Hope in the Key of Chōra: Dissimulation as Survival Tactic

Peace, all. Sharing a bit more from the book about hope from the chapter on Westhelle. Hoping it might be helpful in the moment at hand.  Reading on your phone? Hold it horizontally, and it'll be much easier to read. Lots of love, all! ~Tom

Cats & Mice, The Book of Kells, Foli 34 Recto: Image Source

Dissimulation (or Mimicry as Dissimulation) as Survival Tactic

Etymologically, dissimulation derives meaning from the act of concealing/covering-up and mimicking/copying. “The effect of mimicry is camouflage,” says Lacan. “It is not a question of harmonizing with the background, but against a mottled background, of becoming mottled - exactly like the technique of camouflage practiced in human warfare.” Camouflage protects one against one’s aggressor. 

In the context of oppression/colonization, dissimulation takes place when and where a people or person acts in a way that the oppressor wishes in order to blend in and even not to be seen so that the oppressor does not get irritated or enraged by their difference. One does not “act out” of one’s place and one does not “get out of line” (in the sight of the oppressor) so that one is not “put back in one’s place” or “knocked back into line” by an act of discipline or punishment. Instead, one seeks to “blend in.” 

Dissimulated mimicry, then, involves one’s dress, one’s behavior, one’s speech, one’s gestures, one’s clothing, one’s laugh, one’s religious practice and symbols and so on. One covers one’s difference, as one’s un-covered existence itself may be perceived by the oppressor as a deviation or even perversion, and therefore another opportunity for punishment. Said again, dissimulation is a mask that the oppressed wear when the power dynamic would render them dead or disciplined without a mask. To dissimulate is to “show the master what he wants to see,” to hide one’s Blackness, one’s queerness, one’s ethnic expressions, one’s desire to be free. What the master would love to see is well behaved subjects, happy and ready to serve the empire, the throne, the flag, the country, the queen. 

Dissimulated existence pledges allegiance to the flag even when one secretly detests it and burns it in one’s home. “Authentic expression” or “being oneself ” is not an option if doing so would put one’s life on the line. From a dissimulated point of view, activism may be seen as an act of privilege.

Dissimulation is expressed negatively in a common phrase heard in capitalist spaces. Generally, it is utilized to speak of the physical absence of the boss: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” The implication is that when the representative of the center of power is present, one behaves as one is expected to behave by those who hold power. “Free space,” if it exists, is relegated to the hidden spaces of the eschata, spaces which remain in the absence of the boss and beyond hegemony’s panoptical gaze, spaces where the figurative mice might yet actually play as mice, free from the cat’s tyrannical prowling.

~Thomas R. Gaulke, An Unpromising Hope: Finding Hope Outside of Promise for an Agnostic Church and for Those of Us Who Find It Hard to Believe (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021).