Exclusion, empathy, and Islam: The Runaways in the literary marketplace

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the location of the global literary marketplace in western centres, post-9/11 interest in anglophone Pakistani literature comes with the fetishization of minoritized identities. Fatima Bhutto’s The Runaways combats Islamophobic arguments about the Islamic origins of radicalization, showing that it emerges out of exclusion stemming from material facts of race, class, and gender. However, the novel's place in the literary marketplace complicates Bhutto's efforts to elicit empathy from readers. This article argues that although The Runaways is ideologically opposed to Eurocentric cosmopolitan liberalism, it occasionally falters in its representation of Pakistan and Islamic practices. The novel’s empathy is invested in universalism, suggesting a blind spot which is attributable to the global literary marketplace’s anticipation of a secular cosmopolitan “elite” readership. Through analysis of Bhutto’s novel, this article explores the possibility of productive empathy, and interrogates the ethics of reading and writing the other.