Shifting Positions: Identity and Alterity in the Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a new and innovative framework through which post-9/11 Eastern/Western relationships and prejudices can be re-examined. By avoiding the ‘mimetic’ quality of many literary works written in the Western tradition, Hamid succeeds in radically displacing and dispelling assumptions regarding these cultural interactions. In so doing, the narrative forces the creation of a nascent understanding not limited by previous preconceptions even as the precise content and objectives of this remain elusive and open to debate. Political and literary constructs are applied to an understanding of Hamid’s work, the outcome being a heightened awareness of a shared culpability and injury regarding the type of discrimination generalized under the label of Islamophobia.