THE TRANSNATIONALISM OF SALMAN RUSHDIE: FROM A CONTRAPUNTAL TO A METAMORPHIC READING OF HISTORY
THE TRANSNATIONALISM OF SALMAN RUSHDIE: FROM A CONTRAPUNTAL TO A METAMORPHIC READING OF HISTORY

Summary/Abstract: One of the possible ways to conceptualize transnationalism is to analyze the special kind of consciousness it has given birth to, marked by dual or multiple identifications. A post-colonial writer concerned with what it means to be a migrant or diasporic subject, Salman Rushdie starts from what Said has called a “contrapuntal” reading of history, the setting against one another of home and host country in The Satanic Verses, where the fall from the sky of both Gibreel and Saleem embody “the unhealable rift…between the self and its true home” (Said). However, in his subsequent novels, the contrapuntal reading makes way for a plural and metamorphic reading of history. The initial awareness of the split self changes into an awareness of the irreducible plurality of the self’s identifications with the multiple histories of the spaces and times it inhabits. Thus in his following novels Rushdie gravitates towards a new understanding of the migrant’s identity as metamorphic, constantly changing in response to its environment. This new conceptualization of migrant and diasporic identities as metamorphic points to the emergence of a transnational consciousness, fostered both by postcolonial history and globalization.

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