Orienting Muslims: Mapping Global Spheres of Affiliation and Affinity in Contemporary South Asian Fiction
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ORIENTING MUSLIMS: MAPPING GLOBAL SPHERES OF AFFILIATION AND AFFINITY IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIAN FICTION M. A. CLEMENTS Ph.D. 2013 ORIENTING MUSLIMS: MAPPING GLOBAL SPHERES OF AFFILIATION AND AFFINITY IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIAN FICTION MADELINE AMELIA CLEMENTS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of East London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2013 i Abstract This thesis asks how four South Asian Muslim novelists have responded to the challenge of writing about Islamic faith ties in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre and the ensuing “war on terror”. This is a period when Muslim writers and commentators have come under increasing pressure to “explain” Islamic affiliations and affinities, and – as Pnina Werbner (2002: 1) has put it – to ‘disclose where ... the centres of their subjective universe lie’. Focussing on the international novels of Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, Salman Rushdie, and Kamila Shamsie, this thesis explores the hypothesis that they can be read as part of a post-9/11 attempt to revise modern “knowledge” of the Islamic world, using globally-disseminated literature to reframe Muslims’ potential to connect with others, whether Muslims who subscribe to other versions of Islam, or non-Muslims. It considers how the “world literature” these authors create and shape maps spheres of Islamic affiliation and affinity, questioning where their subjects turn in seeking a sense of connection or identification, and why. It provides a detailed examination of the inter-cultural and intra-cultural affiliations and affinities the characters pursue in these texts, asking what aesthetic, historical, political and spiritual identifications or commitments could influence such connective attempts. It also analyses popular discourses and critical discussions surrounding the novels, offering a critical examination of the explanations offered by their authors in their non- fiction writing and commentary for privileging, problematising or prohibiting one (Islamic) affiliation or affinity instead of another, and scrutinising how the writers are appropriated as authentic and hence authoritative spokespeople by dominant political and cultural forces. Finally, it explores how, as authors of ii Indian and Pakistani origin, Aslam, Hamid, Rushdie and Shamsie negotiate their identities and the tensions of being seen to act as Muslim spokespeople in (conscious) relation to the complex international and geopolitical context in which they write. iii Contents Chapter 1. Writing, Islam and Faith in Anglophone South Asian Fiction after 9/11 1 Introduction 1 After 9/11: Muslims in the Frame 4 Global Orientations in South Asian Muslim Fiction 13 Points of Reference 27 Emerging Visions 36 Authors, Texts and Terminology 40 Globally-Oriented Texts as Discrete Textual Entities 54 Chapter 2. Enchanted Realms, Sceptical Perspectives – Salman Rushdie’s Post-9/11 Fiction 62 Introduction 62 Rushdie Today: Writer and Pundit 63 The Post-9/11 Fictions: 69 Shalimar the Clown 69 The Enchantress of Florence 89 Areas Left Unmapped 101 Chapter 3. ‘A Devilishly Difficult Ball to Play’ – Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist 103 Introduction 103 Hamid’s Ambiguous Personal Affiliations 104 Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Contemporary Readings 114 Changez as Psychological Case Study 129 Dead Ends? Hamid’s Recent Short Fiction 134 Conclusion 139 Chapter 4. Re-culturing Islam in Nadeem Aslam’s Mausoleum Fiction – Maps for Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil 141 Introduction 141 ‘All the Colours?’ Aslam’s Islamic Spectrum and Commitment to Realism 145 Aslam’s Post-9/11 Fiction: 156 Maps: Prescribed Affiliations, Elective Affinities and the Solace of “Sufism” 156 The Wasted Vigil: Re-culturing Islam – Salvaging Art 169 Conclusions: Archived Hopes 191 Chapter 5. Stranger Intimacies: Global Un-knowing and the Suspension of Judgement in Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography, Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows 194 Prologue: ‘Do Not Feel Safe. The Poet Remembers’ 194 Introduction 196 The Author, Kamila Shamsie 196 iv Knowing: Shamsie’s Take on the Exotic and its Expectations 200 Questioning: Shamsie’s Complex Affiliations 211 Un-knowing: Shamsie’s Global, Decentring Perspectives 223 Conclusion: Rendering Forgiveness Redundant 239 Chapter 6. Conclusion: Orientations toward a Coherent Narrative? 241 Bibliography 248 List of Illustrations 268 Acknowledgements 269 Dedication 271 v Chapter 1. Writing, Islam and Faith in Anglophone South Asian Fiction after 9/11 Introduction In the introduction to the revised edition of Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, first published in 1981, Edward Said (1997: xii) expressed increased concern that ‘malicious generalisations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West’. He went on to describe his disturbance on being asked, Untitled Sajid Khan (2012) presumably because of Middle Eastern [Figure 1] – and mistaken Muslim – identity, to provide the media with an insider’s insight into the bomb attack in Oklahoma City in April 1995: I must have received twenty-five phonecalls ... The entirely facetious connection between Arabs, Muslims, and terrorism was never more forcefully made evident to me; the sense of guilty involvement which, despite myself, I was made to feel struck me (xiv).1 1 The perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombings was in fact Timothy McVeigh, an American Gulf War veteran and agnostic, whose protest was anti- government. 1 These late twentieth-century observations point to a totalising trend in Anglo- American discussions of Islam, and highlight its potentially unsettling impact on those actual and assumed Muslim writers who might be called upon to comment in the western public sphere. They provide a means of entry into this study, which asks how four South Asian Muslim authors have responded to the challenge of writing about Islamic faith ties in the aftermath of the attacks on New York of 11 September 2001, which replaced the Oklahoma City bombings as the most destructive on US soil to date. This thesis explores the hypothesis that the international novels of Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, Salman Rushdie and Kamila Shamsie can be read as part of a post-9/11 attempt to revise modern “knowledge” of the Islamic world, using globally-disseminated literature to reframe Muslims’ potential to connect with others, whether Muslims who subscribe to other versions of Islam, or non- Muslims. It considers how the “world literature” they create and shape maps spheres of Islamic affiliation and affinity, questioning where their subjects turn in seeking a sense of connection or identification, and why. It provides a detailed examination of the inter-cultural and intra-cultural affiliations and affinities the characters pursue in these texts, asking what aesthetic, historical, political and spiritual identifications or commitments could influence such connective attempts. It also analyses popular discourses and critical discussions surrounding these texts, offering a critical examination of the explanations offered by the authors in their non-fiction writing and commentary for privileging, problematising or prohibiting one (Islamic) affiliation or affinity instead of another, and scrutinising how the writers are appropriated as authentic and hence authoritative spokespeople by dominant political and cultural forces. Finally, it explores how, as authors of Indian and Pakistani origin, Aslam, 2 Hamid, Rushdie and Shamsie negotiate their identities and the tensions of being seen to act as Muslim spokespeople in (conscious) relation to the complex international and geopolitical context in which they write. For the purposes of this study, I use ‘affiliation’ to describe more active and selective of the modes of Islamic connection which may be traced in the novels. According to the OED Online (2013a, ‘affiliate, v.’) the would-be ‘affiliate’, an adoptive son, seeks to attach himself to an institution, organisation, political group, or society, expressing in his choice a desire to belong. In Edward Said’s (1983: 18-19) conception, this may constitute what he describes as a ‘turn’ from a lost or outmoded natural familial ‘filiation’ to a critically created and ‘compensatory’ cultural and societal system of ‘affiliation’. Further, it may demonstrate an individual’s desire to become an ‘agent’ or ‘bearer’ of a particular notion of ‘civilisation’ or ‘culture’ (Gilroy 2004: 65). The term ‘affinity’, in contrast, variously defined in the OED (2013b, ‘affinity’, n.’) ‘by position’ as a ‘relationship of kinship generally between individuals or races’, and ‘by inclination’ as a ‘voluntary social ... companionship [or] alliance’ and ‘psychical or spiritual attraction’, may point to a more natural, unplanned or even involuntary sense of being drawn to a particular community grouping, geographical area or imaginative realm. Nederveen Pieterse (2007: 186-8) uses the term to describe the ‘multiple circuits of [cultural] identification and integration’ within which migrant communities participate in a global multicultural context. However, the term need not be confined solely to this usage. ‘Affinitive’ may also refer, for example, to the kind of feelings ignited between Muslims of radically different social, educational and doctrinal backgrounds when engaging in Islamic rituals or contemplating a common heritage or culture in their South and Central Asian homelands.