Deer crossing. Moose crossing. Old people crossing. Children crossing: Reading Islamophobia through a vegan lens in Kamila Shamsie’sBurnt Shadows

Abstract

This article uses close textual analysis of Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows in order to reevaluate contemporary theorizations of Islamophobia in relation to global speciesism. By addressing the lacuna in current work engaging with Islamophobia of an understanding of speciesism as a form of discriminatory oppression engrained within the hierarchical divisions of categories of human identity, the article seeks to establish a radically new vegan mode of reading with which to approach literary texts. Exploring the concept of a vegan lens as a mode of reading that seeks to expose the power of language and metaphor in maintaining the absent referent of nonhuman animals, and to challenge the way we understand the construction of human and nonhuman animal identity in relation to Islamophobia, it suggests the variety of ways in which speciesism has been foundational to the assertion of an “us” versus “them” dichotomy. Shamsie’s novel is thus read in order to complicate and multiply the human/nonhuman animal divide apparent within current discussions of postcolonial identity.