In our post-romantic era, we still assign disproportionate value to originals – this, we feel, makes us discriminating critics and connoisseurs. The legacy of romanticism also encourages us to think of resistance – especially cultural resistance – as an original gesture that upends established hierarchies. My larger aim in this project has been to question the privileging of originality by suggesting how closely it is tied to exclusion and political discrimination. I have argued instead for a revaluation of imitation as a cultural and political practice that challenges established national narratives. The early modern confrontations that I have traced throughout suggest that the most interesting mode of resistance to orthodox ideologies of exclusion may often be imitation with a difference. In the face of repressive attempts at homogenization, a calculated deployment of similarity often proves more effective, and more strategically feasible, than the defense of difference.

Mimesis poses a particular challenge to early modern national and imperial identities predicated on exceptionalism and ethnoreligious homogeneity. In the first place, similarity bridges the divide between self and Other. Where ideologies of difference seek to solidify distinctions, mimesis recalls underlying likenesses. Moreover, it undermines the original by showing how easily it can be reproduced, despite claims to singular entitlement.