Rewriting Strategies in Tariq Ali's Postcolonial Metafiction

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study some of Tariq Ali's metafictional strategies of rewriting the authoritative discourse of colonial history, including the rewriting of the document, the other, the subaltern, and the colonial language. The paper hypothesises that metafiction can function as an efficacious post-colonial act of rewriting and hence recuperating the history of the colonised. Post-colonial metafiction is hence defined as a narrative mode that accommodates the self-questioning ambiance of the postmodern and the politicised stance of the post-colonial. To demonstrate this I will focus on two particular historiographic narratives: Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992) and The Book of Saladin (1998).