by Kristína Szegediová

The main theme of R. F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution is a critique of British colonialism. The novel takes place in the 19^ᵗʰ century where British progress is owed to silver-working, a type of magic that relies on match-pairs between languages engraved on silver bars. Consequently, Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation, Babel, functions as the cornerstone of the British Empire. This essay analyses the mimicry depicted in the novel through Babel and the protagonist Robin Swift. Babel wants its students, Robin included, to have a British upbringing, but also remain foreign enough to retain their ingrained mastery over their native languages. As he grows up in Britain and starts attending Babel, Robin longs to belong and turns to mimicry in hopes of achieving this. However, this reveals the flaws of Babel’s system and culminates in its destruction, mirroring how colonies tend to be destroyed due to the violence of British intervention.

One factor that shapes Babel’s ending is Robin’s ambivalent identity. In Homi Bhabha’s essay “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” he highlights the result of mimicry as something that is “almost the same, but not quite.”¹ Robin’s identity reflects this. He is the mixed-race son of an unnamed Chinese woman, who dies at the beginning of Babel, and Richard Lovell, a professor at Babel and the man who takes Robin to Britain with the sole purpose of raising him to translate for the Empire. Robin is almost British, but not quite, and this affects Lovell’s treatment of him. Firstly, despite his relation to Lovell, he never views Robin as his son; his only worth in Lovell’s eyes is Robin’s mastery over his native language. Furthermore, he must discard his Chinese name because “[n]o Englishman can pronounce that”² and choose a proper British one. In mimicking the renaming of colonised lands, this denies Robin an identity separate from the one ascribed to him by the coloniser, who is represented by Lovell. Additionally, this introduces the idea that being English is the only way Robin can belong. However, he is not given Lovell’s surname because it would imply that Robin is something he is not and never will be.³ This confirms Bhabha’s argument that “to be Anglicized, is emphatically not to be English.”⁴ As a result of this ambivalence, Robin desires to find a place he belongs to and tries to assume a British identity during his studies at Babel.

Even though Babel accepts foreigners like Robin as students, the origin of the institute stems from exploitation and mimicry. Therefore, being completely accepted by it is not only impossible, but the notion is also detrimental to Robin’s existence. According to Jerome Playfair, Robin’s professor who eventually teaches him and his cohort silver-working, Babel’s foundations tie back to Psammetichus’s story which offers an altruistic illusion of cooperation while omitting the slavery practiced by him: “‘… He wanted to prevent wars based on misunderstandings. So he sent young Egyptian boys to live with the Ionians and learn Greek so that when they grew up, they could serve as interpreters between the two peoples.’”⁵ Babel, like Psammetichus, presents a façade that exalts its benevolence and conceals its wrongdoings. Additionally, it echoes Lord Macaulay’s opinion in his 1835 Minute denouncing Indian, and therefore foreign, education, calling for “interpreters” that can act as “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”⁶ These interpreters are necessary for Babel’s continued existence, but in relying on the exploitation of foreign, colonised students, it reveals the inherent weakness of the system. Babel’s colonialism will not work without the compliance of its colonised subjects. However, it does not want its students to realise that, so instead it manipulates those like Robin into believing they are the ones who need Babel. For this reason, Robin is reluctant to completely oppose Babel in the course of the novel because he refuses to accept the hopelessness of his situation. He is content being what Bhabha calls a “mimic man.”⁷ In addition to being the only way he knows how to function, this identity of Bhabha’s mimic man or Macaulay’s interpreter is also expected of him by the institute that seemingly accepts him. Furthermore, the omission of the slave status of Psammetichus’s boys demonstrates that the institute views its foreign students as inferior human beings whose only role is to be used for Babel’s benefit. This undermines its deceptive benevolence and lays the framework for its eventual destruction.

As a result of Babel’s status as a colonial authority, the Hermes Society, or simply Hermes, is born. Robin encounters Hermes shortly after becoming a student. Hermes is a secret society that steals Babel’s silver and, through this direct opposition of Babel, inadvertently imitates it. Hermes manifests as the consequence of mimicry because it serves as a parody of the colonial institute it mimics and therefore threatens the established authority.⁸ For example, the name itself is a mockery of Babel’s authority. The silver used in silver-working is “refined with mercury,”⁹ which evokes the Roman god Mercury and subsequently his Greek counterpart Hermes. On the other hand, it also imitates Babel to the point where their resemblance becomes detrimental to Hermes’s cause. Despite condemning Babel’s colonial practices, it treats Robin similarly. He is given little to no explanation about why he is doing what Hermes tells him to do, and he must follow orders regardless of the danger. Moreover, Hermes expects absolute loyalty from its members. When Robin grows frustrated by how Hermes operates, he is expected to either fall in line or leave; he leaves.¹⁰ This confirms Graham Huggan’s claim that “mimicry may paradoxically destabilize even as it reinforces.”¹¹ Hermes mocks Babel and enlightens Robin on the injustices it perpetuates, thus destabilising its authority. Conversely, Hermes reinforces that authority because in driving Robin away, Babel is the only place he feels that he can belong. At the same time as Hermes strengthens Robin’s desire to belong, it also emboldens Robin’s dissatisfaction with his treatment.

Ultimately, however, Robin realises that the colonised subject will never truly belong in a society where it is encouraged to conform to that society’s standards. The colonial authority, Babel, will never allow it because the colonised subject, Robin, exists solely to be used for the benefit of the British Empire.¹² The only way to liberate himself is to destroy it. This is the main factor that facilitates his return to Hermes and the subsequent destruction of Babel. Although Ashcroft et al. state that mimicry does not function as “an overt resistance,”¹³ in Babel Robin mimics the British to the point where mimicry becomes a weapon used against its authority. This is exemplified by Griffin Lovell’s endorsement of violent resistance. Griffin is Robin’s older half-brother whose upbringing mirrors his own; he left Babel and joined Hermes long before their first meeting and is the one who introduces Robin to Hermes. Near the end of the novel, he tells Robin that “[v]iolence is the only language they understand.”¹⁴ Regardless of Robin’s attempts to conform to Babel’s standards, it will never listen to him unless he uses the language most familiar to it. This is further exemplified by the deaths of Griffin, Ramiz, and several Hermes members at the hands of those acting to preserve the established status quo that upholds colonialism. Robin fully embraces this violent aspect of the coloniser’s identity and holds Babel itself hostage: “They would obey because he threatened violence.”¹⁵ However, in doing so, his mimicry of the British escalates and he merges with that which he mimics and intends to destroy. Therefore, he must also be destroyed, because even if he is now completely against Babel, he too has started using violence to coerce those considered less powerful than him. Only through permanently discarding this identity will he truly be free, which he interprets as needing to die. He will never belong in Babel, so he believes he must remove both himself and it from existence.

In Babel, mimicry functions as a weapon that dismantles the hierarchy of power between the coloniser and the colonised. Through Robin’s character, this reveals that mimicry is problematic for both coloniser and colonised. For the coloniser, it subverts the established authority and reveals the weaknesses of the colonial system. It shows that mimicry will never allow the colonised to be accepted by the coloniser despite what is promised, thus leading to resistance. However, even though Kuang’s novel suggests that only through violence will this resistance be realised, the effectiveness of mimicry lies not in its overt force, but in the way it subtly unveils the flaws of the system through Robin’s ambivalent identity, Babel’s inherent prejudice, and Hermes’s resistance and mockery.

Bibliography:

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2000.

Bhabha, Homi K. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” October 28 (1984): 125–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/778467.

Huggan, Graham. “A Tale of Two Parrots: Walcott, Rhys, and the Uses of Colonial Mimicry.” Contemporary Literature 35, no. 4 (1994): 643–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/1208702.

Kuang, R. F. Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. London: HarperVoyager, 2023.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington. “Minute, Dated the 2nd February 1835.” Islamic Studies 54, no. 3/4 (2015): 237–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/26393680.

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Notes:

1. Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” October 28 (1984), 126. ↩︎
2. R. F. Kuang, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution (London: HarperVoyager, 2023), 13. ↩︎
3. Kuang, Babel, 14. ↩︎
4. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” 128. ↩︎
5. Kuang, Babel, 82–83. ↩︎
6. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute, Dated the 2nd February 1835,” Islamic Studies 54, no. 3/4 (2015): 247. ↩︎
7. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” 128. ↩︎
8. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2000), 139. ↩︎
9. Kuang, Babel, 83. ↩︎
10. Kuang, Babel, 220. ↩︎
11. Graham Huggan, “A Tale of Two Parrots: Walcott, Rhys, and the Uses of Colonial Mimicry,” Contemporary Literature 35, no. 4 (1994): 644. ↩︎
12. Kuang, Babel, 433. ↩︎
13. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies, 141. ↩︎
14. Kuang, Babel, 399. ↩︎
15. Kuang, Babel, 455. ↩︎