Mimetic Desires

Impersonation and Guising Across South Asia
Through an exploration of subjects such as Gandhi impersonators, performance artists, and ritual participants, Mimetic Desires makes an intervention toward understanding the phenomenon of impersonation and guising in South Asia and the world.
Through an exploration of subjects such as Gandhi impersonators, performance artists, and ritual participants, Mimetic Desires makes an intervention toward understanding the phenomenon of impersonation and guising in South Asia and the world. This volume defines impersonation as the temporary assumption of an identity or guise in social and aesthetic performance that is perceived as not one’s own, and guising as sartorial and kinetic play more generally. Interrogating the legitimacy of the purported dialectic between the "real/original" and "fake/dupe," Mimetic Desires refutes the ordering of identity along the lines of a binary or dichotomy that presupposes the myth of an original identity. By peeling back the layers of performative masks to reveal the process of the masquerade itself, we can see that those with the most social capital are often those with the most power and opportunities to impersonate "up" and "down" social hierarchies.

The book’s twelve chapters disclose sites and processes of sociopolitical power facilitated by normative markers of social status relating to race, ethnicity, gender, caste, class, and religion—and how those markers can be manipulated to express and enhance individual and group power. The first comprehensive study to focus on impersonation in South Asia, Mimetic Desires expands on previous scholarship on impersonation and guising in vernacular theatre, dance, public processions, and religious rituals. It is particularly in conversation with the robust scholarship on gender performance in South Asia’s theatrical and dance forms. Mimetic Desires explores some of the contexts and forms of impersonation in South Asia, with its remarkable array of performing arts, to gain insight into the very human and quotidian practices of impersonation and guising.

Contributor: Harshita Mruthinti Kamath (Edited by), Pamela Lothspeich (Edited by), Sailaja Krishnamurti (Contributions by), Christian Lee Novetzke (Contributions by), Kellen Hoxworth (Contributions by), Rosie Thomas (Contributions by), Rich Freeman (Contributions by), Chaya Chandrasekhar (Contributions by), Janice Glowski (Contributions by), Sumathi Ramaswamy (Contributions by), Shehzad Nadeem (Contributions by), Aniruddha Dutta (Contributions by), Pamela Lothspeich (Contributions by), Claire Pamment (Contributions by), Shilpa Parthan (Contributions by), Harshita Mruthinti Kamath (Contributions by)

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