Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a Site of Collaboration in the Postcoloniality/Decoloniality Debate

Abstract

While novels like Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist are being analyzed with frameworks driven by Postcolonialism, my paper advocates a ‘Decolonial’ reading of the book to grasp its complexity fully. Discussing the novel with ideas from the domain of ‘Decolonial Option’, I argue that such postcolonial canonical texts as that of Hamid can become a site of collaboration between the apparently warring ideas of postcolonial versus decolonial. While scholars from both factions continue to differ and divulge (and sometimes accuse) each other of ‘serving the master’, my paper demonstrates that both postcolonial and decolonial lenses have similar thrusts of resisting the master’s narrative, and both reach similar conclusions, albeit through different routes. Utilizing major critical ideas from the ‘Decolonial Thought’ and close reading of the plot, narrativization, and aesthetics of the novel, this paper concludes that we need to engage in studies that analyze literature canonized in postcolonial literature and putting it in conversation with decolonial thought, aiming to bring the two together as both share the ‘political’ and ‘intellectual resistance’ against colonialism and coloniality.