霍米·巴巴的"模擬"概念蘊含雙重性:一方面,"模擬"是殖民者為了鞏固其殖民統治而對殖民地人民進行規訓的策略;另一方面,在服從殖民者的規訓的同時,被殖民者可能會挪用"模擬"策略對殖民者的權威進行挑戰。本文根據巴巴的"模擬"與福柯的"規訓"等概念,解讀艾麗絲·沃克的短篇小說《一位非洲修女的日記》中的"模擬"所蘊含的雙重機制。本文認為,西方殖民者的"模擬"策略顯示其殖民非洲的功能性,但非洲修女也通過挪用"模擬"策略反抗西方殖民者的道德秩序和權威話語,并使之成為黑人群體在困境中保存自我的一種方式。

Homi Bhabha’s concept of "mimicry" includes two sides: on the one hand, it is the strategy through which the colonists discipline the colonized people to strengthen their dominance; on the other hand, the colonized people might appropriate "mimicry" to challenge the colonists’ authority while in subjection to the colonizers’ discipline. The paper analyzes the double mechanisms of "mimicry" in Alice Walker’s "The Diary of an African Nun" based on Bhabha’s "mimicry" and Foucault’s "discipline," arguing that the western colonists’ strategy of "mimicry" demonstrates its function in colonizing Africa. However, the African nun’s appropriation of the mimic strategy not only resists the western colonists’ moral order and religious discourse, but also makes it become one means of the black community’s self preservation in predicament.