Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Speaks: Stories, Feminism, and Truth

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Speaks: Stories, Feminism, and Truth

This blog, assigned by our respected Head of the Department, Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, reflects on the importance of stories, feminism, and truth through three powerful talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It explores how stories shape identity and power (The Danger of the Single Story), why gender equality is a universal necessity (We Should All Be Feminists), and how truth and courage are essential in today’s post-truth era (Harvard Class Day Speech). Together, these reflections show how literature and storytelling inspire justice, dignity, and human connection.

For the background reading : Click Here 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Born	Grace Ngozi Adichie 15 September 1977 (age 47) Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	Eastern Connecticut State University Johns Hopkins University Yale University
Genre	Novel, short story, memoir, children's book
Years active	2003–present
Notable awards	Full list
Spouse	Ivara Esege ​(m. 2009)​
Children	3
Signature
Website
www.chimamanda.com

1) Talk on importance of Story / Literature

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED

The Danger of the Single Story: A Critical Reflection

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s influential talk The Danger of a Single Story offers a profound meditation on how narratives shape perception, identity, and power relations across cultures. Speaking from her personal experiences as a Nigerian writer and global thinker, Adichie demonstrates how limiting any individual, culture, or nation to a single narrative not only distorts reality but also undermines human dignity. Her argument is constructed through personal anecdotes, literary reflections, and cultural critiques, making it both intimate and universally resonant.

Childhood Reading and the Internalization of the Foreign Narrative

Adichie begins by recounting her childhood in Nigeria, where her earliest exposure to literature came from British and American children’s books. As an early reader and writer, she unconsciously reproduced the worlds she encountered in these texts: her characters were white, blue-eyed, played in snow, and drank ginger beer—despite her never having seen snow or ginger beer. This disconnect illustrates the powerful formative role of stories in shaping identity and imagination.

Her discovery of African writers such as Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye catalyzed a transformative realization: that literature could represent people like herself—“girls with skin the color of chocolate” and “kinky hair that could not form ponytails.” This encounter liberated her from the single story that equated literature with foreignness. Here, Adichie foregrounds a central theme: that exposure to diverse stories allows one to reclaim agency in self-representation.

The Single Story and Social Perception

The anecdote about Fide, the houseboy, exemplifies how narratives—whether familial, cultural, or social—can reduce individuals to one-dimensional identities. Adichie recalls how her mother repeatedly emphasized Fide’s poverty, such that she could not imagine him as anything but poor. This narrative was disrupted when she visited his village and encountered a beautifully crafted basket made by Fide’s brother, an object that testified to skill, creativity, and agency.

This moment of recognition echoes her later reflection on stereotyping: the danger of the single story lies not in its falsehood, but in its incompleteness. It erases complexity by reducing human beings to singular traits, thereby making “one story become the only story.”

Encountering the Single Story Abroad

Adichie’s move to the United States at 19 intensified her awareness of cultural misrepresentations. Her American roommate assumed that she could not speak English well, could not use a stove, and would be interested only in “tribal music.” This was a manifestation of the single story of Africa as a monolith of poverty, catastrophe, and helplessness. Adichie notes that before leaving Nigeria, she had not consciously identified as African, but the stereotypes imposed upon her in the U.S. forced her into an “African” identity.

She traces this to a long tradition in Western discourse that represented Africa as a site of darkness and difference, citing the 16th-century writings of John Lok and Rudyard Kipling’s infamous description of Africans as “half devil, half child.” These depictions reveal the historical continuity of the single story as a tool of cultural domination.

Power, Storytelling, and “Nkali”

Central to Adichie’s argument is the Igbo concept of nkali, meaning “to be greater than another.” Stories, like political and economic structures, are governed by power dynamics. The ability to tell another’s story and make it the definitive version is a form of domination. She illustrates this with Mourid Barghouti’s observation that to dispossess a people, one can simply start the story “secondly.” By choosing where to begin, storytellers shape perception: beginning the story of Native Americans with their resistance, rather than with colonization, produces an entirely different narrative.

Thus, the danger of the single story is not merely epistemological but political: it silences alternative perspectives and consolidates hierarchies of power.

Self-Reflection: Complicity in the Single Story

Importantly, Adichie admits her own susceptibility to the single story when she visited Mexico. Influenced by U.S. media representations of Mexicans as illegal immigrants and burdens on the system, she was surprised to encounter ordinary people laughing, working, and living full lives. This realization underscores that no one is immune from absorbing reductive narratives; awareness and self-critique are essential in resisting them.

The Balance of Stories

Adichie emphasizes that rejecting the single story requires embracing what Chinua Achebe called a “balance of stories.” She illustrates this through examples of Nigeria’s diversity and resilience: the rise of Nollywood cinema, entrepreneurs creating businesses, women challenging discriminatory laws, and cultural producers such as musicians and television hosts shaping public discourse. These stories complicate the reductionist narrative of Africa as a space of unrelenting crisis.

Her account of readers engaging with her novels, including a messenger woman who suggested a sequel, reflects how literature becomes participatory and democratic when diverse stories are told and made accessible.

Conclusion: The Humanizing Power of Stories

Adichie concludes with a powerful assertion: stories matter because they shape our recognition of shared humanity. While stories can dehumanize, stereotype, and dispossess, they can also empower, humanize, and restore dignity. To engage responsibly with others requires openness to multiple stories, rather than reliance on a single, flattening narrative.

The “danger of the single story,” then, is not only a matter of cultural misrepresentation but of ethical engagement with the world. As Adichie suggests, rejecting singular narratives allows us to regain a “kind of paradise”: the recognition that all human beings contain multitudes of stories, each deserving to be heard

2) We Should All Be Feminist

We should all be feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TEDxEuston

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We Should All Be Feminists – A Critical Write-Up

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s celebrated TED Talk, We Should All Be Feminists, presents a deeply personal, culturally rooted, and intellectually rigorous exploration of gender inequality in contemporary society. Through a blend of autobiographical reflection, cultural critique, and anecdotal storytelling, Adichie makes a persuasive case for reimagining gender norms and for embracing feminism not as a Western import, but as a universal demand for justice and human dignity.

From the outset, Adichie grounds her reflections in personal experience. She recalls her late friend Okuloma, who first labelled her a “feminist” when she was only fourteen. At the time, the word carried negative connotations, uttered with the same dismissive tone one might associate with accusations of extremism. This moment, however, planted the seed of inquiry, compelling her to look up the meaning of “feminist” in the dictionary, where she discovered that feminism is simply the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. The fact that such a word should be burdened with derision reveals much about the cultural baggage surrounding gender in Nigeria and beyond.

Adichie situates her intellectual journey within encounters that illuminate prevailing stereotypes. For example, when she published a novel featuring a man who beats his wife, she was advised never to identify as a feminist, since feminism in Nigeria was associated with embittered, unmarried women. Others told her feminism was “un-African,” a corruption imported through Western books. In response, she playfully reframed herself as “a happy African feminist who likes lip gloss and wears high heels,” exposing the absurdity of assuming that feminist identity must be hostile to femininity. This rhetorical move underscores how entrenched assumptions about feminism are policed both by men and women, and how cultural authenticity is often weaponized to silence dissent.

Her speech is also punctuated by illustrative childhood memories. One striking anecdote concerns her experience in primary school, when she achieved the highest score on a test yet was denied the position of class monitor because it “had to be a boy.” The role was given instead to the boy with the second-highest score, even though he had no desire for the authority the position conferred. This early lesson in gendered expectations revealed how systemic inequality is normalized, often without question, and how ambition in girls is routinely disregarded in favor of male entitlement.

Adichie further develops her argument through observations of everyday life in Lagos. A telling moment occurs when she tips a parking attendant, only for the man to thank her male companion, assuming that money could only come from a man. Such incidents, though seemingly minor, expose the deep-seated ways in which socialization equates maleness with authority and economic power. In hotels, bars, and restaurants, Nigerian women face restrictions and invisibility, reinforcing the perception that their presence in public space requires male validation. These examples demonstrate how inequality is not only institutional but also perpetuated in the smallest gestures of social interaction.

Central to Adichie’s critique is the argument that gender expectations harm both women and men. Boys, she observes, are confined within a “small hard cage” of masculinity. They are taught to fear vulnerability, to equate masculinity with dominance and financial provision, and to suppress their authentic selves. This produces fragile egos that women are then socialized to protect by “shrinking themselves” — aspiring to ambition only in moderation, disguising financial success, and prioritizing marriage as their ultimate goal. She highlights the absurdity of concepts such as “emasculation,” questioning why female success should ever be framed as a threat to male identity.

Marriage, in particular, emerges as a site of gendered inequality. Women are pressured to aspire to it above all else, even at the cost of selling their houses or wearing false wedding rings to command respect. Language itself reflects the imbalance: phrases like “I did it for peace in my marriage” carry different meanings for men and women, with men invoking it casually to describe trivial compromises while women invoke it to describe the sacrifice of careers or dreams. In these contexts, compromise is expected primarily from women, revealing how cultural expectations of selflessness are unequally distributed.

Adichie does not shy away from addressing violence and shame as tools of gender control. She cites the gang rape of a Nigerian student and the disturbing public response that blamed the victim for being in a room with men. This illustrates how women are socialized into guilt and silence, while men are excused as creatures of uncontrollable desire. Similarly, women are policed into modesty and pretense, forced to enact roles of domesticity and chastity, even when these roles betray their authentic selves. Gender, she argues, is prescriptive rather than descriptive: it dictates how individuals ought to behave rather than recognizing who they are.

Her critique of socialization extends to domestic labor. Women are expected to cook and clean, though the most celebrated chefs globally are men. This contradiction underscores that such roles are not natural but socially constructed. She challenges families who assign domestic duties by gender, such as instructing daughters to cook for their brothers, and argues for raising children based on ability and interest rather than gender. The result, she suggests, would be a society in which both men and women are freer to flourish as individuals.

Despite her critique, Adichie remains hopeful. She emphasizes that culture is not static but constructed by people, and therefore open to transformation. Practices once considered “cultural,” such as the killing of twins, have been abolished, proving that culture evolves. If the full humanity of women is not part of our culture today, then we must make it so. Her great-grandmother, who resisted forced marriage and asserted her rights over land, serves as an ancestral feminist figure, demonstrating that resistance to inequality has always existed within African contexts.

Ultimately, Adichie reclaims the word feminist, urging others to do the same. Her own definition is simple yet powerful: a feminist is any man or woman who recognizes that gender inequality is real and insists that we must change it. By concluding with the example of her brother Kenny, whom she calls the “best feminist” she knows, Adichie dismantles the misconception that feminism is anti-male. Rather, it is a vision of a world where both men and women are happier, freer, and truer to themselves.

In this talk, Adichie weaves personal history with cultural critique to produce an argument that is at once intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant. By exposing the hidden assumptions that govern everyday interactions, she demonstrates that gender inequality is not only a matter of law and policy, but also of mindset and socialization. Her speech functions not only as a call to action for Nigeria and Africa, but as a universal manifesto: we should all be feminists.

3) Talk on importance of Truth in Post-Truth Era

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses Harvard's Class of 2018

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Harvard Class Day Speech (2018): 

Introduction

In her Harvard Class Day address (2018), Nigerian novelist and feminist thinker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie employs personal anecdotes, cultural observations, and ethical reflections to craft a powerful message centered on truth, integrity, and courage. Speaking directly to Harvard graduates, she situates her narrative within both a personal and political framework, encouraging young leaders to confront the challenges of dishonesty, fear, and complacency in a rapidly shifting world. The speech blends humor with moral seriousness, underscoring how literature and storytelling can foster empathy, critical thinking, and ethical leadership.

The Power of Names and Cultural Sensitivity

Adichie begins her speech by reflecting on her Igbo name, Chimamanda, which translates to “my personal spirit will never be broken.” The humorous anecdote of her name being mistakenly pronounced as “Chimichanga” foregrounds the theme of intent versus malice. She draws a crucial distinction: mistakes born of effort and anxiety should be interpreted differently from deliberate mockery. For postgraduate reflection, this anecdote highlights how language, identity, and intercultural interaction can become sites of both misunderstanding and empathy. Adichie’s insistence on contextualizing intent invites a broader conversation about the ethics of cross-cultural engagement in a globalized academic and professional world.

Truth as Ethical Foundation

The central motif of the speech is articulated in the injunction: “Above all else, do not lie.” Adichie positions truth-telling as an ethical imperative, not simply because it guarantees success, but because it safeguards one’s integrity. Drawing on her Nigerian background, she juxtaposes American political discourse with experiences of military dictatorships in Nigeria, noting the alarming erosion of truth in contemporary political rhetoric. For postgraduate students, this becomes a reminder that truth operates not only as a moral value but also as a political necessity, essential to the functioning of democratic institutions.

Personal Vulnerability and Intellectual Honesty

Adichie humanizes her argument through candid confessions of her own lies: exaggerating her height, excusing lateness with fabricated stories, or pretending to have read an author’s work. These admissions illustrate the tension between human imperfection and the pursuit of honesty. More importantly, she stresses the importance of developing a “bullshit detector”—a metaphor for critical discernment. At the postgraduate level, this concept aligns with the intellectual rigor required in academia: the ability to distinguish between genuine argument and rhetorical manipulation, both in others and in oneself.

Self-Reflection and the Courage of Acknowledgment

Adichie emphasizes that the hardest truths are those one must tell oneself. She recounts her struggle to admit the shortcomings of her first manuscript, which she eventually abandoned. This act of self-honesty, though painful, was foundational for her later success. For postgraduate scholars, this translates into the necessity of critical self-assessment in research and intellectual labor—acknowledging weaknesses, revising hypotheses, and accepting academic failures as part of the process of growth.

Leadership, Citizenship, and Literature

Addressing Harvard’s emphasis on producing “citizen leaders,” Adichie questions the practicality of universal leadership but insists that whether leading or following, one must orient towards truth. Her prescription is striking: “Make literature your religion.” She advocates for wide reading across fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction as a means of cultivating empathy and human understanding. This reflects the humanistic foundation of leadership, where literature becomes not only an intellectual pursuit but also an ethical compass for engaging with diverse perspectives and fragile human realities.

Courage in Public Life

Adichie repeatedly calls for courage: the courage to speak the truth in politicized spaces, to acknowledge democracy’s fragility, and to resist cynicism disguised as sophistication. Importantly, she warns against silencing oneself out of fear that the truth may provoke resistance. For postgraduate reflection, this resonates with the responsibility of scholarship in society—to challenge entrenched narratives, to amplify marginalized voices, and to risk intellectual dissent when necessary.

Privilege, Assumptions, and Responsibility

Acknowledging the symbolic weight of a Harvard degree, Adichie highlights both the privilege and the prejudices that graduates will encounter. While the degree opens doors and creates assumptions of competence, it may also evoke resentment or elitist stereotypes. She urges graduates to remain conscious of this privilege and to use it constructively to challenge dominant narratives, support justice, and democratize access to truth. For postgraduate students, this serves as a reflection on the ethical responsibility of intellectual privilege—to not merely enjoy the benefits of higher education, but to act as agents of transformation.

Failure, Fear, and Persistence

Adichie reflects on her own struggles with procrastination, self-doubt, and fear of failure, framing them as natural components of creative and professional growth. She insists that both self-belief and self-doubt are necessary for meaningful achievement. The speech thus reassures postgraduates that failure and delay are not deviations from success but integral to it, echoing the Igbo proverb she cites: “Whenever you wake up, that is your morning.” Success, therefore, is not measured by conventional timelines but by the authenticity of one’s pursuit.

Conclusion: A Call to Truth and Courage

Adichie concludes with a visionary call: graduates must act to repair what is broken, to make tarnished things shine again, and to engage courageously with the truth. Her final exhortation—“Be courageous. Tell the truth. I wish you courage. And I wish you well.”—encapsulates the ethical and existential essence of her message. For postgraduate audiences, this is not merely inspirational rhetoric but a profound philosophical stance: that truth, integrity, and courage must ground intellectual, professional, and civic life.

In essence, Adichie’s Harvard Class Day address serves as both a personal memoir and a manifesto for ethical citizenship in the 21st century. It combines humor with seriousness, narrative with philosophy, and personal confession with universal exhortation. For postgraduate reflection, it underscores that intellectual privilege must be accompanied by ethical responsibility, and that literature, truth, and courage remain indispensable in shaping a just and humane future.

References : 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Address to Harvard's Class of 2018 on Class Day, May 23, 2018. Harvard University Commencement, 23 May 2018, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAAEMFAG9E

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. The Danger of a Single Story. TED, uploaded by TED, 7 Oct. 2009, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists. TEDxEuston, 12 Apr. 2013, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc

Barad, Dilip. "Talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie." Dilip Barad’s Teacher Blog, 25 Aug. 2018, blog.dilipbarad.com/2018/08/talks-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.html.

Film Adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Film Screening Worksheet: The Reluctant Fundamentalist 

This blog, assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, examines The Reluctant Fundamentalist through postcolonial and globalization theories. It connects Ania Loomba’s and Hardt & Negri’s ideas on empire with Mohsin Hamid’s novel and Mira Nair’s film adaptation. The study highlights themes of identity, hybridity, and post-9/11 geopolitics, showing how personal and political conflicts reflect the continuing realities of global power.

For background Reading : Click Here 

A. Pre-Watching Activities 

Critical Reading & Reflection :

1.Read excerpts from Ania Loomba on the “New American Empire” and Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri’s Empire. How do these theories reframe globalization beyond the center–margin dichotomy?    is this pdf relevent to this question.

Beyond Center and Margin? Deconstructing Globalization with Loomba, Hardt, and Negri

For decades, the "center-periphery" model has been a foundational lens for understanding global power. It describes a world where wealthy, powerful colonial metropoles (the centers) exploit and dominate poorer, subjugated regions (the margins or periphery). Postcolonial studies has rigorously used this framework to analyze the cultural, economic, and political aftermath of empire.

But in our era of seamless digital finance, multinational corporations, and global supply chains, a pressing question emerges: Is the old center-margin dichotomy still useful, or has globalization created a new, borderless world of power that renders it obsolete?

This is the exact question Ania Loomba tackles in the conclusion to the second edition of her seminal work, Colonialism/Postcolonialism. She does so by critically examining one of the most influential theories of 21st-century power: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire.

Hardt and Negri's "Empire": A Decentered Network of Power

Hardt and Negri's central argument, as summarized by Loomba, is that the old model of imperialism—where a distinct European nation-state conquered and directly ruled foreign territories—is over. In its place is a new form of sovereignty they call "Empire."

This new Empire has three key characteristics that reframe globalization beyond the center-margin model:

1. It is Decentered and Deterritorialized: Unlike the British or French empires, this new Empire "establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers." There is no single capital city ruling the world. Instead, power is exercised through a "network of powers and counterpowers" – a global web of international institutions, treaties, corporations, and NGOs.

2. It is Inclusive, Not Exclusive: Old imperialism worked by exclusion and oppression, drawing clear lines between colonizer and colonized. Empire, they argue, works by incorporation and modulation. It "manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges," absorbing difference into its system rather than crushing it under a boot. They compare it to the Roman Empire, which integrated subject peoples rather than simply subjugating them.

3. The U.S. is a Catalyst, Not the Center: Crucially, Hardt and Negri do not simply label the U.S. as the new center. They argue that while the U.S. constitutional project was a blueprint for this inclusive, network-based power, Empire itself is a supranational entity. The U.S. acts "in the name of global right," not merely its own national interest.

For many, this was a liberating theory. It suggested that postcolonial studies, stuck in a binary of resistant margins and hegemonic cores, was ill-equipped to analyze the fluid, interconnected operations of contemporary power. As Loomba notes, supporters like Susie O’Brien and Imre Szeman celebrated Empire for helping us "think past the reinscription of globalisation as a centre/periphery dynamic."

Loomba's Critique: The Lingering Ghosts of Empire

Loomba acknowledges the provocative nature of this thesis but offers a powerful critique, arguing that dismissing the center-margin model is not only premature but dangerous. She does not deny the reality of global networks but insists they operate on a landscape still brutally shaped by colonial history.

1. The "New" Empire Feels Very Old: Loomba points to voices from the Global South that experience contemporary globalization not as a break from history, but as its continuation. She quotes an unemployed Bolivian miner who declares, "Globalization is just another name for submission and domination... We’ve had to live with that here for 500 years." The report details how free-market reforms in Bolivia, enforced by international financial institutions, led to increased poverty and unemployment, mirroring colonial extractive patterns.

2. The Violence of "Market Fundamentalism": Drawing on economist P. Sainath, Loomba argues that the mobility of capital has created its own "market fundamentalism"—a rigid ideology as destructive and cross-border as any religious fundamentalism. This fundamentalism, enforced by institutions like the IMF and World Bank, has led to "imposition, disintegration, underdevelopment and appropriation" in the developing world, intensifying pre-existing global asymmetries.

3. The Return of the Repressed Center: Most damningly, Loomba shows that while theorists like Hardt and Negri shy away from naming a center, the advocates of a "New American Empire" have no such hesitation. She quotes figures like Niall Ferguson and Robert D. Kaplan who openly call for the U.S. to embrace its imperial role, drawing direct and celebratory parallels to the British Empire. This rhetoric, used to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, blatantly re-establishes a very clear center of military and political power.
4. Cultural Racism in a New Guise: Loomba also critiques Hardt and Negri's optimistic view that biological racism has given way to more fluid, cultural notions of difference. Following Etienne Balibar, she argues that this "neo-racism" (e.g., framing Muslim culture as inherently incompatible with the West) can be just as rigid and pernicious. This culturalist logic, dominant after 9/11, directly fuels the engine of the new imperialism.

Conclusion: Not Beyond, But Through

So, how do these theories reframe globalization?

• Hardt and Negri reframe it as a decentered network (Empire), suggesting we need new tools that move beyond the geographic and political binaries of classical imperialism.

• Loomba argues that this network is layered onto and energizes older colonial hierarchies. The center-margin model isn't obsolete; it has been reconfigured. The margin is still exploited, but now by a diffuse network of capital supported by the hardened military core of a U.S.-led hegemony.

For Loomba, the task for postcolonial studies is not to abandon its focus on domination and resistance but to apply its historical lens to these new/old formations. It must trace the connections between the colonial past and the globalized present, revealing how the "borderless world" of capital still very much depends on and creates brutal borders, immense inequality, and new forms of cultural domination.

The resistance, as seen in the Narmada Bachao Andolan case she discusses, must therefore be both fiercely local and intelligently global, understanding how local power elites collaborate with international networks. It proves that the spirit of anti-colonial struggle is not redundant but essential, evolving to meet the challenges of a world where empire no longer always dares to speak its name—but acts nonetheless.

2.Reflect in 300-word responses: How might these frameworks illuminate The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a text about empire, hybridity, and post-9/11 geopolitics?

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is profoundly illuminated by postcolonial and geopolitical frameworks, particularly the concepts of empire, hybridity, and the post-9/11 climate.

The novel is a sharp critique of empire, not as a historical relic but as a contemporary economic reality. Changez’s initial success at Underwood Samson reveals a new form of imperial power: financial capitalism. The firm’s mantra, “Focus on the fundamentals,” is a directive to ruthlessly extract value, mirroring the extractive logic of classical colonialism (as argued by critics like Anna Hartnell). This neo-imperial system values Changez only for his economic utility as a “native informant” from the periphery, discarding him when geopolitical tensions rise. His eventual rejection of this system is a rejection of an empire that demands assimilation without offering belonging, a theme central to the work of scholars like Edward Said on Orientalism.

This conflict is rooted in hybridity, a concept Homi K. Bhabha theorised. Changez is the ultimate hybrid subject: educated at Princeton, a star in New York finance, yet perpetually marked by his Pakistani origin. His identity is not a smooth synthesis but a site of constant, jarring negotiation. This “third space” becomes untenable after 9/11, as he is forced to choose sides in a Manichean world order that his hybridity inherently challenges. The American gaze, which once saw a model immigrant, now sees only a potential fundamentalist, demonstrating how identity is constructed by the powerful (a key tenet of Said's Orientalism).

This leads directly to the post-9/11 geopolitics of fear and suspicion. The entire narrative is a dramatic embodiment of this new world. The framed dialogue with the silent American listener in a Lahore café recreates the global standoff between the West and the Muslim world. Changez’s monologue critiques American foreign policy and the domestic paranoia that collapses all nuance, reducing complex individuals to monolithic stereotypes. As scholar Stephen Morton notes, the novel exposes how the “War on Terror” created a security state that perpetuates the very divisions it claims to fight.

Thus, through the lens of these frameworks, Hamid’s novel is revealed as a sophisticated critique of how old imperial patterns reassert themselves through global finance and a toxic geopolitical climate, violently foreclosing the possibilities of hybridity and mutual understanding.

Contextual Research

1. Investigate Hamid’s background and the timeline of writing the novel. Note how the 9/11 attacks reshaped his narrative.

Investigation of Mohsin Hamid's Background and the Novel's Timeline

Hamid's Background: The "Global Hybrid"

Mohsin Hamid's personal history is the essential crucible in which The Reluctant Fundamentalist was formed. As detailed in Discontent and Its Civilizations, he is the embodiment of the "global hybrid" he writes about.

• Early Life in Lahore: Born in 1971, Hamid spent much of his childhood in Lahore, Pakistan, giving him a deep connection to and understanding of the country's culture and socio-political landscape.

• Education in the US: He moved to the United States to attend Princeton University (like his protagonist, Changez) and later Harvard Law School. This experience allowed him to not only succeed within the pinnacles of American meritocracy but also to intimately understand its nuances, contradictions, and underlying social codes.

• Professional Life: After graduation, he worked as a management consultant in New York City for McKinsey & Company. This experience provided the firsthand, gritty detail of the high-stakes, hyper-capitalist environment that Underwood Samson (the fictional firm in the novel) is based on.

• Multinational Residency: As noted, he lived in New York just before 9/11, in London during the 7/7 bombings, and in Lahore during the peak of terrorist attacks and U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. This placed him at the epicenter of the "War on Terror" from all three perspectives, deeply informing his worldview.

Timeline of Writing the Novel: Pre and Post 9/11

The conception and writing of The Reluctant Fundamentalist were directly bifurcated by the attacks of September 11, 2001.

1. The Pre-9/11 Novel (c. 2000-2001): Hamid has stated in interviews that he began writing a novel in 2000 about a young Pakistani man in love with a troubled American woman in New York. The initial focus was primarily on the personal: a cross-cultural romance, the experience of immigration, and the protagonist's journey in the corporate world. The title, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, was already conceived, but its meaning was anchored in economic fundamentalism—the ruthless, numbers-driven ideology of global finance.

2. The Post-9/11 Reshaping (2001-2007): The 9/11 attacks acted as a massive historical shockwave that utterly transformed the context of Hamid's unfinished manuscript. The personal story of a Pakistani man in America was now irrevocably politicized. The narrative had to expand to encompass the new, terrifying reality where:

   • Cultural identity became a matter of suspicion and scrutiny.

   • A "clash of civilizations" rhetoric dominated public discourse.

   • The same American society that celebrated meritocracy and diversity began to exhibit insularity and xenophobia.

Hamid set the manuscript aside for several years to process these events. When he returned to it, the story was no longer just a personal one; it was a political thriller, a psychological drama, and a direct commentary on the post-9/11 world. The existing narrative was retrofitted with the looming presence of the attacks and their aftermath, making the date—set in 2000—deeply ironic and tense, as the reader knows the catastrophe that awaits the characters and their world.

How the 9/11 Attacks Reshaped the Narrative

The critical article posits that 9/11 forced Hamid's narrative to evolve from a personal story into a novel that actively challenges the dominant post-9/11 literary and political paradigms.

1. Challenging the "Trauma Narrative" and "Clash of Civilizations" Orthodoxy

As the critical article states, initial Western responses to 9/11 in literature were largely "documents of personal trauma and loss" or works that recapitulated "unproblematic notions of essential cultural difference." Hamid's novel explicitly rejects this.

• Shift in Perspective: Instead of focusing on American trauma, the novel focalizes the experience of the "other"—the Muslim man who becomes a subject of suspicion. It highlights the trauma inflicted by the response to 9/11: the racial profiling, the existential alienation, and the violence of the ensuing wars.

• Deconstructing "Culture Talk": The novel dismantles the reductive idea, as explained by Mahmood Mamdani, that culture is a "tangible essence" that explains politics. Changez is not radicalized by religion but by politics, by empathy for victims of American power, and by the humiliation of being perceived as a threat solely because of his identity. His fundamentalism is economic first, and his reluctance is to the fundamentalism of American empire.

2. Personal Experience Informing Political Critique

Discontent and Its Civilizations shows how Hamid's own life provided the raw material for the novel's most piercing critiques. The experience he recounts of having his article censored to remove Muslim grievances is a microcosm of the "growing American self-censorship" he witnessed. This directly translates into the novel's theme of silenced narratives.

• The "See Something, Say Something" Paranoia: His essay about not reporting a suspicious Pakistani man on the London Tube illustrates a "different sense of responsibility—the responsibility not to act" born from the knowledge of anti-Muslim hysteria. This empathy and solidarity inform Changez's character, making him more than just a political symbol; he is a compassionate individual navigating an impossible situation.

• The Humiliation of Scrutiny: Hamid's experiences at embassies and airports (e.g., JFK) directly feed into Changez’s degrading experiences, such as being singled out for extra security checks. These personal indignities become the building blocks of his political disillusionment.

3. Narrative Form as a Mirror of Post-9/11 Suspicion

The 9/11 attacks demanded a new form, and Hamid responded with a masterful use of the dramatic monologue and unreliable narration.

• Creating Dissonance and Distrust: The one-sided conversation forces the reader into the position of the American listener—unnerved, suspicious, and unable to verify anything they are told. This replicates the very atmosphere of paranoia and uncertainty that defined the post-9/11 world. We are never sure if Changez is a victim, a predator, or a revolutionary.

• The Hoax Confessional: The title sets an expectation of a confession of Islamic radicalization, parodying books like Ed Husain's The Islamist. By subverting this expectation, Hamid critiques the Western demand for Muslims to explain themselves and confess to a radicalism they may not possess. The novel becomes a "confession that implicates its audience," turning the gaze back on the reader and their own assumptions.

4. Rejecting Binaries and Embracing a "Deterritorialized" Worldview

Ultimately, the reshaping of the narrative by 9/11 led to a work that refuses easy answers.

• Beyond East vs. West: The novel argues that "our civilizations do not cause us to clash. No, our clashing allows us to pretend we belong to civilizations." The conflict creates the illusion of separate, monolithic entities. Hamid, through Changez, shows that identities are fluid and permeable: "Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us."

• A Novel for World Literature: As the critical article concludes, the novel forces the reader to be "deterritorialized." It refuses to be a simple Pakistani novel "writing back" to the West. Instead, it occupies a global space, examining the interconnectedness of power, finance, and violence in the modern world. It records the experiences of those affected by the "reverberations from the response to 9/11" that are often ignored, making it a vital work of world literature that holds a mirror to the "hyper-conscious western world."

In conclusion, 9/11 did not just provide a backdrop for Hamid's novel; it fundamentally reconfigured its DNA. It transformed a story of personal ambition and romance into a complex, unsettling, and essential political and psychological inquiry into identity, power, and the perils of empire in the 21st century. The novel is a direct product of Hamid's unique background as a "global hybrid" who experienced the seismic shift of 9/11 from multiple, conflicting vantage points.

2.Write a short summary (150 words): What is the significance of Hamid having begun the novel before 9/11 but completing it thereafter?

Mohsin Hamid’s initial conception of The Reluctant Fundamentalist—begun before 9/11—focused on a personal story of migration, ambition, and cross-cultural romance within the world of global finance. However, the 9/11 attacks fundamentally reshaped the narrative, transforming it into a urgent political and psychological thriller. This temporal shift is profoundly significant: it allowed Hamid to recontextualize his protagonist’s identity crisis within the sudden, stark climate of post-9/11 suspicion, xenophobia, and renewed American nationalism. The novel’s pre-9/11 setting creates dramatic irony, as the reader anticipates the impending catastrophe that will shatter the protagonist’s American dream. By integrating his pre-existing draft with the new global reality, Hamid challenges the simplistic “clash of civilizations” narrative. Instead, he presents a nuanced exploration of how geopolitical ruptures violently redefine personal identity, making the novel a crucial intervention in post-9/11 literature that critiques both Western imperialism and the reductive stereotypes of Muslim identity.

B. While-Watching Activities

The Reluctant Fundamentalist Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Kate Hudson Movie HD

1. Character Conflicts & Themes

• Father/son or generational split: Observe how corporate modernity(Changez at Underwood Samson) clashes with poetic-rooted values—though more implicit, think via symbolism or narrative tension.
• Changez and the American photographer (Erica): Watch how objectification and emotional estrangement are depicted visually and thematically.
• Profit vs. knowledge/book: Look for cinematic metaphors of commodification versus literary or cultural value (e.g., scenes in Istanbul).

Answer : 

Mira Nair's 2012 film adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, transposes complex literary themes into a rich visual and narrative language. The film uses its cinematic form—mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and symbolism—to explore profound conflicts that define the protagonist, Changez Khan's, identity crisis. This analysis will deconstruct the three core conflicts you've outlined.

1. Generational Split: Corporate Modernity vs. Poetic-Rooted Values

This conflict is the film's central ideological battleground, presented not through explicit debate but through a powerful visual and symbolic juxtaposition.

• Research/Theoretical Lens: This tension can be analyzed through the lens of Postcolonial Theory, specifically Homi K. Bhabha's concepts of mimicry and hybridity. Changez's journey is one of initially aspiring to perfect mimicry of the American corporate archetype, only to have that identity destabilized by the reassertion of his native, "poetic" cultural heritage.

• Cinematic Depiction & Symbolism:

  • The "Fundamentalist" Tool: The valuation tool taught by Underwood Samson ("Focus on the fundamentals") becomes a metaphor for the Western capitalist gaze that reduces complex entities (companies, cultures, people) to their mere monetary value. The cold, sleek, blue-and-steel aesthetic of the New York offices contrasts sharply with the warm, textured, and chaotic visuals of Lahore.

  • The Symbol of the Watch: Changez's expensive watch, a symbol of his success at Underwood Samson, is explicitly rejected in a key scene. He throws it away, a powerful act of discarding the metric of time and value imposed by the corporate West. This act is a visual renunciation of the generational push towards Western-defined "success" that his family once admired.

  • Narrative Tension: The entire film is structured as a flashback, framed by Changez's conversation with Bobby Lincoln in Lahore. This narrative structure itself embodies the split: the older, wiser, and disillusioned Changez (rooted in Lahore) recounts and critiques the story of his younger self (the corporate aspirant in New York). The tension is built into the film's very fabric.

2. Changez and Erica: Objectification and Emotional Estrangement

The relationship with Erica (Kate Hudson) is the primary emotional vehicle for exploring Changez's experience of alienation and objectification in America.

• Research/Theoretical Lens: Erica functions as an allegory for America itself. Her name, Erica, is a homophone for "America." Her character is not just a love interest but a symbol of a nation that is beautiful, alluring, but also melancholic, self-absorbed, and trapped in its own past (her obsession with her ex-boyfriend Chris, a symbol of a pre-9/11 America).

• Cinematic Depiction & Thematics:

  • Visual Objectification: The cinematography often frames Erica through a soft, romantic, almost dreamlike lens, objectifying her as an ideal. Conversely, Changez is frequently shot looking at her, his gaze filled with a desire not just for her, but for the acceptance into the world she represents.

  • Thematic Estrangement: Erica's emotional unavailability mirrors America's inability to truly see or accept Changez after 9/11. His famous line, "I was looked at like a monster," is foreshadowed in their intimate relationship. When he tries to connect with her, she asks him to pretend to be Chris—a literal demand for him to erase his identity and mimic another. This is a profound visual and thematic representation of the emotional estrangement and conditional acceptance he faces.

3. Profit vs. Knowledge: The Commodification of Culture

This conflict moves beyond the personal to critique a global system where cultural and historical value is subsumed by economic value.

• Research/Theoretical Lens: This theme resonates with Marxist cultural criticism, which examines how capitalism commodifies everything, including art and heritage, turning use-value and cultural-value into mere exchange-value.

• Cinematic Metaphors (The Istanbul Sequence):

  • The Istanbul business trip is the crucible for this theme. Underwood Samson is hired to value a publishing house, not for its literary output or cultural significance (its "books"), but for its asset value to be sold off ("profit").

  • The Key Metaphor - The Book: The aging publisher hands Changez a beautiful, rare book. He says it is "priceless," a term that in the cultural sphere means its value is beyond economics. Changez, still in his corporate mindset, instinctively translates this into a market valuation, asking, "What would it fetch at auction?" This moment of cognitive dissonance is captured in a close-up on Changez's face, realizing he is applying the "fundamentalist" tool to something sacred.

  • The Cinematic Pivot: The publisher's defiant, dignified stance—prioritizing the legacy of knowledge over a maximum sale price—becomes the catalyst for Changez's awakening. The film uses the visual grandeur of Istanbul, a city that embodies the layering of history and commerce, as the perfect backdrop for this ideological clash. It is here that he begins to see his own complicity in a system that reduces the world's rich tapestry to a balance sheet.

In conclusion, Mira Nair's film masterfully uses its cinematic language to explore these layered conflicts. It moves beyond a simple political narrative to offer a tragic portrait of a man caught between worlds, whose personal relationships and professional life become the microcosm for a much larger global clash of values.

References: 

“Discontent and Its Civilizations.” The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, 9 Mar. 2015, www.thecairoreview.com/book-reviews/discontent-and-its-civilizations/.

Huggan, Graham. "The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the Post-9/11 Novel." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 47, no. 3, July 2011, pp. 297–308. Taylor & Francis Online, doi:10.1080/17449855.2011.557184.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

This blog was assigned by our respected Head of the Department, Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. 

For the background reading: Click Here

It focuses on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, a novel that combines Western postmodern techniques with Indian oral storytelling traditions. The first part of the blog explains the narrative techniques used in the novel, such as framed stories, unreliable narration, magical realism, and parody. The second part gives a deconstructive reading of symbols, showing how objects like the perforated sheet, the silver spittoon, and the pickles carry complex layers of meaning. Overall, the blog highlights how Midnight’s Children tells not only the life story of Saleem Sinai but also reflects the larger story of India—fragmented, hybrid, and full of contradictions.

Narrative Techniques in Midnight’s Children: A Synthesis of Western Postmodernism and Indian Oral Traditions

Narrative Technique | Midnight's Children | Sem 3 Online Classes | 2021 07 12

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a masterful exploration of narrative form, blending Western postmodern literary techniques with traditional Indian storytelling methods. The novel’s structure is deeply influenced by devices such as framed narratives, unreliable narration, magical realism, and parody, all of which are rooted in both global and indigenous literary traditions. By examining these techniques, we can better understand how Rushdie constructs a narrative that reflects the fragmented, multi-layered nature of postcolonial Indian identity.

1. Framed Narratives: Chinese Boxes and Indian Oral Storytelling

The novel employs a "Chinese box" structure, a Western postmodern device where stories are nested within stories, creating multiple layers of narration. This technique, seen in works like Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness, allows for shifting perspectives and challenges the notion of a single, authoritative truth. In Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai’s autobiography is filled with digressions, alternate histories, and personal myths, emphasizing the subjectivity of memory and history.

Parallel to this, Rushdie draws from Indian oral storytelling traditions, particularly the Kathasaritsagara (an 11th-century Sanskrit text composed of interconnected tales) and Baital Pachisi (a collection of stories within a frame narrative, featuring King Vikram and a vampire spirit). These Indian forms thrive on cyclical, non-linear storytelling, where one tale triggers another, much like Saleem’s digressive and recursive narration. The "perforated sheet" motif, for instance, symbolizes fragmented perception, mirroring the layered storytelling of the Kathasaritsagara, where each tale reveals only partial truths.

2. Unreliable Narration: The Postmodern Narrator and the Indian Sutradhar

Saleem Sinai is a classic unreliable narrator, a hallmark of postmodern literature. His account is filled with contradictions, errors, and exaggerations, forcing readers to question the reliability of history itself. This technique aligns with postmodernism’s skepticism toward grand narratives and absolute truths.

In contrast, Indian epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana also employ self-aware narrators. Ved Vyasa, the composer of the Mahabharata, and Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, frame their stories as dialogues, acknowledging their constructed nature. Similarly, Saleem positions himself as a sutradhar (a traditional Indian storyteller or puppeteer), consciously shaping his tale while admitting its artifice. His declaration, "to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world," echoes the epic narrators’ role as both creators and distorters of their narratives.

3. Magical Realism: Myth as Political Allegory

Rushdie’s use of magical realism—where fantastical elements coexist with real-world events—is influenced by Western writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. In Midnight’s Children, telepathic children, prophetic dreams, and supernatural events serve as metaphors for India’s tumultuous post-independence history.

However, this technique also has deep roots in Indian folklore and mythic traditions. The Panchatantra, a collection of animal fables, uses allegory to teach statecraft, much like Rushdie’s fantastical elements critique political realities. Similarly, Girish Karnad’s play Hayavadana (about a man with a horse’s head) blends myth and absurdism to explore identity—a theme central to Rushdie’s novel.

 The "thirty jars" in Midnight’s Children, each holding a child’s fate, parallel the Panchatantra’s allegorical vessels, symbolizing fragmented destinies under authoritarian rule.

4. Parody and Counter-Historiography

Rushdie subverts official historical narratives through parody and episodic storytelling. The novel’s chapter titles—such as "The Perforated Sheet," "Snakes and Ladders," and "The Kolynos Kid"—mimic the structure of Indian oral serials while undermining colonial and nationalist mythmaking.

This technique mirrors the Mahabharata’s parvas (books), but Rushdie’s playful titles mock grand historical arcs, exposing how history is often constructed rather than absolute. By blending postmodern irony with Indian storytelling’s cyclical nature, Rushdie creates a narrative that is both a celebration and a critique of India’s postcolonial identity.

Conclusion: A Narrative of Hybridity

Midnight’s Children is a testament to narrative hybridity, merging:

• Postmodern fragmentation (unreliable narration, Chinese boxes)

• Indian orality (frame stories, the sutradhar’s role)

• Magical realism (myth as political allegory)

The novel’s structure—like the "empty jar" on Saleem’s shelf—invites readers to fill in the gaps, embracing multiplicity over singular truths. Rushdie’s genius lies in making the novel’s form its meaning: just as India’s history is a palimpsest of competing stories, Midnight’s Children demands that we question who controls the narrative—and who gets to rewrite it. 

Deconstructive Reading of Symbols in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Deconstructive Reading of Symbols | Midnight's Children | Sem 3 Online Classes | 2021 07 13

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a text overflowing with allegory, symbolism, and narrative play. It is not only a story about Saleem Sinai, but also a story of India itself—fragmented, hybrid, and always in tension between memory and forgetting. A deconstructive reading of symbols allows us to see how Rushdie unsettles binary oppositions, destabilizes meaning, and foregrounds the contradictions that define postcolonial identity. In this blog, I will explore some of the central symbols—drawing from Derrida’s theory of pharmakon and Plato’s myth of writing—to unpack how Midnight’s Children resists closure and certainty.

Pharmakon: Remedy and Poison

In Phaedrus, Plato recounts the myth of Thoth, the Egyptian god who invented writing, offering it as a pharmakon—both remedy and poison. Socrates, however, condemns writing as corrosive to memory and truth. Jacques Derrida, in Plato’s Pharmacy (1969), seizes on this undecidable doubleness of pharmakon, showing how Western philosophy reduces ambiguity into binary oppositions such as speech/writing, remedy/poison, interior/exterior.

This concept is crucial for Rushdie’s novel. Midnight’s Children itself functions as a pharmakon: storytelling both preserves and distorts, heals and wounds, remembers and forgets. Saleem’s narration, fragmented and self-contradictory, enacts precisely what Derrida terms archi-writing—the recognition that speech itself is already a form of writing, always deferred and unstable.

The Perforated Sheet: Fragments of Vision

The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz first glimpses his wife-to-be epitomizes deconstruction. It reveals and conceals simultaneously, offering vision in fragments rather than wholeness. Saleem remarks that he is “condemned by a perforated sheet to a life of fragments,” and this metaphor expands to the entire novel’s narrative form.

Just as Aadam falls in love with his wife’s body in parts, never unified, Saleem recalls his own past in pieces. The perforated sheet is thus a symbol of partial knowledge, incomplete memory, and fractured identity. Jamila Singer later uses a similar veil, reducing her to a voice—suggesting how women, nation, and identity are mediated through absence as much as presence.

The Silver Spittoon: Memory and Amnesia

The silver spittoon, a wedding gift, emerges as one of the most layered symbols. Initially linked to the traditions of Old India, it becomes the vessel of Saleem’s memory. When struck on the head with it during the Indo-Pakistani war, Saleem loses his memory, yet instinctively clings to the spittoon as an anchor of identity.

Here again, deconstruction destabilizes meaning: the spittoon is both container of memory and agent of amnesia. It reminds us that memory itself is fragile, always on the brink of forgetting. The destruction of the spittoon during the Emergency parallels the erasure of democratic freedoms—identity itself smashed under authoritarian control.

Pickles: Preservation and Destruction

Saleem’s pickle factory literalizes the novel’s obsession with preservation. Like jars of chutney, Saleem preserves his story, chapter by chapter, labeling them for posterity. Pickles represent the power of narration to grant immortality, yet also the inevitability of decay.

Pickling thus becomes another pharmakon: it saves but also corrupts, freezes but also transforms. Saleem’s story, like India’s, is preserved in fragments, never offering a pure or unchanging truth.

Knees and Nose: Strength and Weakness

Ramram predicts the birth of “knees and nose”—Shiva and Saleem. Knees symbolize strength, aggression, and destruction; the nose, sensitivity, smell, and creation. When Aadam Aziz prays, his knees and nose both touch the ground, representing submission. Later, Farooq’s death reenacts this bowing gesture, now to death instead of God.

Shiva’s violent knees and Saleem’s magical nose embody the binary opposition of destruction/creation, faith/rebellion. Yet as deconstruction teaches, these binaries collapse into interdependence: Shiva’s brutality is necessary for historical change, while Saleem’s creativity cannot escape destruction.

Saleem and Shiva: Complementary Opposites

Saleem and Shiva—swapped at birth—symbolize the fractured identity of India. Saleem, allegorical India, carries the burden of memory; Shiva, embodiment of violence, represents destructive forgetfulness. Their binary opposition recalls the Chinese yin-yang: opposite forces bound together, incomplete without each other.

Saleem’s amnesia reflects the danger of a nation overwhelmed by its past, while Shiva’s indifference reveals the perils of forgetting history entirely. Both become political pawns during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, showing how personal identity collapses into national allegory.

Deconstructive Closure

Symbols in Midnight’s Children refuse stable interpretation. Each is undecidable, both remedy and poison, preservation and destruction, revelation and concealment. A deconstructive reading exposes Rushdie’s deliberate destabilization of meaning—mirroring the instability of postcolonial India itself.

Just as  reads Plato against Plato, we must read Rushdie against Rushdie: Saleem’s story claims coherence but constantly unravels into fragments, contradictions, and alternative meanings. The novel’s symbols resist closure, inviting us to embrace uncertainty as the essence of truth.

Conclusion:

Reading Midnight’s Children through Derrida’s pharmakon demonstrates how Rushdie undermines binaries and shows identity, history, and memory to be fractured, undecidable, and hybrid. The perforated sheet, spittoon, pickles, knees and nose—all function as unstable signs that both preserve and undermine meaning. In the end, Rushdie’s novel does not give us a singular truth, but a constellation of fragments—India itself written as deconstruction.

References : 

Barad, Dilip. “Dilip Barad | Teacher Blog: Midnight's Children.” Dilip Barad's Blog, 5 August 2021, https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2021/08/midnights-children.html. 

“Deconstructive Reading of Symbols.” YouTube, uploaded by DoE-MKBU, 13 July 2021, https://youtu.be/KgJMf9BiI14

“Narrative Technique.” YouTube, uploaded by DoE-MKBU, 12 July 2021, https://youtu.be/opu-zd4JNbo