Mimicry is Culture

"History is built around creation and achievement, and nothing was created in the West Indies (29)."[1]

---V.S. Naipaul

"Nothing will always be created in the West Indies because whatever will come out of here is like nothing one has ever seen before."[2]

---Derek Walcott

Walcott’s article, “The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry?” provides an interesting counter-argument to Naipaul’s accusation that Caribbean writers are “mimic men” (6).[3] He notes that all endeavors in the New World are mirroring the Old World to a certain extent, but that through language (something he sees as escaping the bonds of mimicry) American writers create something that more organically reflects what is American, that includes its connection to the Old World but that somehow is also unique. “History, taught as morality, is religion. History, taught as action, is art. Those are the only uses to which we, mocked as people without history, can put it. Because we have no choice but to view history as fiction or as religion, then our use of it will be idiosyncratic, personal, and therefore, creative (13).”[4]

This creative use of history (as Walcott advocates for in much of his work) is the “nothing” that Caribbean writers should embrace. “We know that we owe Europe either revenge or nothing, and it is better to have nothing than revenge. We owe the past revenge or nothing, and revenge is uncreative."(12).[5]

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[1] Naipaul, V.S. The Middle Passage. London: Andre Deutsch, 1962.

[2] Chamberlain, Edward J. “The Literary Manuscripts of Derek Walcott.” The Halcyon 25 (2000)

[3] Walcott, Derek. “The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. Vol. 16 No. 1 (Feb., 1974): 3-13

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.