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Reframing Salman Rushdie: the Politics of Representation and New Media in Transnational Public Culture Reframing Salman Rushdie: the Politics of Representation and New Media in Transnational Public Culture by Tawnya Ravy B.A. in English, May 2007, Randolph College (Randolph-Macon Woman’s College) M.A. in English, May 2009, The George Washington University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 19, 2018 Dissertation directed by Kavita Daiya Associate Professor of English Judith Plotz Professor Emerita of English The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Tawnya C. Ravy has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of October 30, 2017. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Reframing Salman Rushdie: the Politics of Representation and New Media in Transnational Public Culture Tawnya C. Ravy Dissertation Research Committee: Kavita Daiya, Associate Professor of English, Dissertation Co-Director Judith Plotz, Professor Emerita of English, Dissertation Co-Director Robert McRuer, Professor of English, Committee Member Evelyn Schreiber, Professor of English, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2018 by Tawnya C. Ravy All Rights Reserved. iii Dedication To my mother, Nancy Novak, and father, Keith Novak, whose support and encouragement made this work possible, and to my loving husband, John Azar, who believed in me always. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my Dissertation Co-Directors, Kavita Daiya and Judith Plotz whose tireless efforts to help me reach my goal of completing this work will resonate with me for the rest of my life. I would also like to thank my committee members Evelyn Schreiber and Robert McRuer for their support and guidance throughout this process. Many thanks to Dane Kennedy and Antonio Lopez for volunteering their time to read my work and participate in my defense and to Daniel Dewispelare for stepping in as my defense chair. I would also like to thank the research team at the Gelman Library for helping me with my social media data collection and the archive specialists at the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library at Emory University for the opportunity to work with the official Salman Rushdie archive and to learn about its creation. I want to thank my incredibly supportive friends and family for helping me make it to the finish line. I could not have made it here without my dissertation writing group and especially the inspiration and support of Leigha McReynolds and Erin Vander Wall. Most of all I want to thank Nancy Novak and Keith Novak, my incredible mother and father, for supporting and pushing and loving me all the way through this incredible journey. And finally I want to thank my husband, John Azar, for being my rock during this labor of love. v Abstract of Dissertation Reframing Salman Rushdie: the Politics of Representation and New Media in Transnational Public Culture This dissertation examines the politics of representation in Salman Rushdie’s published works and social media feeds. As a literary celebrity and public intellectual with significant influence over the way in which western media frames discussions about the East, Rushdie’s modes of representation deserve critical scrutiny. I evaluate four areas of representation in Rushdie’s work and argue that these representations have changed over the course of his career as well as reflect the ways in which he attempts to frame himself to the wider public. Ultimately my dissertation seeks to interrogate Rushdie’s politics of representation, reevaluating the early works that made him famous and analyzing his more recent works for comparison as well as to examine Rushdie’s position as a contemporary author and public intellectual. Chapter 1 discusses the ways in which Rushdie depicts physical and mental abnormality in Midnight’s Children , Shame , The Satanic Verses , and Luka and the Fire of Life. Chapter 2 analyzes his female characters in light of his own claims to be a feminist in Midnight’s Children , Shame , Shalimar the Clown , and Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights. Chapter 3 looks at Rushdie’s changing representations of Islam and Muslims in Midnight’s Children , Shame , The Satanic Verses , Shalimar the Clown , Enchantress of Florence , and Joseph Anton. In the fourth chapter I perform a qualitative analysis and close-reading of Rushdie’s Twitter and Facebook feeds to establish patterns in his social media usage and draw conclusions about the way in which he represents his public persona through these mediums. vi Table of Contents Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………….iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..v Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...……vi Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………...vii List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………...viii Introduction. “Double Perspective”: Examining Rushdie’s Politics of Representation…..1 Chapter 1. Postcolonial Disability in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children , Shame , The Satanic Verses , and Luka and the Fire of Life……………..…14-49 Chapter 2. Demanding Inclusion: Rushdie’s Literary Representations of Women in Midnight’s Children , Shame , Shalimar the Clown , and Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights ……………………………………………………………..50-86 Chapter 3. Is Rushdie an Orientalist?: Representing Islam in Midnight’s Children , Shame , The Satanic Verses , Shalimar the Clown , Enchantress of Florence , and Joseph Anton ………………………………………………...……87-123 Chapter 4. The Man Who Would Be Popular: An Analysis of Rushdie’s Twitter and Facebook Feeds….……………………………………………………124-154 Conclusion. Tracing the Trajectories of Rushdie’s Politics of Representation……155-159 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………......160-182 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Photo of villa in Breach Candy, Bombay. (2010)............................................143 Figure 2. Facebook Post of Christopher Hitchens, Voltaire Bust, and Salman Rushdie (2012)....................................................................................................144 Figure 3. Facebook Post of Los Angeles Review of Books (November 4, 2012).........................................................................................................146 Figure 4. Facebook Post of Satanic Verses Book Page (February 14, 2014)..................147 Figure 5. Facebook Post of Salman Rushdie Day Certificate Issued by City of Tulsa (September 28, 2015).................................................................................150 Figure 6. Facebook Post of a Photo of Milan and Zafar Rushdie (August 9, 2014)..............................................................................................................151 viii Introduction “Double Perspective”: Examining Rushdie’s Politics of Representation “In the immortal words of Popeye the Sailor Man: I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam,” wrote Salman Rushdie in his Twitter profile after claiming his handle and proving to the Twitterverse that it really was him and not some imposter with the same name. For Rushdie, this quote was as much a light-hearted tribute to his extensive love of popular culture references as it was a pointed declaration that he would no longer respond to the stream of tweets inquiring if it really is him or not. No stranger to television appearances, radio segments, and printed articles and interviews by the time he joined the world of social media, Rushdie was looking forward to having two advantages unique to social media platforms compared to more traditional public relations mediums: 1) direct control over the content and 2) unmediated access to a large audience. Even though he might not have realized the true potential of social media for having real-world ramifications when he joined, Rushdie understood enough about celebrity and public perception to embrace the control and access that social media offered. Navigating his identity in the public sphere has been a decades-long occupation, beginning even before he became a published author when he was a young man living in the heart of the old empire facing the racist slurs of his boarding school peers. When Rushdie published Midnight’s Children in 1981, he could neither have predicted the immense success it would have nor its potential to elevate him to the heights of a literary celebrity. In addition to winning the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers in 1993, and the Best of Bookers prize in 2008, it also had widespread ramifications in the western literary market. Prior to the publication of Midnight’s Children , “‘books on India didn’t sell’” in the West (Goonetilleke 20). Not only did Midnight’s Children remain in the top of the bestseller lists for weeks after its publication, but it is also credited with inspiring and enabling the success of several other prominent, contemporary South Asian authors. 1 Its success ultimately provided Rushdie with a platform from which to comment on contemporary events, culture, and politics. In the years that followed, he became what can be called a “public intellectual,” publishing opinion editorials and frequently giving interviews as a subject expert on the topics of South Asian and Middle Eastern politics. During this period of his early success, Rushdie became more purposeful in his self-presentation for a wider public. He published the article “Imaginary Homelands” in which he addresses his own personal position of authority to write about and commentate on South
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