Reluctant Fundamentalist Research Articles

9/11 Trauma: Nostalgia and Psychic Health in Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Delillo's Falling Man

The trauma of 9/11 makes individuals nostalgic and leaves indelible marks on their psyches. Their personal and political worlds are shattered. Rediscovery is an extravagant problem for them. 9/11 changed their definition of self. The paper analyses changes in their behaviour due to hysteria and its effects on their societal relations. Their distress and anxiety change their healthy relationships with each other into an unhealthy state. Now every individual is disturbed, feeling desperation on mental as well as physical level, having cracking headaches, and so on. This paper tries to study how the mental landscape of individuals changed due to catastrophic events. Mental health disturbance is equal in both Americans and Pakistanis, both the novels show us a story of traumatized people and how they become nostalgic.

Unraveling Changez: A Transitivity Analysis of Character Development in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

This research paper applies systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to analyze the transitivity patterns of Changez’s character in Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The study aims to examine how Changez’s transitivity patterns evolve and shift over the course of the narrative, particularly in relation to his changing ideological stance and identity. Using Halliday’s SFL framework, the analysis reveals that Changez’s transitivity patterns reflect his evolving agency, worldview, and social positioning. The findings also suggest that Changez’s linguistic choices are not merely reflective but constitutive of his evolving subjectivity and ideology. The study contributes to the existing body of literature on SFL, critical discourse analysis, and postcolonial studies by showcasing the usefulness of transitivity analysis in uncovering the complex interplay between language, ideology, and identity in literary texts.

Conflicting Communities The Global Imaginary in the South Asian Anglophone Novel

The novel, the nation and the family, arising in the age of colonization, are structures deeply imbricated in each other, providing the imaginaries that sustain each other. The contemporary emergence of  world literature therefore requires a model different from the family. This essay argues that the contemporary South Asian novel centers new modes of affiliation and kinship that are enabled by global institutions—the multinational finance company and the university—in order to provide an alternative to the site of the family, the imagined basis for the nation’s community. By looking at three novelswritten by authors of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi origins respectively—The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), The Lives of Others (2014), and In the Light of What We Know (2014)—I indicate that rather than a unified ‘global imaginary’ that replaces a previous national one, these characters find themselves imbricated in conflicting contracts of affiliation. It is these contradictory communities that the contemporary South Asian Anglophone novel provides as a model of imagining the world through various acts of affiliation.  

Representations of the Other in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a more recent and contemporary portrayal of 9/11 fiction. This thesis uses postcolonial theory to analyze Mohsin Hamid’s novel, published in 2007. The novel chronicles the protagonist Changez’s life before, during, and after the 9/11 and how his view of America’s capitalism and imperialism-centered society and his identity shifts in the wake of the attacks. It is allegories to display identity and has frequently been used in post-colonial discourse to mean simply cross-cultural 'exchange' to the Pakistani immigrant named Changez Khan in the novel. The novel stands out because it is told from the point of view of a Pakistani immigrant to an American looking for a job to fulfill his dream. The postcolonial tropes allow for an acute interrogation of the historicizing of 9/11 and what role fiction has in creating and re-imagining
 history. The novel allows us to see how postcolonial tropes have evolved and
 remained after September 11 attacks. Also, the features of trauma fiction are briefly introduced to determine those featured in Hamid’s text, which exposes identity problems and searches for the answers to existential queries. Such issues as the deterioration of the American dream, the fight against American imperialism and the relationship between East and West, prejudices that rule the American society, and inward transformation are the main ones that feature in this study.
 Key words: Identity diaspora, Mohsin Hamid, War on Terror, Islamphobia.

The framing of selfless role-playing in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

ABSTRACT In Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), the concept of identity comes undone because the narrator-protagonist, confronted with his lack of belonging, resorts to role-playing as a means of feeling whole. Undertaken in order to heal the self, role-playing plays out in the sense of playacting and responsibility. Although critics have commented on the novel’s deconstruction of belonging, the dual sense of role-playing has not been analysed in terms of how it affects the selflessness responsibility involves. This paper explores the text’s implication of responsibility in playacting, with respect to how this entanglement opens onto a negative depiction of selflessness. The 9/11 novel’s grim take on selflessness, which ties in with its focus on terror, is shown to undercut the ethical value that deracination bears in Jacques Derrida’s readings of responsibility.

Marketing secular anxieties: Mohsin Hamid’s planetary turn

ABSTRACT This article unpacks Mohsin Hamid’s position as a global novelist invested in translating the world view of Muslim characters for a secular, western audience. Its approach to Hamid’s secularism combines materialist with textualist frames of reference, seeing the circulation and reception of The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit West (2017) as entangled with the novelist’s aesthetic strategies. The materialist approach, based on Graham Huggan’s and Sarah Brouillette’s work, questions how western audiences’ anxieties about religiously driven “Others” are marketed by the publishing industry, thus reinforcing the figure of the postcolonial author as a problematic interpreter of marginalized communities. The textualist approach argues that Hamid’s writing participates in the diffusion of global literature, and close reading will question how authors like him propose ways of reconsidering and rewriting hegemony through positioning themselves as “embedded with the world”, and by forging geocentred fictions which, paradoxically, trace lines of flight from the global marketplace.

Exploring Identity Fragmentation, Victimization and Othering in HM Naqvi's Home Boy

The catastrophic incident of 9/11 split the world into two halves, Muslims and non- Muslims. The Muslim identity came under the clouds of suspicion and caught global attention. Soon after 9/11, the Western self-concocted narrative portrays Muslims as terrorists, barbaric and uncivilized. However, Naqvi's novel deconstructs this stereotypical narrative. Home Boy is a counter-narrative against the horrendous narrative of Muslim victimization, fragmentation and Othering. Indubitably, this dominant stance influenced world literature and legitimized the war on terror which sabotaged Muslim identity worldwide. But the narrative of Pakistani writers in the form of 'Home Boy', 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' etc. exposed Western so-called dominancy explicitly. The present study analyzes that Chuck the protagonist of 'Home Boy' was civilized and progressive before the fall of the Twin Towers but after 9/11 he was labelled negatively though he was not involved directly or indirectly in any terrorist activity. The current paper undertakes textual analysis as the main research method under the conceptual framework of Homi. K. Bhabha and Edward Said’s concepts for the analysis of the primary text.

Ideology of the West in Hamid’s the Reluctant Fundamentalist

This study intends to explore the ideology of the West in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid who successfully portrayed the impact of 9/11 to view the ideology of the West for the East (Muslims). Edward Said’s Orientalism is an idea that represents views of the West about the East that fails to understand the cultural differences and perceives the East as biased, and subvert being opposed to reality. This idea of the West is rooted in the history of colonization and racism. The study follows qualitative research in the literary work of The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid through the dialogues of Changez. The novel depicted Changez as a reluctant fundamentalist and he was encountered of being Muslim due to the violent acts of some extreme radicals, and gave rise to the racist ideology of Islamophobia of the West.

Deciphering The British Pakistani Novelist’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist in The Light of Jean Baudrillard’s Assertion-Singularity Avenges Singular Cultures

This paper aims to explore how the Pakistani protagonist in The Reluctant Fundamentalist took the initiative to thwart the predominant global power by manipulating the characteristic of “singularity” of Islam culture. As a Middle Easterner surviving in the Western world, Changez suffered from ubiquitous biased treatment especially after September 11 events and it awakened him to penetrate the disguise and dominancy of global power worldwide. Accordingly, how the protagonist intentionally flaunted his characteristic of singularity to protest against the hegemonic power and simultaneously strengthened self-identification in the novel will be interpreted in the light of Jean Baudrillard’s assertion- “singularities are not necessarily violent, and there are some subtle ones, such as those of language, art, the body or culture.” Concerning immanent power sought from the idiosyncrasy of singularity, how the first-person narrator subverted and flipped the single-track route of hegemonic global power will be discussed by analyzing the cultural and ethnic portrayal of singularity flipping the stereotyped image of Islam appearance as the symbol for self-identification strengthening.

Navigating Economic Inclusion and Psychological Exclusion

Drawing on Kristeva’s theory of abjection, Wallerstein’s world system theory, and Petras’ imperialist-centered model of capitalist accumulation, this article argues that the immigration of Changez from Pakistan to America in The Reluctant Fundamentalist demonstrates a structural shift from the periphery to the center as a highly educated and skilled human capital in the era of global capitalism. The article contends that Changez’s decision to accept a funded scholarship at Princeton University is a result of the lack of economic opportunities in Pakistan and the corrupt economic and political systems that impoverished his family. Furthermore, the article critically examines America’s paradoxical policies of inclusion and exclusion toward Changez. While he gains access to Princeton University and the Underwood Samson company, his economic inclusion is not accompanied by genuine acceptance. In the context of global capitalism, Changez is economically included but psychologically abjected due to his ethnic identity.

An Analysis of Bourdieu’s Habitus and Field Theory in Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The purpose of this study is to investigate Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by utilizing the theory of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The study, a theoretical construct founded on two key concepts from Bourdieu’s theory, namely habitus and field, aims at offering a new perspective to understand the dilemma of the protagonist Changez from a sociological cultural perspective. It shows how Changez cultivates his habitus to pursue a specific taste in America through multiple forms of cultural capital and manifests how these forms shape his attitudes and relations. It also offers a metaphorical portrayal of Changez as a footballer who struggles within various positions to retain power and eventually fulfill his American dream through both the macrocosmic and microcosmic social fields that he finds himself in. The assumption that this paper is seeking to validate is that there is a common ground between the novel and Bourdieu’s theory of practice in some key concepts and that understanding the habitus and the doxa of Changez’ social fields can help understand his practices, dispositions, and most importantly the reasons behind him leaving America.

PORTRAYAL OF DIASPORIC IDENTITIES: CHANCES AND CHALLENGES

The practice of migration does not run smooth rather it brings along a number of crucial factors. Among them the identity is fundamental one which brings huge change in diasporic community. Diasporic community meet both; the great opportunities as well challenges. On one hand side, migration results in improved version of life, freedom of expression and great cultural exchange while on the other hand it leads to crisis of identity and homesickness. The present study discusses the portrayal of diasporic identities in the context of South Asian diasporic community with reference to novels such as The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Lowland along theorists. The study concludes that migrants experience both; chances and challenges in the course of migration. Keywords: Migrants, diasporic, literature, identity, chances, challenges.

Intimate Others: Utopia and Heterotopia in the Reluctant Fundamentalist and the Submission

The Submission and The Reluctant Fundamentalist invest in the strategic ambivalence that characterizes heterotopias. Steering away from trauma studies I concentrated on the possibilities the concept of heterotopia offers to understanding the multilayered content and symbolism of the two post 9/11 novels. Heterotopia as a Foucauldian concept established spaces that are ‘other’ in relation to a normal space. I extend that other space to include Muslims as belonging to a heterotopic garden from which they challenge an Islamophobic and divisive discourse that is affiliated to power and uses the popular media and grievances of the 9\11 families to further cut off Muslims from contribution to mainstream society.

The poetics of the (un)named city in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

ABSTRACT Cities in Mohsin Hamid’s fiction appear as menacing, over-powering spaces, whether in presenting the possibility of violence in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, or as in How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Exit West, in representing an unnamed city facing conflict. This article examines the construction of the unnamed city in Exit West, which deploys the trope of namelessness, both to throw light on the eerie similarity of cities that face violence and to narrate the urban experience of the Global South metropolis. By drawing from Saskia Sassen’s study of the “global city” and Manfred B. Steger’s concept of the “global imaginary”, it interrogates the novel’s unnamed city and reflects on the invisible forces of globalization being reimagined through the movement of the refugee. The refugee figure becomes the lens through which Hamid politicizes the north-south divide and visualizes a more egalitarian future.

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Literature has always been considered as the reflection of human life because of its involvement with human behavior, thoughts, activity, development, progress, etc. Sometimes while reading a literary text, readers often face complicated characters that are quite troublesome and create difficulty to understand but at the same time, these characters generate curiosity in the mind of the readers to know more about them. Such a character is Changez from the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This article aims to explain the behavior of Changez, the protagonist of the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist who narrates and shares his experiences about his time in America to an American stranger. To analyze his personality, this paper uses the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. This paper upholds psychological pressure and its consequence on Changes as an individual who faces a sudden and unexpected social change in America. All the methods that are applied to conduct this paper are the qualitative method and the analytic descriptive method. Finally, this study serves a relation between psychoanalysis and literature.

An Exploration of the Reluctant Fundamentalist from Multicultural Perspective

This paper interrogates multiculturalism in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. Multiculturalism is a technique which author use to tell their stories. When analyzing a novel, it is important to identify this technique. It is used in order to shed light on the ways in which they function in the story. Mohsin Hamid, an emerging novelist of Pakistan has given a new identity to the genre of Pakistani English Writing through his popular novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. In his first two novels Moth Smoke and the Reluctant Fundamentalist, Hamid has tried two different types of narrative techniques. While he has used Multiple Narrative Technique in Moth Smoke, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, he uses monologue. The present research proposes to explore how these narrative techniques have their validity to theme and message, the novelist conveys. This study is going to focus on multiculturalism in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Written in a critical time, this novel contains too different social issues of Pakistan. It is believed that narrative technique has a vital role to express the temperament of the characters hence; this paper aims at studying how the narrative technique “Monologue “and “Multiple Narrative” and “Multiculturalism” do express the temperament of characters in the selected novel.

H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy as a Response to Post-9/11 Islamophobia and as Implicit Critique of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Western fiction about the 9/11 attacks tends to center white American experiences and perspectives and reinforce dominant Western stereotypes and misconceptions about Muslims, especially Muslim men. Counter-discursive post-9/11 fiction from a Muslim cosmopolitan perspective that seeks to intervene in these modes of representation inevitably has to contend with globally dominant epistemological frameworks of suspicion. While Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) is among the most well-known of such counter-discursive fictions, this article focuses on H. M. Naqvi’s less well-known novel Home Boy (2009) to argue that Home Boy constitutes a postcolonial response to 9/11, an explicit critique of the ensuing American response and Islamophobia, and a tactical alternative to and implicit critique of Hamid’s novel. The article highlights some problems created by the narrative strategies Hamid uses and shows how Naqvi takes a different approach, in particular by foregoing the temptations of ambiguity and gender stereotyping and highlighting the multiple traumas experienced by Muslims from 9/11 and its aftermath. In so doing, the article suggests how critical readers can recognize both the drawbacks of Hamid’s celebrated novel and the alternative possibilities of other strategies that Muslim writers can use to address the problems of neo-Orientalism and global Islamophobia.

SOFT POWER IN THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST BY MOHSIN HAMID

This research paper aims at soft power in the novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid. It throws light on the character of Changez, who becomes a victim of soft power of American culture and its policies. Changez is a brilliant student but he strongly supports American culture and tries to become part of it. This research qualitatively analyzes the text of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and highlights those events which reveal that America tries to influence Changez. This research follows close reading of the novel. America has strong influence on his mind but it will never accept him as a citizen and a true American. This paper also throws light on the effects of soft power on the personality of Changez and the factors which compelled Changez to realize the soft power of America because of the bias of America against Muslims. The theoretical framework for this research is the soft power theory of Joseph Nye. It concludes that Mohsin Hamid has successfully depicted American soft power.

„I am not, of course, an Arab“ (Vulnerability and Secret in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West)

The article studies two novels by the English writer from Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit: West 2017, which earned him world fame with the uncomfortable questions posed by exposing the hidden dangers in our globalized world. The books appeal for people to be more tolerant in order to achieve true human oneness. In these two novels, the writer depicts how fear of the Other can be the leading emotion of entire societies; it tells the story of a world in which no one and nowhere can feel safe and secure. Although Mohsin Hamid's characters are constantly fleeing because they can't find their home anywhere, they always seem to be trapped in time because something dramatic and violent is happening everywhere and it prevents them from settling, home is not just a fixed place but it is also a place where major events do not take place. Through complex, nostalgic and ambiguous images, Hamid sees fixation on grief and loss as a chasm between cultures. Both novels deconstruct racial and cultural codifications, presenting migrants as individuals with different personalities and traits, rather than as representatives of a particular religious or political group.

The Confession of the Other: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The September 11th attacks on the U.S. caused unanticipated changes in the global arena. Their depiction in fictional discourse contributed to the broad understanding of the events and their memorialization. In this paper, I analyze Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist which presents the perspective of those who were silenced in the dominant rhetoric of the 9/11 tragedy and were single-mindedly blamed as “evil others.” Through his monologue, Changez, the homodiegetic narrator of the novel, explicitly demonstrates the intention to present the voice of the Other. The narrator of the novel asks readers to listen to the other side of the conflict and not to judge all Muslims as bloodthirsty fundamentalists. Changez proposes that the American agent consider his view in order not to blame him but to understand the roots of his anger. In addition to his appeal for constructive dialogue between the West and the East, the narrator of the novel brings forward the critical revision of the U.S.’ international politics. One of the messages is that after causing so much grief and misfortune abroad, the U.S. cannot play the role of an innocent observer. I conclude that the diegesis of the novel opens new ways for productive dialogue between nations and countries.