Rereading Post- 9/11 Paradigm Shift in Mohsin Hamid's Diasporic Novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist

مطالعات زبان و ترجمه

Article 1, Volume 52, Issue 4, February 2020, Pages 1-28   

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.22067/lts.v52i4.83969

Authors

Farah Ghaderi¹; Ensiyeh Darzinejad²; Karim Sadeghi^{* 1}

¹Department of English, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

²Independent Researcher, Urmia, Iran

Abstract

Due to its diasporic features and being 'in-between' competing Pakistani-American discourses, Mohsin Hamid (1971--)'s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) has the potential to deconstruct the dominant perceptions about influential incidents like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The major concept which is dislodged in this novel is the paradigm shift which occurs in the West and especially the United States after the event. The United States claims that its strategic alteration toward the Muslim immigrants in the post 9/11 era is a reaction against the fundamentalism and terrorism engendered by them; whereas, Hamid's critical reading against the grain, regards the post 9/11 alterations in the reception of Muslim migrants as anterior to the global fundamentalism and terrorism, rather than posterior to them. Put differently, the marginalized and oft-neglected narrative of a Muslim migrant author of the post 9/11 tumults, recognizes the United States as the origin of the global fundamentalism and terrorism and not the victim of them as widely claimed. The redefinition of this change in American policies in post 9/11 is depicted through the perspective of Changez, the novel's protagonist. He is a Muslim Pakistani young man, a Princeton graduate, and employed by a prosperous economic company. Hamid's redefinition of the post 9/11 paradigm shift is investigated along three axes and three important binary oppositions are deconstructed in his novel; the cosmopolitan/nationalist United States, the religious/ economic fundamentalism, and the military/economic terrorism.

Keywords

Mohsin Hamid; The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Military Terrorism; Economic Terrorism; The United States; Economic Fundamentalism; Religious Fundamentalism

References

درزی‌نژاد، ا.، و برادران جمیلی، ل. (1396). وطن به‌مثابة فضایی ترامکانی در گفتمان دیاسپورایی مهجا کهف. نقد زبان و ادبیات خارجی، 14(۱۸)، 169-185.

دهشیار، ح. (1388). لیبرالیسم: جوهرة جهانی‌شدن. اطلاعات سیاسی اقتصادی، 268، 48-55.

راد، آ.، فارسیان، م.، و بامشکی، س. (1397). بررسی تطبیقی تصویر جنگ جهانی در رمانهای خون دیگران و سووشون. مطالعات زبان و ترجمه، ۵۱(۳)، ۱-۳۱.

صادقی، ر. (1398). ماهیت پارادایم و ابعاد ک‌ گرایانة آن. متافیزیک، 10(27)، 129-156.

عظیمی، ص.، و احمدزاده، ش. (1397). به‌سوی تعریفی تازه از بدن: تحلیل مسئلة بدن از فلسفه و جامعه‌شناسی تا ادبیات. مطالعات زبان و ترجمه، ۵۱(۴)، ۸۵-۱۱۸.

 

Aumeerally, N. L. (2017). Rethinking recognition in Muslim diasporic writing: From an 'ethics of responsibility' in The Reluctant Fundamentalist to an 'ethics of dispersion' in The Silent Minaret. Culture, Media & Film, 4, 1-14.

Balfour, L. A. (2016). Risky cosmopolitanism: Intimacy and autoimmunity in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 58(3), 214-225.

Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London, England: Routledge.

Business Dictionary. Retrieved from http:// www. businessdictionary. com/ definition/ paradigm-shift.html

Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved from https:// dictionary. cambridge. org/ dictionary/ english/ paradigm-shift

Ehteshami, A. (2007). 9/11 as a cause of paradigm shift? Working Paper. Durham University, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham.

Eriksen, T. H. (2007). Globalization: The key concepts. Oxford, England: Berg.

Giddens, A. (2002). Runaway world: How globalisation is reshaping our lives. London, England: Profile Books.

Gilroy, P (1993). The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. London, England: Verso.

Gray, R. (2011). After the fall: American literature since 9/11. Malden: John Wiley and Sons.

Haider, N. (2012). Globalization, US imperialism and fundamentalism: A study of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. South Asian Review, 33(2), 203-238.

Hamid, M. (2012). The reluctant fundamentalist. Orlando: Harcourt.

Hartnell, A. (2010). Moving through America: Race, place and resistance in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 46(3-4), 336-348.

Hopper, P. (2006). Living with globalization. Oxford, England: Berg.

Lecouras, P. (2010). 9/11, Critical theory, and globalization. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 12(1), 78-90.

Merriam Webster Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paradigm_shift

Moallem, M. (2002). Whose paradigm? Meridians, 2(2), 298-301.

Morey, P. (2018). Literature now: Islamophobia and the novel. New York, NY: Colombia University Press.

Pei-Chen, L. (2013). Post-9/11 South Asian diasporic fiction: Uncanny terror. London, England: Palgrave McMillan.

Shirazi, Q. (2018). Ambivalent identities and liminal spaces: reconfiguration of national and diasporic identity in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. South Asian Diaspora, 10(1), 15-29.

Singh, H. (2012). Deconstructing terror: Interview with Mohsin Hamid on The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 42(2), 149-156.

White, M. (2019). Framing travel and terrorism: Allegory in The reluctant Fundamentalist. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 54 (3), 444-459.

Young, R. (2012). Cultural translation as hybridization. Trans-Humanities, 5(1), 155- 75.