Affiliation:
1. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Abstract
This paper first analyzes the use of metafiction in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight's Children; and explains how this narrative technique is connected to the novel’s identity politics. Even though several Rushdie critics have justifiably praised Rushdie’s work for its inclusive identity politics based on hybridity, this paper discusses the limits of Rushdie's metafiction in Midnight's Children, and argues that Rushdie's secularist nationalism in Jose Casanova's sense defines the limits of his metafiction, which is clearly exclusive of characters with religious orientation. Methodologically, the paper first discusses Rushdie's distinctive way of using metafiction in order to explicate how Midnight's Children is based on the concept of hybridity. The following part connects Rushdie's novel to his theory: through an analysis of his Imaginary Homelands and a 2011 interview, I trace the novel's secularist nationalism as shown in Rushdie's theory. The conclusion provides a comparative analysis of Rushdie’s work regarding metafiction, secularism, nationalism, identity and belonging.
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