Fiction’s gothic imagination of reverse domination: Western migrants in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reverse colonization narratives, subsumed under the rubric “imperial gothic” by Patrick Brantlinger, featured invasions from the colonial periphery to the imperial centre. This essay argues that recent decades have seen the emergence of similar “reverse domination narratives”. The narratives feature the migration of professionals from the Global North to the new economic centres in the Global South, where the migrants occupy subservient positions. As in the case of nineteenth-century reverse colonization narratives, gothic elements underpin the reversal of domination. In this essay I read two instances of these narratives – Hilary Mantel’s Eight Months on Ghazzah Street and Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for the King – as symptoms of Northern anxiety at losing economic, political, and cultural influence to regions perceived as threats to global supremacy.