Salman Rushdie's Postcolonial Metaphors - Migration, Translation, Hybridity, Blasphemy, and Globalization

Metaphors allow us to describe something new in terms of the familiar. They are culturally and ideologically grounded and help structure language, thoughts, and attitudes. The network of empire building was sustained through a system of metaphors that saw and depicted the colonizer as superior, powerful, and beneficial, and the indigenous population as deviant and primitive. Colonial metaphors included such images as bringing light to dark, barbaric places; journeying to uncharted lands; and educating ignorant natives. This volume studies how Salman Rushdie reworks and reimagines colonial metaphors in his postcolonial novels.

The book looks at five overarching metaphors in Rushdie's writings: migration, or the transfer of people and their ideologies; translation, the process of representing something from one language into another; hybridity, the fusing together of disparate cultural elements; blasphemy, the desecration of sacred beliefs by altering their representation; and globalization, the homogenization of cultures. By reconstructing these metaphors in his novels, Rushdie challenges established colonial ways of understanding the world, undermines imperialist power structures, and introduces alternative visions of reality.

List of contents

Introduction
Migration
Translation
Hybridity
Blasphemy
Globalization
Conclusion: Constructing Newness
Bibliography
Index

About the author

JAINA C. SANGA teaches cultural studies at Southern Methodist University. Her previous books include Salman Rushdie's Postcolonial Metaphors (2001) and South Asian Novelists in English (2003), both available from Greenwood Press.

Product details

• Authors: Jaina C. Sanga
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 7 to 17
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2001
• EAN: 9780313313103
• ISBN: 978-0-313-31310-3
• No. of pages: 192
• Weight: 425 g
• Series: Contributions to the Study of World Literature
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Asian / Indic, India, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form, The Arts: World Literature