and their roles are the product of colonialism.

Modern man here in the “present” is just defined by the three factors of colonial strategies whether political or cultural. We are still trapped in the “beyond” but not probably leaving behind of the past, meanwhile, not in a new horizon as well. Because it would not have been a colony, since then, if she could have maintained itself, yet the modern man is providing the field for that and nationalism is making it worse.
However, sovereignty of their boundaries might have a conclusive image at a singular level, however, the moving away from the singularities of ‘class’ or ‘gender’ as a primary conceptual and organizational categories, according to Bhabha; a prestigious writer particularly in the context of the culture, has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions. The ignored different cultural articulation had pushed the origin and initial subject format of the culture to the ‘beyond’ where space and time cross to produce complex figures of different identities.
To me cohesion is not for the artists, any modern man who claims the self-governance in the subject of Sovereignty and Nationalism is pointless and meaningless. In both of the cases culture is the glue to the ‘Us vs. Them’ philosophy. Of course the race of gender, generation, institutional location, geo political level and sexual orientation which inhabit the claims of an identity in modern world has a profound role in both of the cases, however, the in between Spaces provided frequently in the parallel race by the colonial culture, which is explained by Bhabha as a “Third Space” in his work “the location of culture”, retain us from the elaborating strategies of self-hood and singularities. Consequently, this has resulted in the new signs of ‘new’ identity and innovative sites of collaborations, and, here you go with the “Modern man; living the shadows of mimicry”, the inter-subjective and collective experience of the ‘Sovereignty’ and ‘Nationness’ is negotiated.
The point of dragging modern man to the table of criticism is that we need to understand the modern philosophy of survival in the colonial era. The product of colonialism in the shape of modern man is the biggest threat to the sovereignty and nationalism. Both have their own cultural perspectives and presumptions, however, modern man can make these, pointless and useless, while, living the shadows of mimicry.
Nationalism seeks to represent itself in the image of enlightenment and fails to do so. It is not what it seems, and above all not what it seems to itself; the cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions.
We may begin by questioning that progressive metaphor of modem social cohesion the many as one; shared by organic theories of the holism of culture and community, and by theorists who treat gender, class or race as social totalities that are expressive of unitary collective experiences.
Modern man is forced to live as sovereign, and yet the sovereign man to do so is it loss by itself, because of the conflict to modernity over traditional ambivalence. The people are neither the beginning nor the end of the national narrative; they represent the cutting edge between the totalizing powers of the 'social' as homogeneous community, and the forces that signify the more specific address to the identities within the population.
Of course it is the same as Jacques Derrida mentioned in his work “My Chance” that ‘For some of us the principle of indeterminism is what makes the conscious freedom of man fathomable’. The third World countries and the discourses of 'minorities' within the geopolitical divisions of East and West, North and South has been intervened in the ideological discourses of modernity. These hegemonic attempts, to give a formulated revision around the issues of, cultural difference and political discrimination is in order to reveal the antagonistic and ambivalent moments within the ‘rationalizations’ of modernity.
So far, modern man is caught by the mimicry of colonialism, where the lines between self and other, identity and culture, are constantly blurred. As we have explored, this mimicry isn’t just the passive reflection but an active process of the colonial strategies that shapes the very fabric of our existence. The boundaries of both sovereignty and nationalism are tested by challenging the self.
In the end, we must admire that modern man is still confronting the colonial era whether the British or whole West but yet they had confronted the agency of the world where cultural articulation is constantly shifting. This requires a complex understanding of the interplay between colonialism, nationalism, and identity. Only then we can begin to the new path, one that acknowledges the ambivalence of modernity and the fragmented nature of ourselves. Hoover, the question remains: can the modern man find a way live beyond the shadows of mimicry, or will be remain forever trapped in of his own making? Meanwhile, the answer, much like the modern himself, remains exclusive, waiting to be uncovered in the complexities of our own cultural narratives.

*You can reach the writer at ahsanjaved.info