The Practice of Transformation-Oriented Anti-Colonial Dialogue: Personae in Post-9/11 Novels by Pakistani Authors in English

ABSTRACT

This essay argues for embodied dialog among scholars from different global situations as an academic practice crucial to anticolonial transformation. The essay illustrates this practice by recounting the critical interpretations of two differently situated anticolonial persons and the changes in interpretations wrought by our dialog. We draw on postcolonial and dialogic orientations and recent materialist theories that envision rhetorical scholarship as “making” in order to encourage expansion of the range of depictions of Muslims in literature. The analysis employs a persona theory revised through Burkean dramatism and the anticolonial perspective. The transformative potential of the approach is illustrated by a dialogically executed analysis of the Pakistan-focused novel, The Spinner’s Tale, by Omar Shahid Hamid.

KEYWORDS:

• Anticolonialism
• dramatism
• Islam
• Pakistan
• persona
• postcolonialism

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan for stimulating and enabling the interaction of the authors through a grant to the first author. We thank our spouses for their willingness to support our work and engage with supporting and getting to know each other.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Selected by The Guardian as one of the decade’s defining books; winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and The South Bank Show Award for Literature; short-listed for the 2007 Booker Prize. Reliance on Western press and awards reflects existing bias in the access to such awards. Where possible we note reception in Pakistan.

² “Best book” awards in 2017 from Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Public Library, and Kirkus, a Texas Bluebonnet Award master list selection, and Goodreads choice award.

³ We define colonialism as the practice of exercising control over other geographically situated socio-political-cultural groups (GSPCG). The focus on geography is being weakened by human mobility, which thereby generates the need for change in the fundamental concept of all “colonial”-related word stems, but the involved complexities exceed this essay’s ability to address them. We therefore revert to the standard usage of “anticolonialism” as statements, beliefs, or actions opposed to the practice of control by members of one GSPCG over other GSPCGs. In a transformational perspective, this is a necessary but insufficient step toward decolonization. We understand decolonialization as practices that transform the world in ways that increase control by GSPCGs of their own processes for GSCPGS, but necessarily also involve and require coconstruction of global responsibilities and basic human rights.

⁴ The scare quotes around “express” and “voice” signal that even the application of these terms is contested.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from Pakistan’s International Research Support Initiative Program to Hafiz Javed ur Rehman.