Global Citizenship in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

[...]Changez may be assumed to stand for his homeland, Erica for America (as a nation), and the company Underwood Samson for the global, corporate power of the US. According to Harleen Singh, 'the novel provides a variation on [Richard] Gray's theme of 'emotional entanglements' a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transnational literature 2016-05, Vol.8 (2), p.1
Main Author: Mahmutovic, Adnan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Zizek, Slavoj
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:[...]Changez may be assumed to stand for his homeland, Erica for America (as a nation), and the company Underwood Samson for the global, corporate power of the US. According to Harleen Singh, 'the novel provides a variation on [Richard] Gray's theme of 'emotional entanglements' as the sole viable representation of 'cataclysmic public events' by recasting the love affair as a failed mediation between cultures, countries, religions, race, and politics'.48 Changez's desire to help Erica heal is a desire to help America heal after 9/11, despite the fact that 'their love ... was, after all, a religion that would not accept me as a convert' (129). [...]Changez's political allegiances seemed to shift between the US and Pakistan, and between different fundamentalisms, but a closer reading of the novel shows that plural allegiances have always already been taking place across the borders between the personal and the political, national and global, and that such crosspollinations are far more conducive to healthy civic engagement within nations as well as globally. [...]the organizational forms and strategies for mobilizing social capital matter a great deal' (14).
ISSN:1836-4845
1836-4845