The politics of fiction: a response to new orientalism in type

Abstract

In ‘New Orientalism in Popular Fiction and Memoir’, Fitzpatrick raises the issue of two problematic themes in contemporary Muslim/Islamic literature: (1) perpetuating negative Muslim stereotypes; and (2) the promotion of Western values. Character defamation with ‘Muslim’ traits such as misogynistic, violent Islamic men and helpless, victimized women are described by Fitzpatrick as typical portrayals of the Far East in classical Orientalist scholarship and to have continued in recent popular Islamic fiction. In my following response, I plan to show that A Thousand Splendid Suns and Reading Lolita in Tehran, contrary to Fitzpatrick's argument include many characters that read against these predominant media stereotypes. Fitzpatrick's argument that Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns promotes negative Muslim stereotypes does not respond to the multiple women in the text that confound expectations running against type and have their own coercive and powerful agency. Arguments of ‘New Orientalism’ in an increasing global network of dialectism and interconnectedness are allegations indeterminedly complicated by the political status and agency of the native or near native authors involved. Authorial complications that consider a particular extrinsic/intrinsic outlook, Diasporan in-between-ness (in the case of Azar Nafisi), as well as other complicated forms of identity politics may be playing a strong role in their political bias.