Exploring Global Identities in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1401.12Keywords:
Exit West, fundamentalist identity, Mohsin Hamid, Maalouf's argument, affiliationsAbstract
Identity cannot be compartmentalized, as Amin Maalouf argues. Neither is it established on a rigid core of a single affiliation like the restrictive essentialist identities of some political/religious groups wreaking havoc in the world. Identity changes encompass various affiliations in a unique way for every individual. However, this does not refer to the absence of a cultural, religious, or national identity. Maalouf's concept encourages peace. The refugee crisis and the tumultuous events of the last few decades led to a devastating confrontation between rival restrictive identities that could have been avoided if the parties and the world had given up the redundant notion of singular restrictive identities. Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (2017) tells the story of two people falling in love in a disintegrating world. Their identities change as they escape their homeland to different parts of the West, highlighting the effects of their mobility and change of places and contexts. Using Maalouf's argument, this paper investigates how characters' identities change due to the catastrophe in their own country and the world they move into. The narration's tone, details, and character delineation show identity and notion stereotyping, especially in the Muslim world. As implied in Exit West (the major topic of this study) but expressly addressed in The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), the novelist compares a restrictive, rigid fundamentalist identity with another fundamentalist identity.
References
Bağlama, S. H. (2019). Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West: Co-opting refugees into global capitalism. New Middle Eastern Studies, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.29311/nmes.v9i2.3244
Bauman, Z. (2001). Identity in the globalizing world. Social Anthropology, 121-129.
Bayart, J. (2005). The Illusion of Cultural Identity. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of Culture. Routledge.
Bilal, M. (2020). Reading Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as a world novel. Journal of World Literature, 5(3), 410-427. https://doi.org/10.1163/24056480-00503006
Chandler, C. L. (2017, October 30). We are all refugees: A conversation with Mohsin Hamid. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/we-are-all-refugees-a-conversation-with-mohsin-hamid/. 10/08/2022.
Goethe, J. W., & Eckermann, J. P. (2014). Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann. Ravenio Books.
Hai, A. (2020). Pitfalls of Ambiguity in Contexts of Islamophobia: Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Studies in the Novel, 52(4), 434-458. https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2020.0053
Hall, S. (1996). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (1st ed., pp. 110-121). Routledge.
Hamid, M. (2007). The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Orlando: Harcourt.
Hamid, M. (2017). Exit West. Riverhead.
Lagji, A. (2018). Waiting in motion: Mapping postcolonial fiction, new mobilities, and migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West. Mobilities, 14(2), 218-232. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2018.1533684
Maalouf, A. (2000). In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (B. Bray, Trans.). Penguin Books.
Mian, Z. R. (2019, January 19). Willing representatives: Mohsin Hamid and Pakistani literature abroad. Herald Magazine. https://herald.dawn.com/news/1398781. 20/08/2022.