Apocalyptic Narratives: The Nation in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Abstract

The radically performative laying down of law by legislator must create very context according to which that law could be judged to be just: founding moment, pre-, is always already inhabited by post-. Geoffrey Bennington (132) Thus veil had to fall so that with it strongholds of reactionaries preventing women from being educated and participating in public life would fall. Amina Said (360) In Book of Revelation, John is living in forced exile on island of Patmos.[1] Opposed to and alienated from existing social and political order, he predicts overthrow of a corrupt and everlasting reign of New Jerusalem. In this revolutionary prophesy, John imagines himself as consciousness of collective; boundary between and word, between narrative and history, must dissolve, and all margins, including one he inhabits, must be eradicated to complete this dream of a perfectly integrated at end of history. [2] While belief in actual or imminent end of has receded, Frank Kermode argues that the paradigms of apocalypse continue to lie under our ways of making sense of world (28). With shift from God's plan for humanity to secular dreams about world, nationalist narratives that both replace and echo Revelation are one of ways we order that world. Apocalypse continues to be understood in a secular context as a revelation or unveiling (from ancient Greek apokalupsis), and this paradigm underlies nineteenth-century teleological narrative of modern nationalism, where emergence of nation is understood as point of arrival for an imagined community (Anderson 6). As Benedict Anderson has suggested, as traditional religious belief wanes, national narratives come to satisfy desire for origins, continuity, and eternity (11). Like biblical story, secular apocalyptic writings about nation also express dreams of ostracized and oppressed about renewal or rebirth of a community; call from beyond (the interference from Other) that characterizes apocalyptic writing challenges established order, confuses accepted rules, and ignores prevalent codes of reason. As Jacques Derrida writes, By its very tone, mixing of voices, genres, and codes, and breakdown [le detraquement of destinations, apocalyptic discourse can also dismantle dominant contract or concordat (Of an Apocalyptic Tone 89). It is not surprising then that Romantic poets, and Blake in particular, conceived of French and American Revolutions in millennial terms; violence and upheaval of these events seemed to mark dawn of a new earthly order, freeing man from tyranny of monarchy and church.[3] And in Writing Apocalypse, Lois Parkinson Zamora reads both Hebrew (Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah) and Chri stian (Mark 13, Matthew 24, 2 Peter, and Revelation) apocalyptic texts, with their emphasis on merging of private and public destinies, as inspiring communal or national fictions of Latin American writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Julio Cortazar. However, events of twentieth century have also cast doubt on apocalyptic nationalist narratives. In E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, Aziz clearly joins revolutionary chorus when he declares that shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! (289). But while Forster suggests that colonial presence in India is intolerable, completing his novel in aftermath of First World War, he is clearly not convinced by revolutionary promises of nationalism: Fielding taunts Aziz with remark a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to drab nineteenth-century sisterhood!(289). And as a Muslim, Aziz himself is only half taken with idea of modern nation as he recognizes es of teleology and origins that accompany this model. …