Foregrounding of Postcolonial Elements in Hanif Kureishi’s the Black Album
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22128867 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Muhammad Azeem (0000-0002-3264-6231, University of Sindh), Muhammad Khan Sangi (University of Sindh), Komal Ansari (University of Sindh) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1018-1026 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2395-6518 • E-ISSN: 2395-6518 |
| Publisher | Maya Global Education Society (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.18510/hssr.2021.93100 |
| OpenAlex | W3176582139 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Purpose of the study: This study aims to examine the postcolonial elements i.e, hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence concerning Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Black Album (1995). The protagonist of the novel faces religious, economic, social, racial, and ethnic identities in a tormenting and perturbing social order of England. Methodology: This article is based on inductive reasoning and thus exploratory due to its qualitative nature. A close reading method is applied to the text of this paper. For this purpose, the researcher has read carefully the book Close Reading (The Basics 2018) by David Greenham. The method consists of five stages through which the paper scrutinized. Main Findings: The researcher endeavors to find out religious, economic, ethnic, cultural, and social factors behind the identity crisis faced by the protagonist. Hybridity, mimicry, assimilation, and ambivalence play a very vital role in the social life of the protagonist. The researcher found that Shahid Hassan is caught between two identities i.e, Islamic fundamentalism and liberalism. Islamic fundamentalism offered him much peace and satisfaction with the Islamic religion whose leader is Riaz Al Husain but the liberalism attracts his attention with drugs, sex, music, freedom, rock n` rolls, and carefree life in form of Deedee Osgood who is his mentor and is a college lecturer too. He becomes the victim of hybrid identity and remains in an ambivalent state of mind. Being a British immigrant, he always remains in search of his true identity. Being a postcolonial novel, it helps the students, teachers, and literature lovers to know about the biased and rude behaviour of the whites towards non-whites. Application of the study: Foregrounding of postcolonial elements is very significant only in the field of postcolonial study because it highlights economic, religious, political, social, cultural, and ethnic factors of identity crisis. Novelty/Originality of this study: This study is an original contribution as it examines the economic, political, racial, social, and ethnic issues faced by the protagonist. The researcher employed Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial elements to examine the identity crisis faced by the protagonist. Moreover, the close reading method for data analysis is based on originality as well as novelty
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Fundamentalism · Hybridity · Islam · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Linguistic, Cultural, and Literary Studies · Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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