Transformations of the Liminal Self: Deconstructing Muslim Identity in Tariq Ali’s The Stone Woman

Abstract

This article examines how Tariq Ali's novel The Stone Woman (2000) attempts to deconstruct identity by blurring the self/other distinctions and sets the groundwork for hybridity wherein ‘otherness' emerges as a signifying process open to interpretation. The critical parameters of the study emerge from an investigation of the post-colonial context, suggesting in its process a displacement of the fixity of Manichean thought. Drawing upon Homi Bhabha's theorization on “third space” and “hybridity” and Edward Said’s “other”, the article demonstrates how the novel configures identities as woven through the rich cultural textualities that people live in and provides alternative spaces to deconstruct Eurocentric identity discourses. This article argues that the novel proposes a paradigm of idealized Muslim identity that deviates from reductive Eurocentric representations of Muslims as the “other” and exposes such reductive perspectives as traditional to Orientalist discourses.