Postcolonial politics of the possible
City and nation in the fiction of Salman Rushdie
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2178472 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stuti Khanna |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 401-413 |
| Publication date | 2009-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449850903273598 |
| OpenAlex | W2047355266 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 8 |
This article focuses on the relationship between the city and the nation in the early novels of Salman Rushdie and argues that Rushdie's invocation of the city of Bombay is the crucial means by which he seeks to critique narrow nationalist politics. It begins by unravelling the interdependence of two seemingly contrary visionary models of the post‐independence Indian nation backed by Gandhi and Nehru: the rural and the urban, respectively. The discussion draws out the ambiguity underlying the Nehruvian model that, even as it aligns itself with urbanization as the way forward for the new nation, continues to believe in an authentic national soul and spirit that inheres in its villages. Similar dualisms appear in contemporary cinema and this paper examines Rushdie's challenge to them in his inventive redeployment and transformation of popular cinematic tropes in Midnight's Children. Finally, the paper traces the disillusion, voiced in The Moor's Last Sigh, with the Bombay of the 1990s that attempts to cleanse itself of “outsiders”, in the shift from the trajectory of return, as found in Rushdie's earlier novels, to that of flight in his later ones – to American cities that seem to offer an alternative to parochial neo‐nationalist politics
Aesthetics · Ambiguity · Art · Couplet · Independence (probability theory · Invocation · Literature · Nationalism · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Middle East Politics and Society · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Urban Planning and Governance · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2024 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |