Modern Postcolonial Intersections: Hamid, Mahfouz, and Pamuk

Abstract

Some of the overarching literary theories that stem from postcolonial theory spearheaded by Edward Said¹ and Gayatri Spivak² call into question the underlying assumptions that form the foundation of Orientalist thinking. Said’s³ thesis states that there is a need to revise and reject old and new Oriental perceptions, generalizations, cultural constructions, and racial and religious prejudices. Said asserts that there should be a conscious understanding of the line between “the West” and “the other.” Naguib Mahfouz, Orhan Pamuk, and Mohsin Hamid demonstrate this understanding in their work. Said argues for the use of “narrative” rather than “vision” in interpreting the landscape known as the Orient. In other words, a scholar or interpreter would need to focus on a complex history that allows space for a variety of local human experiences. Mahfouz provides this type of complexity in his writings, as does Pamuk,⁴ who describes his own oscillation between East and West in Turkey. Hamid⁵ asserts his own ideas on what might be considered exemplary of Orientalism and, more importantly, on the transformation that occurs when the lines between the Orient and the Occident are diminished, as he writes:

But as I reacclimatized and my surroundings once again became familiar, it occurred to me that the house had not changed in my absence. I had changed; I was looking about me with the eyes of a foreigner, and not just any foreigner, but that particular type of entitled and unsympathetic American who so annoyed me when I encountered him in the classrooms and workplaces of your country’s elite. This realization angered me; staring at my reflection in the specked glass of my bathroom mirror I resolved to exorcise the unwelcome sensibility by which I had become possessed.⁶