Terror and resistance in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007): A postcolonial perspective

Résumé

For any process of literary resistance to take place, it has to take into account the economy of power relations which are complicit in history. Based on post-9/11 diasporic literature, this paper seeks to examine how the notions of displaced identity, terror and resistance are re/framed in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) as a post-9/11 postcolonial fictional narrative. Drawing upon a postcolonial approach, the present article argues that Hamid provides an alternative fictional perspective which defamiliarizes and resists the hegemonic and orientalist discourses of terror and terrorism by which the post-9/11 western colonial project is justified. In so doing, this diasporic novelist highlights in his literary work the power relations behind the discourse on “terrorism” and “war on terror” through which he questions the post-9/11 discourse which constructs “Orientals” as “terrorist others.” This paper concludes that while history speaks for power, The Reluctant Fundamentalist provides a voice for the oppressed and marginalized in the diaspora.