Postsecularism and the ethics of ethno-religious pluralism in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses an...

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" Postsecularism and the ethics of ethno-religious pluralism in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and Zadie Smith's NW "

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	803015
Doc. No	:	TL48198
Call number	:	‭1679935909;‮ ‬1587418‬
Main Entry	:	Mian, Ali Altaf
Title & Author	:	Postsecularism and the ethics of ethno-religious pluralism in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and Zadie Smith's NW
	:	\ Christopher J. Tumminello
	:	Rizzuto, Nicole
College	:	Georgetown University
Date	:	2015
Degree	:	M.A.
student score	:	2015
field of study	:	English
Page No	:	59
Note	:	Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-71231-5
Abstract	:	What I aim to accomplish below is an analysis of the commitment exhibited within <i>The Satanic Verses</i> and <i>NW</i> to portraying the complexities of the relationship between the religious and the secular in a postcolonial and postmodern age. Through a thorough and intricate depiction of the presence of difference in the urban center of London, both texts are clearly committed to establishing an ethics of ethno-religious pluralism in the Western metropolis. I propose that this appeal to ethics mirrors that of Kwame Anthony Appiah's notion of the ethical universal, since both texts make narrative and aesthetic maneuvers that emphasize their concern with humanism and the power of the individual. In <i>The Satanic Verses</i> this is on display through a form of metafiction that implicates all narratives in the web of discourse, resulting in an equivalence of all texts, from the novel itself to the Qur'ān. While Rushdie was evidently eager to contest the ideas of fundamentalist Islam throughout the novel, this metafictional move confirms that even his own authority is highly questionable, and thus his own text is up for equal contestation. Combined with its attentiveness to Islamic beliefs and history, <i>The Satanic Verses</i> illustrates a type of critical, postsecular ambivalence that values tolerance, and the existence of a pluralism that requires constant confrontation and negotiation.
Subject	:	Ethics; Literature; Political science
Descriptor	:	Language, literature and linguistics;Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;NW;Pluralism;Rushdie, Salman;Smith, Zadie;The Satanic Verses
Added Entry	:	Rizzuto, Nicole
Added Entry	:	Georgetown University
	:	English