Transnational Voices in Contemporary Pakistani Literature: An Exploration of Fragmented Self and Hybrid Identity in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

For various reasons, Pakistani literature has remained at the periphery of academic enquiry and research. As an independent nation, Pakistan is relatively young, with less than 75 years of history. The partition of 1947 and the bloodshed and violence that ensued had a strong impact on the growth of Pakistani literature and culture, as shown in the early writing of the nation which focused on the violence of partition and the sorrow of the nation. However, after 9/11, Pakistan and numerous other Muslim nations were brought into the limelight by the US. This focus had its obvious negative impacts on the perception of Pakistan as a fundamentalist nation and the base of religious extremism. Nevertheless, this unwarranted spotlight on the nation has also enabled its writers to respond to the West’s homogenous categorisation of their national, cultural and religious identity as merely fundamentalist and militant. During the last decade or so, Pakistani literature has thus been gaining momentum in the international literary sphere. Contemporary Pakistani diasporic writers have made significant contributions in shedding light on the culture, traditions, and complexities of Pakistan as a nation and the indifference of the West towards Pakistan as a mere hub of terrorism and religious extremism. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) follows a similar train of thought and attempts to demystify the complex identity of a Pakistani Muslim migrant in America before and after 9/11. This paper explores Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a manifestation of the transnational voice in contemporary Pakistani literature. It also attempts to reconfigure the notion of identity beyond the boundaries of an isolated nation and culture through the inclusion of migrants embodying hybrid identities. The paper concludes by analyzing the tenability of transnationalism as an antidote to the fragmentation of identities resulting from migration.

Keywords

• identity
• hybridity
• fragmentation
• transnationalism
• cosmopolitanism
• assimilation