The paper deploys the theoretical tools of cultural identity, colonial discourse, and ambivalence to scrutinize the existential impasse surfaced through the inner discordance of Ralph Singh in V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. The protagonist configures cultural identity as an essence, whose discovery is only a matter of unearthing what colonial experience has buried, and overlaid with its subjectifying and appropriating discourse. The system of interpellation, a reform of manners ─ Master’s discourse, in its visualization of power, normalises the fixation of colonial subjects as metonymies of presence, evoking the desire for a reformed, recognizable other through colonial mimicry. Shedding the persona of other constructed under regularization and conformity of imperialist discourse, Ralph takes up a veneer of Mimic Man. The excess or slippage produced by the ambivalent mimicry of the Masters ─ at the cost of relinquishing his cultural roots ─ dismantles his urge for neutralization, propelling him into an in-betweenness. His botched endeavour of negotiating between the disparate socio-cultural milieus and reformation of identity ensnares him in the labyrinthine structure of liminality. Capitulating to his repudiation of imaginary Indian ancestry, Caribbean indigenous culture, and assimilation into the three-dimensional solid city of London, he terminates all emotional baggage with landscapes and communities only to find seclusion in an isolated suburban hotel.                                       

KEYWORDS: Cultural Identity, Colonial Discourse, Ambivalence